A Small Reprieve

August 14th I wrote about a challenge in our (very large) county, trying to prevent a Common Core-type infiltration through daycares. The week after that post, I attended the Harris County Department of Education meeting, and spoke, among several others, who addressed the HCDE board on this issue.

There’s a good summary of the meeting, if you’re interested, at Big Jolly Politics. I am the one referred to in the article this way: “I missed the name of one of the citizens, I apologize for that.” I’m apparently easy to miss, with a name that’s hard to hear. Nevertheless, I felt good about my short speech, and got approval from those near me after I sat down.

Earlier in the day was a workshop in which proponents of the program, called Early to Rise, were able to present more details about their program, and answer direct questions from the trustees. But there was no community input at the workshop. Big Jolly also summarized the workshop.

There’s good news. This past Monday, August 26, was the deadline for deciding what would appear on the November ballot. County Judge Ed Emmett decided not to accept the proposition for the ballot. HCDE didn’t have to make the decision, at least at this time, after all. Whew! Thank you, Judge Emmett.

It was not an easy position for Judge Emmett. He expected to be sued either way. He didn’t get an answer from the Attorney General on the legitimacy of an additional tax to be filtered through a more-or-less government entity to private entities. County Judge Vince Ryan had been in favor of putting the measure on the ballot and dealing with lawsuits from objectors. Emmett didn’t like that answer and hired a private attorney, whose advice he followed. I believe keeping it off the ballot was a better decision than putting it on possibly illegally, leaving the public at the mercy of someone willing to fight through the legal system after tax money is already spent. The proponents can always (and certainly will) look at alternative ways to seek what they want.

But it was never right to take tax money intended for improving school districts and give it, without oversight, to a private entity, for the purpose of training daycare providers (who have access to training in community colleges and many other places), entering homes and directing parents, and doing something indefinite about healthcare for very young children. Particularly disturbing—and the point over which the proposition was turned down—was making this an additional tax through HCDE. To review, HCDE gets 2/3 cent per $100 property value, and by law can never assess more than 1 cent. This new tax, a full additional 1 cent assessment, over and above everything HCDE already gets, would be a 150% increase, with all of the increase going only to a private entity for this one project. One would think that a public school entity such as HCDE would need more for actual public school child education than for something that isn’t even under the purview of public schools.

I wanted to share a couple of things from the meeting, mainly related to Rep. Debbie Riddle. She gave an analogy about the proposal, so we could see it in a new light. First she reminded us of how the money would be spent, which was not on actually doing childcare improvement: $400,000 on grant writing, $500,000 on evaluation services, $800,000 on best practices research, $12.6 Million for professional development and outdoor resources (I don’t know what that means, but that’s about half the annual amount), $750,000 for PR, $250,000 for tech support.

Now here’s her comparison (from my notes, so not an exact quote): “Suppose you come to me and say, ‘If you pay me $100, I’ll go out and find someone to mow your yard. And I’ll even consider letting you mow your own lawn, and I’ll pay you $25 to do it.’ That’s what this deal looks like.”

If there was a need for early childhood intervention (assuming, which I don’t, that HCDE should have its public school fingers in that arena), then why would HCDE need some outside entity to do it, rather than do their duty and find the solution themselves? This Early to Rise program was brought to them, placed on their agenda, and then attempted to be placed on the ballot, all prior to HCDE researching whether early childhood intervention needed any additional attention, let alone this huge influx of additional tax.

The trustees responded to the citizen testimony (particularly mine) by attempting to make it clear things were not settled, which seemed puzzling, because why would we have been encouraging them to turn down the proposal if we’d thought it was too late for public input? The chairman pointed out that she only learned of a proposed contract the Saturday morning previous to the meeting. The contract, which specified that if the voters approved the ballot proposition, all the money would be turned over to HCSRC, for ten years or more, indeed was made public that Saturday. But there have been discussions of the issue at least since June, so that was disingenuous. Also on the agenda was a private meeting with the lawyer the trustees hired specifically to deal with finding a way to work with the HCSRC, the nonprofit intending to manage the Early to Rise program. [The contract with the legal team was in evidence on page 453 of the full public agenda, dated August 2, 2013, well ahead of the Saturday of the public announcement of the proposal from HCSRC. It begins that the law firm in the contract “will represent Harris County Department of Education…in connection with the negotiation of an Early Childhood Services Agreement between the Department and the Harris County School Readiness Corporation.”]

