Privatization is a Scam By Leighton Hollar and John Bachtell Bronx, NY - During our campaign for the Community School Board (in the Bronx, NY) last year, we warned that the school system faced two challenges: overcoming a massive teacher shortage and privatization through the establishment of charter schools. We called for the hiring of 50,000 teachers. Our estimate was off - the schools must hire 54,000 teachers. Chancellor Levy plans to turn over the 50 worst performing schools to for-profit corporations to manage. It is hard to fathom privatizing at lightning speed a portion of our public school system without public debate. What kind of democracy is this that gives away public institutions at taxpayers expense? Privatization is a scam, akin to the one the hospital and insurance industries perpetrated on an unsuspecting public with their HMOs, which until recently no private citizen could challenge. Since our predictions were accurate then, allow us to make another one: privatization will be a monumental failure, as it has been in Hartford, Baltimore, Wilkinsburg, PA, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. To guarantee maximum corporate profits, our kids will be shortchanged and corruption will increase. What is not being addressed by most of our elected officials, the chancellor nor by the Board of Education is the obvious - the need to massively increase spending on education. There is no way around this issue to ensure comparable pay for teachers with surrounding municipalities, smaller classes, universal pre-k and new schools.
