This came in from Dan Wever:
If you think we are not privatising our public schools check this out.
This company from Alabama with a 24 year old CEO is going to be put into 14 of our schools allowed to hire and fire teachers, do payroll etc and we are paying them over 1.5 million dollars. They are supposed to hit up parents and students for money for the programs.
dw
elpasospeak 
The new Secretary of Education would be proud. This is totally what the GOP wants. Misinformed idiots keep voting for this, and that is what they get. From local, to state, to federal. The GOP has has education in their sites for years as something to privatize. If you voted for Trump, Cruz, Cornyn, Abbott, Dan Patrick or any other of the “lets privatize everything” crowd (including Mr. Margo I might add) then don’t cry.
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Click to access Appleton%20Learning.pdf
Click to access Appleton.pdf
Here are two more sites with information about the Appleton Learning company. I cannot figure out what the EPISD is paying 1.5 million dollars for. Does anyone know? I do not think it is for what was put in the Agenda Backup and passed on the Consent agenda. Maybe the FBI needs to come back in and ask a few questions since this involves federal money.
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It’s the Republicans fault. If they didn’t exist, our schools would be perfect. …. Right Anon?
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No Chico, they would not be perfect. But we would have less distractions like this when trying to improve them. This privatization movement is another steal from the poor to make the rich richer type of scheme that the GOP is famous for. Why, take this week’s Healthcare bill as an example. Same thinking. Rich white guys making other rich white guys richer. Screw the poor, screw the weak, screw the schools.
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No Chico, it is the fault of people that know what is happening were not able to get the message out because the Education Reform people have the big bucks and media to subtlely take over our public education. Example: Dee Margo hires a lawyer with little education experience and the lawyer hires one of the biggest education reform people in the US to develop the EPISD strategic action plan for future education in El Paso. Public Education ideas and history were thrown out as not working and replaced by Active Learning and Project Based Learning. Neither of these education methods have any viable data that says it works now or will work in the future. Technology is becoming the teacher instead of its supposed use as just another teacher’s tool. And what is funny it that they will get away with it because accountability in Texas is becoming so diluted that if students score 40 on a Biology test and enough of them make this score the public is told 90% of them passed and warm fuzzies are issued all around and parents swell up with pride. Long live PR!
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Wow this is so sad.
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The privatization of schools and educational services is no different than the privatization of prisons. It’s all about the money and crony capitalism. The real agenda is not to improve education or to officer choice or to truly lower costs. It’s about a few people in the private sector wanting to get into an industry or business, in this case education, and have government redirect the money to them. It’s not that these people really want to bring down taxes. They just want the tax dollars given to them. This is also a way for school superintendents to build relationships with private sector companies that will hire them as consultants and board members at later dates.
The following story involves a Headstart teacher in a public school in Ohio. She worked for the company to which the school system outsourced their Headstart program.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/youngstown-ohio-teacher-fired-dragging-student/
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An update on the Appleton Summer Lab, if you look at page 16 of their EPISD proposal you will see that the children are given snacks in the morning and afternoon in the all-day sessions. It seems that in order to save money and make the program look more cost efficient, the SNACKS will not be provided. 😦
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