Press release – Stoner Elementary community to hold protest against charter school co-location that has taken resources from home school.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
On Monday, August 17, 2015, the first day of school, from 7:30-8:30AM, the Stoner Elementary School Community and local Del Rey neighborhood will be holding a protest against the co-location of ICEF Vista Charter School on the Stoner ES campus. Stoners parents are upset that the co-location has taken resource rooms including: music, special education, and language therapy among others. Local residents are upset because the co-location will bring traffic and safety issues to their neighborhood.
WHAT: Stoner Elementary Community is holding a:
RALLY TO SUPPORT STONER ELEMENTARY AND OPPOSE THE CO-LOCATION
WHEN: Monday, August 17, 2015 at 7:30 – 8:30 AM
WHERE: on the corner of Stoner Avenue and Lindblade Street, 90230.
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Media is invited to attend.
There will be speakers. There will be signs. There will be chanting and drums.
Most importantly, there will be calls for better schools, a safer neighborhood, and unity in the community.
ICEF Vista Elementary, a neighboring school that is located two blocks from Stoner on the campus of the defunct St. Gerard Majella Elementary School, has taken classroom space at Stoner. To many people in the neighborhood, ICEF is seen as ‘the school at the church’ and many ICEF families take pride that their school provides benefit to the local parish. However, ICEF wants to expand and that means leaving the church grounds. Part of ICEF’s expansion plan includes co-locating at another campus to open up space at the St. Gerard campus.
ICEF is “stealing from Peter to Give to Paul”
Stoner ES parents are outraged that ICEF Vista’s will be co-locating this year and has taken set aside rooms that are used for music, art, parents center, and computer lab at Stoner so that ICEF can open up space on the St. Gerard campus to have room for an art room, parents center and computer lab. ICEF is literally taking away resources from Stoner ES to give those same resources to the ‘school at the church.’
The Stoner parents and local residents are mad about the colocation and are fighting back
In February 2014 when the proposed co-location was announced, Stoner community leaders addressed the ICEF board and asked them to reconsider their co-location plans. In March 2014, Stoner families and local residents sent over a hundred letters and emails to ICEF and LAUSD Boards urging them to not have the co-location at Stoner. In April 2014, when a final offer was made for the co-location, the Stoner and local community held a protest in front of the ICEF Vista campus urging them to not co-locate.
The Stoner and local community will be holding a protest on the morning of the first day of school Monday August 17 to let ICEF families know about our concerns with the co-location. More protests are planned for later in this school year.
WHAT DO WE WANT:
We want to let the ICEF community know the damage this co-location is causing and the harm it is bring to our community children. The Stoner parents are asking family of ICEF Vista to not support the co-location by selecting another educational option. We are encouraging the families of the 20 ICEF students who pertain to Stoner to consider sending their children to their local community school. We are asking parents from outside the area to consider their local schools or choose a non-colocated charter.
Adam C. Benitez
President, Friends of Stoner Avenue Elementary School
www.friendsofstoner.org
“Colocation is eviction… It doesn’t mean sharing, it means displacement.” — NY State Sen. Bill Perkins
ReplyDeleteThank you for sending this out Mr. Benitez. Thank you for leading the social justice struggle against this corporate charter chain’s occupation of your local public school. Direct action and acts of resistance are the only effective means against these corporate privatizers. Using similar grass roots activism is how we were eventually able to get the CWC corporate chain out of our local public school — Micheltorena ES. Acts of resistance against privatization were the only thing we as a community had left, as the political establishment and media are beholden to the deep pocketed interests in the charter sector.
I’ve taken the liberty of publishing your press release on K12NN and several other media outlets and social media platforms.
Short: http://ow.ly/QVNrb | http://thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/2015/08/15/stoner-elementary-community-to-hold-protest-against-charter-school-co-location-that-has-taken-resources-from-home-school/
Let us not forget that this is the same ICEF corporate charter chain that somehow “lost” millions and millions of taxpayer dollars. [1] Meanwhile their former “CEO” Mike Piscal is still at large [2] and many of our local public schools are without school libraries and other necessities.
ICEF is notorious for enrolling a significantly low number of students with low incidence disabilities [3], and has a dubious reputation for counseling out students that pose a risk to their inflated test scores. Moreover, privately managed [4] ICEF is run by an unelected board of directors and headed by well-heeled corporate excessive Parker Hudnut, a “graduate” of the Broad Residency [5].
Keep resisting, and pay no attention to those asking you to engage in respectability politics. Once the corporate sector has their foot in the door, any talk of what’s “best for both sides” is a cynical nod to the elimination of the public commons. Our children and communities deserve better.
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[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/28/local/la-me-0928-charters-20100928
[2] http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/2010/09/icef-public-schools.html
[3] https://www.scribd.com/doc/24674991/Data-Tables-Pilot-Study-of-Charter-Schools-Compliance-with-the-Modified-Consent-Decree-and-the-LAUSD-Special-Education-Policies-and-Procedures
[4] U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). Public Education Finances: 2009 (GO9-ASPEF). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Print.
[5] http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31748-the-non-profit-industrial-complex-s-role-in-imposing-neoliberalism-on-public-education