Saturday, November 16, 2013

GPS petition

From the PG:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2013/11/16/Petition-asks-board-to-delay-votes-on-key-city-school-issues/stories/201311160121

7 comments:

Questioner said...

In Richmond there is also a petition re: TFA:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/richmond-public-schools

Questioner said...

Link to the petition (would have been helpful for the PG to include it or specific info on how to reach it):

http://www.change.org/petitions/pittsburgh-public-schools-superintendent-linda-lane-wait-until-the-new-school-board-is-sworn-in-to-vote-on-important-issues-facing-our-schools?share_id=sQgBEEmTuM&utm_campaign=share_button_action_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition

Anonymous said...

The Richmond petition is so to the point. What is most frustrating about the pps TFA proposal is that like so many other ideas/plans it feel like there is some deadline and the rush is on. Is it the M.O. to leave so little time to have everyone consider all aspects of a plan to get things through that have the appropriate backing? It sometimes feels like we and our children are experiments used to build careers and resumes.

Anonymous said...

Education in Pittsburgh has become an integral part of multiple schemes to freeload on uneducated taxpayers. The more uneducated and unprepared the rising generation is, all the more opportunity there is to perpetuate the freeload in this entrepreneurial schemata.

Anonymous said...

From the agenda review materials regarding TFA:
*3 year contract hiring up to 30 teachers/year
*cost of $5,000/teacher payable to TFA
*salary and benefits from PPS
*TFA is a non-profit
*teachers for secondary science, math, social studies, and foreign language
*from the supplemental GATES fund
*$750,000 total contract
*TFA has dedicated, effective teachers with 2 year contracts

What is the supplemental GATES fund? What does this tell us? It is a done deal.

We don't have "effective" available teachers in ALL of these disciplines? We can't recruit without paying fees to a "non-profit" corporation?

Can the TFA teachers opt out after only 1 year? What is our guarantee?

This is just another PPS experiment while paying out more monies to corporate America.

deegazette said...

"TFA has dedicated, effective teachers with 2 year contracts"

how has their effectiveness been tested thus far?

Councilwoman Rudiak posted the following to her fb recently:

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" Albert Einstein (found on a poster at CMU)

I think that is where the skills needed to be a good teacher come in. I don't know that pps is in a position to experiment at this time.

Anonymous said...

It was reported at the Public Hearing that there are 1,341 people who signed the petition against Teach for America.

Also, the cash in hand sale of Burgwin, to be voted on tomorrow, is 475,000 to the Hazelwood Initiative who plans to put a Propel school in the building.