Public education brought to the fore ‘Parties’ aim to shift election year debate

WASHINGTON – In what is being called the largest grassroots mobilization in support of public education to date, 4,000 “house parties” were held Wednesday night in private homes and community centers across the nation.

The initiative, called the National Mobilization for Great Public Schools, is aimed at bringing public education to the forefront of an election debate dominated by war, terror and jobs.

“It’s important to parents and it’s important to communities, but I’m just not sure it’s important enough to lawmakers,” said Constance Higginbotham, an algebra teacher leading a town forum on education in Clay County, Fla. “When they see that we’re mobilized – teachers and parents and people involved in classrooms – then maybe we can mobilize them.”

Nearly 40 people attended a gathering at Husson College in Bangor to discuss how local schools are struggling to meet federal education mandates, such as the No Child Left Behind bill, with increasingly strapped budgets.

“No Child Left Behind in itself is not a bad thing,” said Ellen Holmes of Newburgh, a parent, teacher and one of nearly 20 people who registered to host meetings in Maine. “But it all costs money. You must help pay for the programs.”

The gatherings Wednesday night were spearheaded by the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, along with other pro-public education groups.

NEA president Reg Weaver said the goal is to get people thinking about public schools as they prepare to vote for races involving the schoolhouse, the statehouse or the White House.

While the organizers insist the initiative is nonpartisan, the teachers union and several other organizers are supporters of Democratic nominee John F. Kerry and have been critical of President Bush and the education bill he promoted and signed into law, commonly called No Child Left Behind.

“We have all sorts of people who are critical of the policies of the administration,” Weaver acknowledged. “No Child Left Behind needs to be fixed and funded.”

But Weaver said the activities were open to “anyone interested in quality public education” and aimed at making people more cognizant of the issues that are affecting education.

Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org, a progressive activist group that also is sponsoring the campaign, said, “Education is a key element to having a good democratic society. These are shared values.”

The mobilization encouraged parents, teachers and citizens in every state to sign up through the NEA’s Web site to host “house parties” Wednesday night. Monica Wroblewski, a spokeswoman for the teachers union, said tens of thousands were set to attend the gatherings nationwide.

Every host was sent a video with testimonies from parents and educators denouncing the critical state of the public school system, statements that were then meant to be used as a conversation starter during the meetings.

“Out of every federal dollar, we spend less than three cents on education. Raising that to just five cents will allow us to fund the programs our kids need most,” intoned the narrator of the video.

“We’ve never been funded at the promised 55 percent from our state legislators,” Holmes said. “Who knows what the possibilities would be if we received that full funding.”

Holmes said she wanted participants of Wednesday night’s meeting, which was held at the campus center of Husson College at the request of students, to ask legislators to fully fund education and hold them responsible for the local public schools.

Participant Kyle Busing, a physical education instructor at Husson College, signed a petition at the gathering that demands legislators live up to education funding promises.

Busing said Maine’s small class sizes impressed him after he moved to Brewer from Colorado.

“If [schools] have a class of 16, well that’s really good,” said Busing, adding that federal education funding is needed to maintain such a teacher-to-student ratio.

As a fourth grade teacher at Fairmount School and an adjunct professor at the University of Maine, Holmes said she is concerned about the job opportunities and work conditions for new teachers.

“Locally we are facing a devastating tax cap issue,” said Holmes, referring to the proposed 1 percent cap on property taxes that Mainers will vote on in November. “For our Bangor school districts it would mean a loss of 120 positions.”

As the mother of two children who attend public schools, Holmes is concerned with the loss of money and staff and wanted “to take the steps so that they have a quality education.”

Patrick Phillips, deputy commissioner for Maine’s Department of Education, said the department had no official position on the mobilization.

Rob Walker, president of the Maine Education Association, an National Education Association affiliate, said Wednesday’s events were intended to discuss the flaws of the No Child Left Behind Act and its underfunding.

He also was critical of the so-called Palesky tax cap plan, saying “it will remove approximately $600 million from the municipal government resources and that includes education.”

Participants in the mobilization were being asked to sign a petition to the President and Congress to “keep their promises to our children and increase – not cut – funding for our schools.”

The Associated Press and NEWS reporter Jackie Farwell contributed to this report.