Many of us painfully recall our last Broad Superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson and the chaos she wrought through school closings, successful programs being decimated, an increase in bureaucracy, nonsensical rifing of teachers and a regime of fear.
This kind of disruption has been felt by other districts who hired superintendents trained by the billionaire Eli Broad who thinks all schools should be privatized.
At least once or twice a month, people contact me after finding the article Sue Peters wrote on the Broad Foundation, How to tell if your school district is infected with the Broad virus. These parents feel as we did, lost, not understanding what was going on or why and not knowing what to do.
The reason this blog was created is because several of us, as parents and teachers, didn’t understand why our superintendent was closing schools when we knew Seattle was growing and couldn’t understand why she was moving school programs around and rifing teachers on a whim. Someone floated the name “Broad” which we then connected to charter schools and all became clear. We began to see the connections between Broad and Bill Gates along his faux roots groups and the push for privatization. Once we began to accumulate information, it became too unwieldy to file online so I decided to post the information in the form of a blog and the rest, as they say, is history. The one good thing that came out of Goodloe-Johnson’s reign was that we formed a tight knit community of parents, teachers and concerned citizens who became the watchers on the wall and we are blowing the horn once again.
Broad claims it engages in “venture philanthropy”:
“Our Approach to Investing: Venture Philanthropy. We take an untraditional approach to giving. We don’t simply write checks to charities. Instead we practice ‘venture philanthropy.’ And we expect a return on our investment.”
-Eli Broad
The Broad agenda is to close schools and successful programs and bring in charter schools to replace them as happened in New Orleans after Katrina, in Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles where Eli Broad lives. Broad has proclaimed that all schools in Los Angeles should be charter schools
Goodloe-Johnson closed 9 schools and programs with a reshuffling of teachers and students to save $5M just for them to be reopened the next year due to overcrowding of classes at the cost of $47.8M. She also closed the African American Academy and Summit, both alternative schools that served the community well.
In the end, Goodloe-Johnson was let go along with her CFO under a cloud of allegations of fraud.
Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Contact your school board members and let them know what you think. The vote is this Wednesday.
Seattle School Board Directors
206-252-0040
schoolboard
@seattleschools.org
For additional information on the Broad Foundation and Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, see:
A Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation’s training programs and education policies
The Battle for Seattle, Part 1
The Battle for Seattle, Part 2: Hijacked!
The Broad Foundation in Seattle
EDU$HYSTERS OF THE WEEK: TIM QUINN OF MICHIGAN (AND THE BROAD FOUNDATION, OF COURSE)
CAN SEATTLE’S SCHOOLS AFFORD MANY MORE YEARS OF SUPT. GOODLOE-JOHNSON?
TESTIMONY REGARDING THE FIRING OF DR. GOODLOE-JOHNSON
Seattle School District Used False Data To Show College Readiness
TESTIMONY REGARDING DR. GOODLOE-JOHNSON’S PERFORMANCE: NO ONE CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS
SEA, THE SEATTLE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, RECOMMENDS TO THE SCHOOL BOARD NOT TO EXTEND SUPERINTENDENT DR. GOODLOE-JOHNSON’S CONTRACT.
THE TRUE LEGACY OF SEATTLE’S FIRED (BROAD ACADEMY) SUPERINTENDENT MARIA GOODLOE-JOHNSON
SEATTLE
NINE SCHOOLS SO FAR HAVE SIGNED “NO CONFIDENCE” RESOLUTIONS REGARDING THE PERFORMANCE OF DR. GOODLOE-JOHNSON
REINVENTING PUBLIC EDUCATION (CRPE) RIGHT HERE IN SEATTLE
PHILADELPHIA AND THE ATTEMPTED COUP OF THEIR SCHOOL DISTRICT
THE PUSH TO PRIVATIZE EDUCATION IN PHILADELPHIA AND BEYOND
PHILADELPHIA AND THE PRIVATIZATION OF A SCHOOL SYSTEM
WHO WILL RUN PHILADELPHIA’S SCHOOLS? BILL GATES?
Who Is Victimizing Chicago’s Kids?
What’s wrong with CPS’s Renaissance 2010??
From Accountability to Privatization and African American Exclusion: Chicago’s “Renaissance 2010”
Got Dough? Public School Reform in the Age of Venture Philanthropy
-Dora Taylor
Seattle Education 