Re: Public Education and the Supreme Court

The New Jersey Association of the UCC has a Yahoo group. There has been a lively discussion about my post about the recent Supreme Court decision. Here is a continuation of this post. I hope that someone is reading this stuff. Remember these are my ideas and you are welcome to comment on them at any time. Just hit the comment on the bottom of the post.
Here is my recent post:
I "spoke" to Jan Ressenger UCC minster for Public Education. I asked her what we can do now she replied: "I think what we have to do now is "keep on keeping on." The Supreme Court, a far-right wing Supreme Court, doesn't speak for me or, I suspect, for you. In the church we
are called to name what we believe is right. We will have to find a way to continue to do that."
At Synod we were given a lot of ways to help support children which is the bottom line. They can go to segregated schools IF THEY ARE TRULY EQUAL. They have teachers who love and support them. They have teachers who teach them in the way they need to learn not just one way as we all have different learning styles. They have teachers who have the interest in the child in mind. As Marion Wright Edleman said" "If you don't like children don't go into teaching!" Or something like that. There is the old expression those who can't do teach! This has got to stop!
As a chemist we want high school teachers to have the equivalent of a Master degree in chemistry to teach. Which means teacher education should be a five year degree! We would like
elementary and middle school teachers to have a minor in science education. We also want high school and middle school chemistry and science teachers to be paid what they are worth. Which means to be paid the equivalent of an entry level scientist. I know the union will protest especially English teachers. (As you can see I did not take my English lessons seriously but that's what editors are for!)
As for my personal history:
My father worked two jobs,one as a superintendent of an apartment house so that we could live in the white neighborhood so that I could go to the neighborhood school. New York City education was de-facto segregated because of neighborhood schools. All teaching was not
equal although I had a great first and second grade teacher in a black school, not all teachers were like that.

Even in our New Jersey suburban high schools where all students meet the education is not equal. Again my chemistry teachers tell me they have the low achieving classes, the regular classes and the AP classes. Guess who is NOT in the AP classes. Is this by design?
So we and our church should investigate the schools and get the class demographics. They should be available from your school board. We have members of our congregation who work in urban school districts and with urban students, we should use them as a resource.

When I was working as a science educator, we helped teachers go through the demographic sheets and wanted them to be disaggregated by race. I believe No Child Left Behind Act mandates that. You need to study NCLB as it is now being reauthorized. You see this is a very sore point with me especially after Synod.

Sister chemist

The UCC Pastoral Letter Calling Upon and End to the Iraq War

You can now take action and sign the UCC Pastoral Letter to end the Iraq War. Below is the UCC take action e-mail that I received today;

Last week in Hartford, nearly 10,000 United Church of Christ members and clergy gathered for the General Synod, where the Collegium's pastoral letter on the Iraq war was read to an audience united in its opposition to five years of bloodshed. The voice of the church was clear that day: Now is the time tojoin protest to prayer and call for an end to the war. In less than a week, 2,500 people have signed a pledge supporting this statement. It is a strong call for the end to violence as the first, rather than the last resort, and for the beginning of a lasting peace in the Middle East. Join the church officers, seminary presidents, conference ministers and members of the General Synod who have added their names - add your name and your voice to ours. We need your witness. Please sign this petition today. Sincerely, The Rev. John H. Thomas General Minister and President United Church of Christ .Jeannette Brown

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Public Education and the Supreme Court Decision

Today the Supreme Court made a decision about using race to integrate schools that I consider a setback for "Brown vs Board of Education. But since it was done by such a narrow margin there is an opening for race still to be considered in school integration. The UCC reaction of to the decision is posted on the UCC website, but in case you have a hard time finding it I have copied it here.

"Justice and Witness Ministries regrets Supreme Court's 'turn from school integration'


Written by staff reports
June 28, 2007

Justice and Witness Ministries released a statement regretting U.S. Supreme Court's June 28 decision on school integration.

UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST JUSTICE AND WITNESS MINISTRIES REGRETS THAT U.S. SUPREME COURT TURNS AWAY FROM SCHOOL INTEGRATION, BUT AFFIRMS THAT COURT MAJORITY FINDS RACIAL DIVERSITY A COMPELLING INTEREST

Cleveland, Ohio —While, in the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, we regret that, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today struck down Seattle's and Louisville's voluntary programs promoting school integration and opportunity, we are pleased that in a separate opinion Justice Kennedy joined the four dissenters to recognize our nation's compelling need for diverse and integrated schools.

While it struck down the programs in Louisville and Seattle, today a majority of the Court made clear that diverse and inclusive schools are important to the future of our country, and that communities have a clear stake in overcoming the isolation and marginalization of children.

