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Al Dia: Some of us came to America to flee undemocratic rule...like the School Reform Commission

Al Dia editorial socks it to the Harper Valley PTA

The Latino-oriented Philadelphia newspaper Al Dia has a killer -- and I mean killer -- editorial today on the affront to democracy that is our city's School Reform Commission and its buried-in-the-classifieds assault on the teachers' union. It speaks for itself, but the most powerful lines say, in so many words, that some Philadelphia Hispanics came here as refugees from regimes that rule in the same banana-republic fashion as the SRC:

The manner in which the SRC has conducted itself has been, if not deliberately deceptive, then certainly disingenuous and obstructive.

The SRC's tactic of hiding the meeting date by burying an announcement of it in the legal notices of a newspaper; of not posting meeting information on its website (its public face); of scheduling the meeting when those most affected and most likely to protest the action — teachers, students, parents — could not possibly show up; precluding dissenting comment until the action was a done deal, are awfully familiar to those of us who grew up in places where governmental institutions routinely trampled on the best interests of the people they purportedly represented. 

This is not a pretty comparison, but a true one.

We are remembering, today, a roundtable discussion we had with Superintendent Hite, in which he lamented the way certain charter schools got around having to serve any and all Philadelphia students — by scheduling their registrations at times which almost absolutely precluded working-class and lower-income folks from being able to enroll their kids. It was wrong, he said, and the school district did not abide actions that conspire to make people powerless in their children's education. Hello? Hello?

The entire piece, beginning with the in-your-face headline, is a work of power and beauty...please read the whole thing. And then tip your hat to hundreds of brave Philadelphia school kids who hit the pavement in a wildcat strike this morning to make the point that seems so elusive to the suburban rear-end-planted commentariat -- that even in their teens they've already learned that they can't get a good education without good teachers.

The same people who grouse about today's youth only caring about their sneakers and their video games are surely grousing hypocritically today over young people who passionately care about the schooling they receive, and who've been let down by feckless "grown-ups" again and again and again. These kids who walked out today are alrright -- they are heroes in my book.