The Rhode Island Teach for America offices are located at 1 Western Exchange Center, Suite 101, 67 Cedar Street in Providence. Their impact on Providence schools is shown to be nothing but detrimental in a recent report filed by Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network wherein he speaks to education scholar and TFA alumnus T. Jameson Brewer, the co-editor of Teach For America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out who has just completed a study of TFA that was the subject of an interview by Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report we previously referred to in our report on City Year Rhode Island. One quote that seems particularly relevant to the allegedly cash-strapped Providence is the following:

[I]n most cases if you have the prospect of filling a single teaching position with either a Teach For America corps member or equally experienced, or rather inexperienced, non-TFA teacher, it’s actually more expensive to fill that position with Teach For America on the front end, because TFA requires non-refundable finder’s fees, right, that range anywhere between $2,000-5,000 per corps member per year. And even if the corps member quits, the district is still obligated to pay the rest of that finder’s fee to Teach For America. [Emphasis added.]

Between Teach for America and City Year alone, we are talking about municipal expenditures that are costing the city millions of dollars that it allegedly does not have. At a time when the social safety net is most precarious why is Jorge Elorza giving away freebies?

The popular media narrative of the 2014 Providence mayoral election was that the East Side threw support behind Elorza and delivered him the vote to prevent a return to power for Vincent “Buddy” Cianci. But the point not raised is that the East Side is an enclave of private sector NGO-industrial complex policy wonks that support corporate school deform efforts, including the Democratic Party finishing school of neoliberalism known as Brown University’s School of Government. Perhaps the election narrative needs to be revisited.

Jacobin magazine is not my favorite publication on the Left, mostly because it seems to have some spots where it is putting its layout editorial policy ahead of everything else, producing gorgeous magazines that sometimes seem to be all over the place ideologically. That said, they did a fantastic job this summer commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Union victory in the Civil War. Earlier this year, they released a short documentary titled THE SCHOOL CLOSURE PLAYBOOK that explains how the neoliberal charter school deformation of public education has been executed against Chicago.

Since then, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has entered one of the most politically treacherous waters since perhaps the 1968 Democratic Party Convention devolved into street fights between Mayor Daley’s militarized Chicago Police and thousands of anti-war protesters who were disgusted with the machinations of the pro-Vietnam War Hubert Humphrey. It seems unlikely that Emanuel will emerge unscathed from the Laquan McDonald police shooting scandal. Yet regardless of what happens to one over-glorified and under-qualified Clinton-era political hitman who somehow tricked voters into electing him, we can be sure that the neoliberal teacher union-busting strategy he has implemented in Chicago is going to continue to be used across America, a strategy that sounds eerily familiar to those who watch the policies in Providence and other school districts in the Ocean State. In this sense, this video is a Christmas gift for local public school teachers. As the Chicago teachers prepare to go on strike again, thanks in no small part to the rise of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators in the ranks, we should see Chicago as both a warning and guide for strategy.

The Board and Gist had a very animated hour-and-a-half debate last night in executive session, which can be closed to the public. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be. And the two parties had this highly scrutinized and politicized debate with a room full of reporters on the other side of a glass wall. It’s hard to see how they could have a reasonable expectation of privacy behind a glass wall. Could I also not report on it if they put it on TV?

Plus, the public bodies don’t have to discuss contractual issues in private. I believe the employee can request that they happen in public session. The parties may have even wanted this debate to be a little bit public – that would explain all the exaggerated body language!