New Hampshire prides itself on local control in education. To many, this has become a farce.
If you missed this article in The Federalist, I would suggest taking some time to read it. In “Obama Administration Wants To Kiss Your Local Schools Behind,” they explain how the Obama Admin., “…is maneuvering to replace local control in education (and in other areas) with school systems that extend across entire metropolitan regions.”
The article details how “regionalism,” is a way to abolish suburbs. The bigger you make a region, the less local control you have over your public schools. The end result will further be silence parents.
How will they accomplish this newest “regionalism” scheme? First, “any local jurisdiction that applies for a Community Development Block Grant from HUD to complete an “Assessment of Fair Housing,” analyzing housing occupancy by such categories as race, ethnicity, nationality, and class. If there are imbalances (i.e., if a particular housing area is disproportionally low- or high-income, or white or black or Hispanic or whatever) then the grantee must determine what factors account for the disparities.” Since every jurisdiction will have some sort of imbalance, the grantee will have to submit a plan to address this imbalance. The plan would have to include several jurisdictions to cover a region. Once you take the bait (federal dollars), you accept all of the strings attached.
This is how grants work in public schools. If you take a peek at the grant application, you will see what local schools give up in order to secure the grant money. In other words, if the grant requires teachers to use methods that lower academic achievement, school administrators will force teachers to use these methods. When a parent then goes to their school board to request a change, it will fall on deaf ears. The school already sold local control to the highest bidder.
Grants tend to come from the Federal Government or education education reformers like The Gates Foundation or Nellie Mae. These are the ones who want to buy up “control” of your public school.
EBuild is funded by Bill Gates and the other organizations that have been pushing Common Core education reforms on our local schools. EBuild is now decrying borders and saying they should be, “dissolved and students economically integrated by force.” This is their way of forcibly redistributing suburban tax revenue to less-affluent school districts.
Regionally specific education is embedded in ESSA. Page 325 states that all post secondary Ed must be region specific. Also consider that other education related items, actions, and groups have the USA broken into regions. Especially the CCR Success Centers.
Lastly, venture capital groups, are pouring billions into education, to eliminate local school boards. ESSA has woven, into “state accountability,” measures so that low performing schools get taken over by private charter schools as a way to eliminate local control. Eliminating local control is exactly what Marc Tucker, one of the architects of Common Core, advocated for when he decided the dumbed down workforce model was good for public schools.
The assault on local control in education is a political agenda that is coming at us through grants, federal laws, the NH Department of Education and Corporations poised to capitalize off of taxpayer dollars.
How do we fight to maintain local control? First there has to be an effort to turn away from money that seeks to cut parents and local residents out of the democratic process. School Boards still maintain a lot of power if they just exercise it.
Ann Marie Banfield currently volunteers as the Education Liaison for Cornerstone Action in New Hampshire. She has been researching education reform for over a decade and actively supports parental rights, literacy and academic excellence in k-12 schools. You can contact her at: abanfield@nhcornerstone.org
