By Katie Campos Executive Director, Buffalo ReformED:
Tomorrow (Tuesday, May 3rd) at 5pm at Performing Arts High School, the District Parent Coordinating Council (DPCC) is hosting an historic stakeholders meeting that will determine the fate of the Buffalo Public School System.
At the DPCC meeting last month, Vice President of the DPCC, Sam Radford showed a Channel 7 news clip of Superintendent Williams stating that New York’s public school system is structurally designed to fail students.
The District Parent Coordinating Council turned Superintendent Williams words into a rallying cry: The person we are paying over $220,000 to manage and improve our school system is saying that it is designed to fail, and he isn’t doing anything about it besides pointing the blame at the state education department and the federal government.
Pointing blame is William’s M.O. these days, and that mindset has trickled down to the school board. A good portion of every school board meeting is spent blaming the state and federal government for issuing mandates and not helping the district meet those mandates. In reality, the school board and superintendent have the authority to make hard decisions that will improve the school system by putting students first–which are essentially what each of the federal mandates boil down to.
The DPCC called on each elected official representing the City of Buffalo to come to a stakeholders meeting on May 3rd and explain to parents why New York’s public education system is structured to force kids to drop out of school, as Superintendent Williams has stated.
By getting all of the elected officials into one room, the DPCC believes it will be able to ask for the real reason the school system is designed to fail and call on the elected officials to offer their solutions. Usually, each of these elected officials point the blame at the other layer of government and no responsibility is taken. The goal of this meeting is to get everyone to agree that the system is broken, and also to agree to create an emergency intervention committee to address and solve the structural issues that are plaguing our school system.
If this doesn’t happen, the DPCC will boycott the BPS on May 16th by sending their kids to church programs and home schools instead of their public school.
The DPCC did their homework and researched the trajectory of the Buffalo Teachers Union coming to hold the majority of power in the school district. The DPCC is using the same tactic of withholding their participation in the system until their demands are met. The teachers union was successful in each of its 3 biggest strikes of the school system, and the DPCC is hoping to create a similar history for itself and put power back in the hands of parents.
Vice President Sam Radford explains the parent revolution that the DPCC has been organizing for over 6 years to put power back in the hands of parents
Click here to see my video explaining the significance of the DPCC’s May 3rd Stakeholders meeting and the possible outcome of a school boycott if the Elected Officials representing the City of Buffalo do not offer solutions to address the structural problems in the Buffalo Public Schools
For information about the DPCC and its long-term involvement with the district in pursuit of improving the school system, check out their website.
For details on the May 3rd event, please visit: http://on.fb.me/mijgvT