What is Duper Super Pam Homan’s job? Why do we have a school board? (Guest Poster)

“You mean I should actually read these contracts before signing them?”

Sunday’s PayWall Leader gave us some surprise news.  Our esteemed local school board ceded more control to an appointed official and she in turn sold more of the sole of this city.  She has decided to give up on more of our most needy by selling them out to a for-profit ‘education’ corporation.

Is our education system so broken in Sioux Falls we have to give up on it and pay a for-profit education corporation to operate our schools?  Remember a few days ago when we were ‘privileged’ to hear the Homan dog and pony show about the wonderful job she is doing? Reread SouthDacola’s Duper Super Homan feature speaker at Democratic Forum today.  Well here we go again.  Let’s see how Homan has been doing: telling the substitute teachers they aren’t worth being paid a competitive rate, experienced teachers retiring early,  consolidating schools without full public discussion as to costs and benefits, nepotism and more.  Somehow our weak, led by the nose school board is afraid of her or have been bought into her schemes to dismantle our once great public school system.

We’ve had a few discussions with others since the news was dropped on us.  The crux of these convos is why the Joe Foss school deal is wrong not on one but many levels.  It seems to be such a shock it escapes the full thought process of Sioux Falls.  We will only touch on a few ways this is a real bad idea for the student, the school district and Sioux Falls.  It may sum up to numbers.  In an effort to make the testing / grade averages increase for the school district, Homan has decided to remove a problem area from their ‘numbers’ by farming the students off to a private corporation.  Instead of putting the efforts necessary to help the students with the right kind of support, Homan has decide to abandon the students and families of special needs children.  This will likely cost the school district more money in the end and society as a whole.

Fake Liberals and holier than thou Conservatives have been locked in a battle to control the educations of our youth.  The holier than thou are looking for ways the take our children to their version of the Lord.  The fake Liberals (neo-liberals) are trying to protect their children from being contaminated by the unwashed-lesser of society.  Amy Goodman’s recent article tells the tale of the Chicago school teachers strike and what was at stake:

Pauline Lipman is a professor of education and policy studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago. She explained, “Chicago was the birthplace of this neoliberal corporate reform agenda of high-stakes testing, paying teachers based on test scores, disinvesting in neighborhood schools and then closing them and turning them over to charter schools.”

Now with the preceding quote in hand think about what is happening in Sioux Falls right now.  At the heart of what is going on in our schools matches the Chicago situation.  To paraphrase Goodman: locally, from the grass roots, do we operate with teacher and parent control, or top-down, by a school board controlled by Homan.  We are supposed to be so impressed by Homan’s dog and pony shows we forget the purpose of the public school system is to educate everyone equally, to add to the value of the community and create thinking citizens.

Homan is contracting out the school board and her responsibilities to a for-profit company who is only concerned with how much they can skim off the top, middle and bottom to make a buck.  Students are not human beings in their equation, they are products to be churned out as cheaply as possible.  Why do we have Homan making these decisions and no thinking people on the school board to question her.  Is No one able to veto anything she throws out?  No questions?  Really?  Really no one is able to raise any ethics or long-term education issues in this?  Really?  Wow, is Sioux Falls so backwards we cannot question authority?  Really?  What happened to students first philosophy of John Harris?

We ask the questions again, “What is her job?” “Why do we have a school board?”

I also received this information recently from the SE Homeless Coalition:

There are 3600  households on the waiting list for a subsidy at Sioux Falls housing, and the  wait is at least four years.  This is the entire preschool life of a  child.  Pam Homan said there were 500 unserved preschoolers, I am guessing  this might be a low figure.