two articles from democracy now:
Sean Arce, the head of the Tucson school district’s banned Mexican American Studies program, was dismissed Tuesday night amid vocal protests from dozens of supporters. Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program has been under attack following the passage of a bill which prohibits schools from offering ethnic studies courses. Arce maintains he was fired because he spoke out against what he saw as a discriminatory law targeting Mexican Americans and Latinos. “I, along with many others, stood up and [saw] this law as unconstitutional,” Arce says. “And because we stood up, the district has retaliated.”
The response has been overwhelming in favor of actually restoring Mexican American Studies. Mexican-American and Latino students within TUSDhave experienced for years a disparate and discriminatory treatment. Currently, Tucson Unified School District, under the current leadership of John Pedicone, has been put back under a 30-plus-year desegregation plan, desegregation suit, because the district has not acted in good faith with the Mexican-American and Latino community. So, something that was very organic, something that the community demanded to be—for the district to be responsive to the academic, the social needs of our students, our community created this Mexican American Studies program. And now the district, again, in currying to the racists and being accomplices to that racism, particularly John Pedicone, has—in essence, has abolished a very effective, a very engaging—something that was very cherished, a program, an effective educational model for Latino students.
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An eighth grade charter school teacher in Michigan has been fired after helping her students organize a fundraiser for Trayvon Martin’s parents. Brooke Harris and her students at Pontiac Academy for Excellence drew up a plan to raise money by donating one dollar each to wear a hoodie to school, as Martin had worn
when he was shot dead. She obtained permission for the fundraiser, but her superintendent opposed the plan. Harris was initially suspended and then later fired without explanation. “They didn’t want to walk out of class. They didn’t want to wear the hoods over their head. They just wanted to pay a dollar to wear their regular clothes instead of uniform and donate that money to someone else who they saw needed it,” Harris says. “I just wanted to know what I specifically did wrong, so I could learn from my alleged mistake and be sure never to do that again.”
