It's a BOYCOTT! - on September 8th, 2010

And a perfect opportunity for NYC parents to continue to rise up and demonstrate our united power!

Whether it's the latest hot topic of test score fraud, or the pitting of parent against parent in the Charter School invasion war, or the constant budget cuts, illegal overcrowding, disrespect to parents, students and great teachers and so much more. . . we alone hold the power to make the madness stop.

No harm, no foul will come to our children when extending their summer vacations (by one day) in order to send them back to school for a full, continuous week of continuity and routine, starting Monday, September 13th.

Some will say, "Why. . . What's the point? Even insideschools believes 'Sept. 8th it is!'"

Those who support the continuance of mayoral control and the on-going silencing of parents, will no doubt acquiesce to the Chancellor’s orders. Just as I was terribly disappointed in learning who the “keepers and tweekers” were last year when parents rallied so hard to end mayoral control, I am also saddened that these same folks aren’t acknowledging their current role in perpetuating what isn’t working.

Mayoral control, Chancellor Klein and the PEP must go. For that to happen, we need every parent, CBO, grass-roots organization, CEC and Presidents' Council to get behind the movement for change.

No more engaging in the usual DoE / UFT finger-pointing, no need to explain away September 8th because of collective bargaining agreements (that without a Parent Union we have no say in), and no more talking about transparency and how to hold this city and state's too well-greased education policy makers, Mayor and Chancellor accountable.

Just like parents shut down the August PEP meeting, we know what we have to do to democratize NYC’s system of public school education and governance. It's time for us to pick up our brooms and clean house of the dirty lies and fraud perpetrated upon our children at City Hall and in Albany.

In the Bloomberg / Klein model of control, children are products, parents are consumers and the manufacturing of learning is done through labor agreements, closed door negotiations, data manipulation and a media / public relations spin doctors. Our children deserve better.

Even if you aren’t “political,” this boycott makes sense.

It’s obvious that the corporate Tweedie-bird who first came up with the idea of starting school right after the long summer vacation-- for just one day before having an immediate four-day break-- never had the experience of being a parent directly responsible for calming the emotions of a nervous, anxious or excited kindergartener, middle or high schooler.

Using Bloomberg’s own business-speak, NYC parents MUST take a stand as the public school’s PRIMARY investors and majority stakeholders. Our concerns are much more important than Tweed, CSA or UFT work days and careers. We risk our children’s greatest assets: their minds, health, spirits and futures by entrusting them to others in public schools, and it is our moral obligation to hold public education officials accountable and answerable to us.

But the millions of phone calls, emails, petitions, lobbying of legislators, rallies at City Hall and Tweed, and even lawsuits in the last decade, haven’t done very much. The policy makers don’t listen and they break the law.

This dictatorial system and inherently elitist, racist bureaucracy will not change without a full-fledged lesson from America’s history: the utilization of massive, non-violent protest.

September 8th is a perfect day for every NYC parent to take a simple, defiant action and by doing so, send the message that “Parents DO have Power.”

The time to organize, parent-to-parent is right now. The time to mobilize our boycott is September 8th.

Spread the word.

Then please wait until Monday, September 13th to send your child to school.