Community Forum: Fighting educational racism, school privatization and the school-to-jail track

~Featuring grassroots organizers from Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, LA~

In the fight for educational justice, the struggle to keep public schools public has become as critical as ending the school-to-jail track.

- In Los Angeles, two historic Black high schools Crenshaw HS and Dorsey HS face daunting "reconstitution" that will undermine community leadership and roots.
- In Chicago, many schools are being closed while others are being siphoning off to private operators and charters.
- In Philadelphia the school district faces bankruptcy and is proposing to privatize half the schools.
- In New Orleans, so many schools have been closed or privatized that public education virtually no longer exists.

Increasingly, school privatization is being exposed as a force in the gentrification and destabilization of neighborhoods as teachers, staff and children are split up and displaced from neighborhood schools.


~Learning from national grassroots campaigns
to build a stronger movement~

In this community forum, we will explore what forces are driving school privatization and how they intersect with those forces behind the school-to-jail track. We will learn from the courageous struggles of communities across the country who are having to wage both fights at the same time, to stop their youth from being criminalized at school and to save their neighborhood schools from being taken over by a corporate-driven educational agenda.

Panelists will include:

From Chicago
Jitu Brown, Educational Organizer at Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO)

From New Orleans
Ashana Bigard, Organizer at FFLIC (Friends and Families of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children)

From Philadelphia
Hiram Rivera, Executive Director, Philidelphia Student Union (PSU)

From Los Angeles
Alex Caputo-Pearl, teacher at Crenshaw HS and organizer with Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ)
Manuel Criollo, Lead Organizer at the Community Rights Campaign, Labor/Community Strategy Center

Questions about the event?
Please contact Shruti Purkayastha at the Community Rights Campaign
RSVP at info@communityrightscampaign.org
(213) 387-2800