This note came to us from a third party:
The purpose of this E-Mail is to update you on the infestation of El Paso by IDEA Public Schools. We are sometimes so focused on surviving the semester, Fighting Forwards for a Bonus, and Fighting Back on individual and collective Advocacy Issues, we lose track of the greater threat of our students, our schools, our district, and our profession. That is the impending arrival of a major predatory Corporate Charter profiteer, “IDEA Public” Schools in El Paso.
Here is what has happened so far, this school year.
1. IDEA has begun actively and aggressively recruiting students to exploit. Presumably you have seen or heard their radio and TV spots. They set up a roadside recruiting stand across the street from a Socorro ISD Elementary School this week.
2. Construction has begun on two IDEA locations in East El Paso. Needless to say, they are using non-Union contractors. Our brothers and sisters in the Iron Workers and Building Trades Council are protesting at the work site. IDEA uses low quality “educators”, so why be surprised they are using low quality labor to build their “schools”.
3. We prematurely thought that we had ‘dodged the bullet’ for a while in EPISD and that Socorro and Clint ISDs would take the brunt of their initial attack on our Public Schools. That feeling of relief ended when it came to light that the former Jewish Community Center building at 405 Wallenberg Dr. had been sold to Tommy Torkelson’s Bad IDEA. That places an IDEA “school” in the middle of the Morehead MS and Johnson ES Attendance Zones. Both Title 1 schools are with 750 feet of the Bad IDEA “school”. And, it is very disappointing and disconcerting when you look at who sits on the Board of Directors of the organization that had to authorize the sale last school year.
Tommy’s Bad IDEA “schools” will soon be trying to recruit faculty and staff. Of course, Tommy will go to his alma mater, Teach for America and its ‘drive by’ 30 day wonder teachers as a source of staff. But also look for them to try to recruit you. Oh boy, lower payer, no due process, no to very low expectations of being kept past three years, no rights, and no academic freedom, just drill and kill.
In Solidarity,
Ross
Posted by Brutus 
elpasospeak 
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