Scott Walker GOP Wants to Take over Dozens of Milwauke Public Schools

Having confined the greater Milwaukee urban area as the nation's most segregated region, Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans are now working on legislation to take over dozens of Milwaukee public schools and hand them over to for-profit companies.

Notes the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), "Wisconsin legislators from two of the wealthiest communities in our state have released a plan to hand over dozens of Milwaukee’s public schools to private companies, create a central city zone with no corporate taxes, and implement a 'right-to-work' law only in the city of Milwaukee. Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) released their plan [last week] and say they will introduce legislation soon."

With the GOP-heavy Milwaukee police continuing its assaults against the black community, the city of Milwaukee will soon resemble something akin a dystopian police state, if you are poor and black amid the battering of Milwaukee.

One wonders how this targeting of Milwaukee by Scott Walker and Republicans is consistent with the Wisconsin Constitution, Article X, Education.

The legislative proposals follow draconian cuts to public schools in Walker's first term, and a Scott Walker-proposed $300-Million cut the University of Wisconsin System.

Walker never ran on these proposals, as the push-back from old-school Republicans begins in this lethargic state with a dilapidated Democratic Party of Wisconsin in opposition.

The Wisconsin media portray the assaults against public schools as though there is no collusion among Republican legislators, Scott Walker and the special interests supporting the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

Public schools are liberalizing institutions, socializing young people to view human beings as human beings, thus evangelicals such as Scott Walker have never liked the idea of public schools, and are now taking an ax to Wisconsin public schools and universities, institutions that took generations to build for the common welfare of the state.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court's GOP wing is expected to eviscerate the Fair Housing Act of 1968 this term in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, et al v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. 

The Fair Housing Act was signed into law days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

"The act makes it illegal to refuse to sell, rent 'or otherwise make unavailable or deny' a property to anyone because of race, sex or other protected categories." (New York Times)

Our Broken Escalator - Cuts to School Districts are UnAmerican

Nicholas D. Kristof has a piece in today's NYT on why public education is a good thing.

Scott Walker, Randy Hopper and the gang don't agree as they take their ax to school districts, demonize teachers, and take over community control.

Writes Kristof:

THE United States supports schools in Afghanistan because we know that education is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to build a country.

Alas, we’ve forgotten that lesson at home. All across America, school budgets are being cut, teachers laid off and education programs dismantled. ...

The immediate losers are the students. In the long run, the loser is our country. ...

it’s also true that blindly slashing budgets is making the problems worse. As Derek Bok, the former Harvard president, once observed, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

Still, we nation-build in Afghanistan and scrimp at home. How is it that we can afford to double our military budget since 9/11, can afford the carried-interest tax loophole for billionaires, can afford billions of dollars in givebacks to oil and gas companies, yet can’t afford to invest in our kids’ futures?

Sometimes I hear people endorse education cuts by arguing that “school isn’t for everybody,” which usually means something like “education isn’t for other people’s children” — or that farm kids in places like Yamhill [Oregon] really don’t need schools that double as rocket ships. I can’t think of any view that is more un-American.