So it is my suspicion that if there hadn’t been so much outcry against the program, the HCDE trustees might have moved ahead as though the taxpayers opinion mattered not at all. And we are relieved that Judge Emmett took it out of their hands, just in case.

I wanted to share this photo of Rep. Riddle, from the hallway outside the meeting. She was teaching this 9-year-old boy how to give a firm handshake. She also spent time telling us stories, and giving encouragement. I think she does that everywhere she goes. Rep. Riddle is the one who put forth the bill to get rid of the two remaining redundant county boards of education. It didn’t get out of committee this legislative session, but we can try again in a year and a half.

In the meantime, the moral or the story is: constant vigilance.

Common Core for Babies

When I write about local issues, it is with the hope that it will help not only local friends, but people wherever they’re reading. So today’s post is about a proposition that is likely to be on the Harris County ballot this off-year November election. But it is also about how the enemy is going about separating parents from the teaching of their children.

This is Texas, where Governor Perry refused federal money for implementing Common Core, the curriculum (no—not a “curriculum,” but simply basic standards, they claim—that just happen to dictate what will be taught in each classroom, on each specific day, in a specified manner; why would you call that curriculum?) that happened to promote a worldview that is in conflict with capitalism, US Constitutional freedom, God-given natural rights, freedom of religion, and probably anything else in conflict with the worldview of most parents.

This is Texas, where the state legislature, led by my State Senator Dan Patrick and others, succeeded in getting rid of CSCOPE, which was a Texas-created (supposedly) version of Common Core, that again wasn’t really “curriculum,” because it was all online, but it also promoted the Common Core worldview indoctrination.

The enemy, however, is relentless.  Now we’re looking at what you could probably call Common Core for Babies. A renamed ACORN group, Collaborative for Children (with ties to George Soros and a long line of Obama minions), has created a corporation in Harris County for the purpose of placing Common Core materials in daycare centers. This organization is Harris County School Readiness Corporation, with a program called Choice Partners. [My notes were insufficient on the status and connection of all the entities. I reserve the right to edit if I learn more later.]

The way they’re going about it is to get tax money, funneled through the Harris County Department of Education, and then offer it to daycares, aiming first at low-income areas that are most likely to be vulnerable to offers of free stuff. The exchange would go something like this:

Listen, we’ll pay your employees for you. You’ll no longer need to worry about meeting payroll, so you’ll be able to concentrate on taking care of children, which is your real passion. We’ll also help pay for equipment and supplies. Did we mention, we’ll even go into the homes of the children and offer guidance to those families? No, this won’t cost you anything. Really. All we ask is that you use our program, teach the things we provide in the way we require. Think about it. It’s for the Children.

It’s always for the children. Right.

I first learned about this issue in June. Colleen Vera wrote about it in her blog, Texas Trash Talk.  Her piece is full of information and connections. But at that time the “to do” part was simply to call legislators during the special session to see if they could find a way to act on it. So I saved the information but didn’t pass it along.

Two months later the threat grows. Here’s the update. Harris County Department of Education (HCDE) has up to now discussed the many known flaws of the program but nevertheless voted 6-1 in favor—so far only to gather more information and decide later.

Meanwhile Collaborative for Children (the ACORN remake) has been gathering signatures to request placing a proposition on the ballot to fund the program. The wording will be called something like a “penny tax.” The phrase “equalization tax” might also appear, because that is what the funding of HCDE is called. Currently this equalization tax is a 2/3 penny tax per $100 of property value, which translates to about $14 million a year. [HCDE educates no one; the independent school districts do that. There are only two counties in the state still with school boards, and money that goes to them is money that could otherwise go directly to the school districts. Dallas County at least uses their county department of education money for transportation, which seems reasonable. But Harris County uses it for various interfering, moneymaking programs. It should not exist. Rep. Debbie Riddle put forth a bill to eliminate the two CDEs during the last legislative session, but it didn’t get out of committee. We’ll have to deal with the corruption of HCDE another day.] An additional penny more than doubles the current amount. Some estimates project that this “insignificant” additional penny tax will take something like $45 million out of the economy [Houston Chronicle says $25 million, so I may have heard wrong while taking notes], pretty much for the sole purpose of indoctrinating our very young children in ways we have boldly rejected—twice.

