Some Additional Thoughts on Buffalo's Privatization Movement

If our good friends the Chameleons wanted to  look any more like the out of touch rich douchebags with the angry Spanish guy in tow than they did I can't say exactly how they might have done it. On the other hand though if they actually had any credible buy in from the community they could have presented Mr and Mrs. X, parents of Jerome X East High student and Mrs. and Mrs. Y parents of Janelle Y. Waterfront student. They could have introduced the parents and kids and allowed them to explain how they've spent time with Steve and Amy and Emilio and Hannya and listened to their plan in detail finding a lot to be excited about. Yeah imagine that - introduce some parents and students who've heard them out, listened to their plan and shared their manifest frustrations with the inept teachers and administrators at East and Waterfront. They could have pulled some scenes from Won't Flush Down the box office drain circler released and forgotten in the time it takes a 2nd grader to bubble in a standardized test. Oh they could have told stories about the indifferent teachers shopping online during instructional time and making arrangements for boob and nose jobs, tummy tucks and liposuction. And what was to stop them from finding these weapons of mass instruction? It's not like they don't have full access to Sam Radford. Grand Poobah of the District Parent Coordinating Committee. It's as if they can't make a tuna sandwich without giving Sam a bite. If he and they wanted contact with parents they would have had some.  

Surely, as that deeply caring Edreformer Hannya Boulous reminded us all at meeting's end the children need choices. And I know she cares too because she has an art history degree from Georgetown and attended Nichols High School. Anyone whose education takes place in such sanitized and well apportioned circumstances as those 2 joints is assuredly more compassionate and knowing than slobs like us who went way the fuck into debt subbing during the day and attending Buff State's Tokyo-like overcrowded parking lots at 4:45 where we fought for a spot then ran inside Ketchum or wherever and tried to participate, engage and stay awake til 7:30 or so. Yeah I guess this is the end of the line for me listening to these overstuffed gasbags lecturing us, the people who have to get between Big Dre and Lonzo when they commence to kicking the holy shit out of each other in the hallway, about how much they CARE. Here's a newsflash dabblers, knowitalls, debutantes and opportunistic friends of Sam Hoyt : Buffalo teachers CARE about KIDS. So feel free to shut your goddamned holes about your for profit caring and the infamous war cry of the Barber of No Illusions Emilio Fuentes who declared in his now famous Haircut speech " I care about KIDS not ADULTS.   

Fact is The Chameleons don't know shit about our kids, their families or their community. If they did they could have proved it but they couldn't and they didn't. Reality is a lot of the people from the community have the Chameleons number as the white knights riding in for their own glory and profit that they really are. One said if you come walking into my neighborhood and you don't look like me then I don't really care to have you coming around claiming you are going to fix my community, my kids and my schools. Amen to that. The closest they could come to an actual African American is poor old one minority fits all Fuentes. They showed up with a lawyer, a lawyer's wife, a British accented front person, (nice touch there in embracing the hood, Chamelons) and a bunch of cheerleaders who've never set foot in a school like Waterfront or East and never will. And they tried with straight faces to run roughshod over the community, the Board of Ed and Buffalo Teachers. The only thing they could have done to give them ANY cred whatsoever was to show everyone that parents are buying in. Pretty hard thing to show when parents AREN"T buying in. Nobody is. 

The real riot though is yet to come when lil John King and his troupe of charter school flying monkees ignore the will of the parents, the community and the teachers and hands these 2 gems over to the Steve and Amy show. Does anyone out there really belive King isn't going to approve this? Based on his antics so far, his obvious(and mutual) contempt for Buffalo Schools and the misguided Charter Juggernaut creeping across NY schools, I have every reason to believe this deal is done. At least until he approves it, then things are going to get interesting.