Citizens for Public Schools presents a Virtual Town Hall
“Healing our Students and Schools:
A Community Conversation to Resist High-Stakes Testing and Reclaim Public Education”
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Wednesday, June 10th, 7pm, by Zoom
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For nearly 30 years, we have lived under an MCAS-driven education system that ignores child development, narrows the curriculum, is harmful to student health and wellness, and most reliably tells about students' wealth and address. With the COVID-19 crisis, public education is at a crossroads, with privatizers and testing companies vying to capitalize on this crisis to reinvent public schools in their own image.
Meanwhile, students, teachers, school nurses, guidance counselors, parents, and school board members are uniting to reclaim our schools. We are working toward a just recovery in education that halts the damaging high-stakes standardized tests, emphasizes racial justice, and puts the health, happiness, and well-being of every child at the center of learning now and in the post-pandemic era.
Please join us on June 10
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for a conversation about our collective vision for public education during and after the pandemic. We'll hear from education leaders, teachers, students and school committee members fighting for education justice. They'll share their thoughts on what we need during this time and how to realize our vision and goals. We'll present the framework for a campaign to stop high-stakes testing and invite you to share your perspectives and feedback in breakout groups.
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Moderator
Drew King
is a CPS board member, and a doctoral candidate in public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He has conducted extensive community-based research on student organizing in Boston's educational justice movement.
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Ricardo Rosa
is a CPS board member, co-chair of New Bedford Coalition to Save Our Schools, and an associate professor of public policy at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He's the author of
Capitalism’s Educational Catastrophe: And the Advancing Endgame Revolt! (2015). His research interests include, Curriculum and Instruction, Language Policies, Literacy and Social Studies Education.
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Natalia Cuadra-Saez
is an Organizer with the Boston Teachers Union. She was previously a history and social studies teacher in Boston Public Schools. As a teacher and an organizer Natalia is passionate about Ethnic Studies, valuing stakeholder voices, and rethinking how we measure school quality.
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Ayesha Wilson
is a member of the Cambridge School Committee, and is the product of the C
ambridge Public Schools. With over 18 years of service in human services and youth work, she is an advocate for children and is passionate about empowering students and parents to use their voices. Ayesha currently develops youth programs with the Cambridge Housing Authority’s ‘The Work Force’ Program, and is
Secretary of the Cambridge Branch of the NAACP.
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Beth Kontos
is President of the AFT Massachusetts Teachers Union, a member of the CPS board of directors, a steering committee member for the Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, a former history teacher, and a tireless advocate for students and justice.
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CPS is presenting another webinar on Sunday, June 14, 7pm, as part of a series sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action:
Public Schools at a Crossroads
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Reclaiming public education and fighting for justice in the COVID-19 era.
Public education in Massachusetts is at a crossroads with the Covid-19 crisis
shutting down schools, while highlighting and exacerbating drastic racial disparities driven by inequitable funding, high stakes testing, harsh school discipline, and school privatization schemes.
What resources are needed for a just recovery in K-12 public education? Where can these resources come from? What will a just recovery in public education look like, one that focuses on the holistic health and wellness needs of students, teachers and families, not standardized testing?
Panelists will include
Lisa Guisbond
, Executive Director of CPS;
Merrie Najimy
, President of the Massachusetts Teachers Association;
Zac Bears
, Executive Director of PHENOM, the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts;
Suzie McGlone
, Boston Public School teacher. You can register for the series, including CPS's June 14 webinar,
here
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