Kay Smith, HCDE trustee
at Cypress Tea Party meeting

Kay Smith, the lone HCDE vote against, spoke at our local Tea Party meeting this past Saturday, which is how this issue got my attention again. (She also provided info to Colleen Vera for her article in June.) She needs help if there’s any hope of stopping this Common Core infiltration. The next HCDE vote will take place next Tuesday, August 20, 1:00 PM (address is 6300 Irvington Blvd., Houston, TX, 77022—it’s in the Reagan Building, where HCDE is housed, with the meeting taking place in their board room on the fourth floor, in case you are local and available to attend).

August 20^th, the day of the vote to place the proposition on the county ballot, is also the deadline for collecting signatures for the petition. True the Vote has offered help in verifying signatures, as they did for Wisconsin’s recall back in 2012. But it’s not possible to verify on the very day the signatures are turned in, before the vote in the 1:00 meeting. I don’t know whether attending the meeting to speak against the proposition will help, but it can’t hurt.

County Judge Ed Emmett was apprised of the problem (all counties in Texas are led by an elected judge, so Judge Emmett is actually an elected official over a constituency that is maybe only smaller than New York City and Los Angeles). Just one of the legal questions is about putting a proposition on the ballot to direct school money to a private entity. He went to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to rule on whether the proposition can be placed on the ballot. AG Abbott would not rule; he said it would need to be ruled on by the county attorney. I think he’s legally correct on that. Unfortunately, the Harris County Attorney is Vince Ryan, a Democrat; he has already said he would allow placement on the ballot with a rather flippant, “Let them sue us later.”

I asked Kay Smith whether anyone was considering such a lawsuit, as a backup, in case we can’t persuade the HCDE board to vote against. She said it would be a very expensive ordeal. The opposition has big money behind it, leading back even to George Soros money. So it would be nice if there were some willing patriot out there willing to take it on, but she doesn’t know of anyone.

When I talked this over with my son Political Sphere, who is beginning to think like a lawyer, he said the lawsuit would be expensive to take all the way to the end. But what you really need is just a suit to be filed, so that you can ask for an injunction to prevent the proposition from appearing on the ballot until the questions of legality are answered. Even if it were to delay only a few months, that would avoid this year’s low-voter-turnout off-year election, and would give more time to get the word out. Getting the word out on CSCOPE brought its removal pretty quickly. And since lawsuits tend to go on for at least a year, maybe two, we might even avoid another election cycle. And maybe with the serious legal questions being brought to light, HCDE would then vote to change their minds and remove it from the ballot.

Still, as Kay Smith said, it would take a willing patriot out there, with at least some money resources, to take it on.

Why should we be so concerned about an issue that only affects some low-income daycares? Because that is not the end; that is only the foot in the door. The plan is to expand the daycare program statewide. And of course that’s not all. If they’ve been consistently teaching children up to age 4, why not add in pre-K kids? And if you include pre-K kids, why not kindergarteners? And after that, since kids are now used to this “standard” up to age 6 or so, why not extend that through elementary schools? And once you’ve had kids accustomed to the same thing for all their school lives, why not expand to middle schools and then high schools?

Oh, and by the way, since “standardization” is “for the children,” it wouldn’t be “fair” for any children to be left out. So they would push to have all Texas students meet the “standards,” even though that might mean forcing homeschools and private schools to use it. And if compliance is too difficult, then maybe we’d just need to eliminate homeschools, and maybe private schools too. For the children!

Does this seem farfetched? Remember that this administration’s DOJ went out of its way to overturn asylum for the Romeike family, from Germany, for no better reason than they wanted it on record that they supported Germany’s policy of preventing homeschooling and standardizing all the education in the country—because this administration believes parents do not have a natural right to make decisions about the education and upbringing of their children.

They want control. And, as Lenin said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Of course they want control over the ideas being taught to children, to perpetuate their control over additional generations. Tyrannists always want that.

What can we do?

·         Attend Tuesday’s HCDE meeting and make your opinion known.

·         If it gets on the ballot (a 99% probability, according to Kay Smith), then get the word out to everyone you know, so they know this tiny off-year election is extremely important.

·         If you have connections to resources, file a lawsuit regarding the illegalities of placing this particular proposition on the ballot.

·         If it ends up on the ballot, vote against it, and take your friends to vote with you.

·         If you’re in another place, expect this to be coming to you, and do all you can to fight it. The names change from place to place, so be aware and vigilant. Even if your locale has rejected Common Core in any form, this daycare version is a new backdoor approach to watch for.