Jackie Goldberg to address SM Democratic Club

Jackie Goldberg to Address Santa Monica Democrats on Public Education Under Siege

PUBLIC EDUCATION UNDER SIEGE:  Jackie Goldberg on pushing back against the corporate privatizers and the austerity hawks.
Public schools, the bedrock foundation of democracy in America, continue to be under attack.  Corporate privatizers, aided and abetted by a number of powerful, deep-pocketed foundations and the public officials they influence, have had a tremendous effect on how people view education, teachers, and most especially teachers' unions.  Their propaganda is overturning generations of consensus about how to fulfill the obligation to provide a free, sound public education to all--and indeed, undermining the notion that such an obligation even exists.  
These insidious ideological attacks, framing public school teachers as the problem, and proffering charters and other corporate projects as the solution, have corroded the public's confidence in public education.  Now the notion that we have a "deficit crisis" is adding a further squeeze on the resources available to the public schools and amplifying the push to privatization.  
Jackie Goldberg, former Assemblymember and former president of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, will address these issues in the larger context of the austerity being foisted on us, threatening not only public education but other programs and services that for generations since the New Deal were the foundation of our shared prosperity and security. Ample time for Q & A.