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Trabajadoras: A Union Voice for Working Women

Mar 27th, 2012
by Lily.
1 comment

Trabajadoras is the Spanish word for Working Women. Today was an important day for Latina Working Women. Not necessarily a happy day. But an important day.

Because an organization that fights for them, The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, released a first-of-its-kind report on the working world of Latinas in our country and the challenges they face. It’s not a pretty picture.

Trabajadoras: Challenges and Conditions of Latina Workers in the United States has stark graphs of statistics that clearly show the high poverty rates; the low education attainment; low homeowner rates; the dismal employment ratios; lack of health insurance and any sort of retirement plans of Latinas.

The report is not a cry for pity or charity. It’s a call to action.

We ignore the reality of these numbers to our peril. To our communities’ peril. To the country’s peril. These women are hardworking, talented people with as much potential as anyone on the planet. Why are the numbers so astoundingly headed in the wrong direction? Many reasons.

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These Educators Deserve a Movie Deal

Feb 1st, 2012
by Lily.
1 comment

There are two stories to tell in Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania. One is a heroic story worthy of a book or movie deal. There are plenty of movies about the lone teacher crusader who against all odds and against the establishment brings students out of the darkness of ignorance and into the light of the power of their own futures.

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I’m a sucker for those movies. But I have a love-hate relationship with them because inevitably, in order to lionize the hero, they have to make all the other teachers in the school less than heroes. They have to make the principal a bully. Movies need a good guy to cheer for and bad guys to boo over. Así es la vida. That’s the way it goes.

Chester Upland, a poor and predominantly minority district, is a long way from Hollywood, but it does have a star in Sara Ferguson.

(more…)

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An International Diane Ravitch Moment?

Dec 15th, 2011
by Lily.
15 comments

There is hope on the horizon, my dears.

For more than ten long, empty, intellectually dry and dishonest years, we’ve lived under the insanity of No Child Left Untested. (Someone told me not to be so negative. Trust me. I’m holding back.) Children, especially poor children, have been subjected to a corporate “reform” mentality of pass/fail by making their quota of test score points on some standardized garbage never designed to gauge anything more delicately complex than a child’s understanding of where the comma goes.

(Ironically, the only ones lately who have been afforded “social promotion” have been the morally corrupt CEOs who were awarded their gold star parachutes whilst bankrupting the global economy, but I digress.) (more…)

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When it Rains, it Pours…in the Middle of the Classroom

Nov 17th, 2011
by LilysBlackboard.
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In an effort to highlight the dire, immediate need for school modernization funding to repair schools that are literally falling to pieces, Lily and NEA Health Information Network Director Jerry Newberry, visited Southern Middle School in Reading, Pennsylvania.

An estimated 14 million American children attend deteriorating public schools. Of the existing 80,000 public schools, at least one-third need extensive repair or replacement and at least two-thirds have unhealthy environmental conditions.
“The message these kids get when they look up and see their classroom ceiling leaking and falling in is, ‘I don’t matter,’” Lily noted  “How can we expect students to achieve in these conditions? This is a national crisis. We need to repair our public schools to keep our children healthy and allow them to learn.”

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