My Stand For Ackerman, Gamble And Renaissance Plan Could Prevail If… Part 1 By Van Stone, vspfoundation@yahoo.com (215) 469-1902
Larry Platt, Editor, Phila. Daily News. Van is waiting for some answers about why the Daily News is not telling a fair story about Phila. teacher Hope Moffett.
When I was a Jehovah's Witness, a so-called assistant hearing officer and theocratic ministry school assistant, I was able to participate but not judge in many of their infamous discipline and punishment trials. Watching as a mediator, I learned quickly that just because a majority said that something in print was so, it didn’t mean it was the truth.
A few good ministry school teachers and students from time to time got all bent out of shape at each other over a JW’s plan before I pointed out to them that much information they were reading was misleading. Folks working in the mega-magazines department, with great intentions or not, were writing things that did not explain facts about the JW’s plan clearly. Well, of course you would expect something like that to happen coming from novice editorialists. But the same type of smear writing and pointing the finger words are being printed by several mega-newspapers in Philadelphia ever since late last year. And it’s bad writing. And it’s all about something called a "Renaissance Plan".
The Philadelphia Daily News has allowed an unchecked catch phrase “teacher jail,” mastered by an unknown person, to pretty much stir up renewed negative feelings about the Philadelphia School Board, and one of its highest achievers in the history of national school superintendents, Arlene Ackerman - along with this Renaissance Plan. And this has sparked hundreds of students and teachers who are now set against the district. And if that’s not enough, now there are on-going negative remarks in the Daily News smearing Chairman of Universal Companies, Inc., Kenny Gamble, a man who has witnessed first hand the fight to get a taste of equal justice and equal opportunity dealing within public schools during the civil-rights moments. This is occurring just as his own ‘breaking the cycle of poverty and dysfunction with education as the key” school program has been named in the Renaissance plan converting eight schools into charters.
The Philadelphia Daily News editor Larry Platt wrote his Thursday, March 8, 2011, opinion about the district’s handling of Hope Moffett, a teacher at Audenried High School who was removed from her classroom after speaking out against the plans to turn Audenried into a charter school. This was referred to as a teacher-held hostage situation. Hope was ordered by school board due process policies to report ONLY to a location where she would have no contact with school children. The location just so happens to be in the basement area of a particular school. Hope would be just fine. She must appear at a scheduled hearing for disciplinary purposes. However, the school board does not punish, ever.
Due to the policy of the board, all parties are prohibited from speaking directly in detail about an on-going hearing of possible discipline. Kenny Gamble should have never been mentioned in the same context when talking about Hope’s hearing. So for now no one should expect him to comment on the matter. These facts turn things back to me. I do not work for the school board and I have never met superintendent Ackerman. What I do know is Hope would not lose a day's pay as long as the hearing process is on-going. These are just the tip of the iceberg facts about the phrase "teacher jail". Using that phrase is an insult to all those who have been put in jail or a jail cell anywhere in Philadelphia. My stand for Ackerman, Gamble and the Renaissance Plan could prevail if the facts are placed where they belong.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.