{"id":1416,"date":"2011-10-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/school-consolidation-as-disaster-capitalism.html"},"modified":"2011-10-11T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T13:00:00","slug":"school-consolidation-as-disaster-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/school-consolidation-as-disaster-capitalism.html","title":{"rendered":"School consolidation as disaster capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"School consolidation would set up an artificial fiscal disaster that\ncould force the “unified” public school system to turn to private foundations\nfor funding, at the price of control of public education by private entities.\nThis is disaster capitalism, or the shock doctrine, right here in\nValdosta and Lowndes County.\n

\nWhat’s the Shock Doctrine?\nIt’s been around for a long time, but Naomi Klein researched it for\n\nher book of the same name.<\/a> It’s\n\n<\/a>\n

\n“the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock”\n<\/blockquote>\nShe was writing mostly about wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters.\nLocally here we haven’t had any of those.\nBut we may be about to create a disaster, a shock,\nat the ballot box in November,\nif voters fall for the school “unification” snake oil.\n

\nWhat’s the next step after CUEE has accidentally revealed that\n\n\n\n<\/a>\nschool consolidation\n\nwouldn’t improve education, wouldn’t save money, and would raise taxes?<\/a>\nAfter we learned from consolidation opponents such as the Lowndes County Board\nof Education that it’s even worse than that:\nconsolidation would\n\n<\/a>\n\nreduce state and federal school funding\nand even after raising local taxes to the state cap\nthere still wouldn’t be enough money to pay for all existing services?<\/a>\nThat’s the shock, the disaster.\nA disaster that would, as\n\nSam Allen enumerated<\/a>,\ntrigger massive layoffs, service cuts, and school closings.\n

\nWhere could the “unified” Lowndes County School System turn to then,\nto bail the schools out of that artificial budget crisis?\nCUEE’s paid expert from Tennessee\n\nhad a local foundation waiting<\/a>\nfor just such a case when the Chattanooga and Hamilton County TN schools\nconsolidated.\n\n<\/a>\nA local foundation with access to deep pockets of larger foundations\nand of local old money, that is, from what CUEE’s other (unpaid)\nexpert from Troup County called the\n\n“white fathers”<\/a>.\n

\nNow you tell me: do you think those foundations and the “white fathers”\n(you may know them as the old boys) will provide that money no strings attached?\nOr will they insist, as they did in Hamilton County, Tennessee,\non doing it their way, with their own parachuted-in school superintendent?\nThis is a textbook case; it might have come right out of Naomi Klein’s book:\n

\n“the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following\nmassive collective shocks …\nto achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nNevermind that\nthe corporate reengineering of the Hamilton County, Tennessee schools\n\nwas a failure:<\/a>\n