We disagree with the Supreme Court decision to strike down these voluntary programs that promote inclusion and opportunity. We believe those programs were consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which is intended to provide opportunities, not deny them. Unfortunately the Court's decision will make it harder for school districts to tailor programs to serve particular demographic groups of children, many of whom have been underserved for generations.

In a dissent, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens, Justice Breyer laments that today's decision by the majority will make it harder for school districts to design programs that bring children together across racial lines: "Many parents… want their children to attend schools with children of different races. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. The long history of their efforts reveals the complexities and difficulties they have faced. And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their hands the instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. The plurality would decline their modest request. The plurality is wrong to do so."

The UCC's Justice and Witness Ministries was party to an amicus brief in these cases that supported the right of the Louisville and Seattle school districts to use race as one of a number of factors to promote schooling children in demographically diverse settings at a time when our nation's schools and housing patterns have grown increasingly segregated. Research continues to demonstrate that all children benefit from learning with and from children whose backgrounds are different from their own. Serious achievement gaps demonstrate that racially separate schools remain unequal across the United States, and school finance data confirms that high spending schools continue to outspend low-spending schools by at least three to one in most states.

"We hope school districts will not give up on the ideals of opportunity, diversity, and inclusion, and that their leaders will analyze carefully this Court's ruling to discern any and all remaining ways communities can create diverse and inclusive schools in a constitutionally permissible way," said Jan Resseger, Minister for Public Education and Witness.

In 1991, the UCC's General Synod, its national governing body, proclaimed a truth that remains relevant sixteen years later: "Because the poor and their children are disproportionately people of color, the educational inequities in our public schools reinforce the racial/ethnic injustices of our society."

As an expression of long support in the United Church of Christ for integrated public schools, last week at the denomination's 26th General Synod in Hartford, Connecticut, participants were given an opportunity to learn about and celebrate the efforts of lifetime UCC member, Elizabeth Horton Sheff, mother of the named plaintiff in Sheff v. O'Neill, Connecticut's 18 year school integration case. Sheff v. O'Neill was decided by Connecticut's supreme court in 1996 under state constitutional language that prohibits "segregation or discrimination" on the basis of race or color. This case has resulted in a series of remedies involving city-suburban magnet schools and opportunities for children to participate in Project Choice, that provides places for children in neighboring districts to enhance integration. Because the state has lagged in meeting the requirements of a 2003 settlement, Connecticut's legislature has been meeting to strengthen the remedy.

The United Church of Christ's Justice and Witness Ministries, based in Cleveland, coordinates and implements the denomination's peace and justice advocacy mandates on behalf of 1.2 million members in over 5,700 congregations in the United States."

Reminder we have done two adult education programs on the subject of Brown vs Board of Education and the UCC Public Education concerns. The UCC minister for public education

Jan Resseger, is ready willing and able to come and do an adult education program again about public education

During our Service Program at General Synod we learned about the Connectuct school integration case in which there has been a partial solution. We saw the schools which had been bulit with the aide of Trinity College...

UCC 50th Anniversary Synod -2

Monday June 25 Contd
Service Project: Today I participated in the service project which began by waiting for the bus. We traveled to a Hartford magnet school first. This series of schools were set up by Hartford as a way of integrating the schools. There is a Montessori school, a middle school and two high schools, one for science and the other for the arts. Students from the suburbs are bussed in for half a day to go to one of the two high schools. The schools are called "The Learning Corridor" www.learningcorridor.org. It is a partnership between the Hartford Public schools and Trinity College. I was built to be the prototype for other schools in the district.
Next we went to a neighborhood middle school where we assembled the bags of materials, some of which was supplied by some of you, for the teachers. Unfortunately unlike Atlanta where the local churches supplied the bulk of the materials, we did not have enough materials for all the bags, but the huge group of workers managed to pack 400 bags in one hour. I have photos of this which I will post soon. We had three bus loads of works many were high school youth. To keep the youth busy, they were asked to clean up he grounds of the school as well by picking up the trash. After lunch we returned to the arena.

Transition from Visitor to Delegate: That afternoon I chose a seat where I could run down and sign up for "Speak Outs" Speak Outs are a time where anyone can talk for 2 mins about anything. I happened to sit near the new director of education for Riverside Church Rev. Gerald Thomas. He is African American and came from he Vermont Conference. We struck up a conversation and I told him what I do and he said he would invite me to speak to his youth some time.
While I was sitting there watching the delegates, knitting a shawl and napping, John Deckenback the Central Atlantic Conference Minister spotted me and asked me to become a substitute delegate! It seems that Ruth Sykes ( Plainfield UCC) had an emergency so she had to go home. So now I am a delegate!
Resolutions passed: (for details see the resolutions on www.ucc.org)
Super fund Site
Green Churches
Support for Smithfield Ham workers in North Carolina
Cali Witte and Edith Guffey were reelected to serve on the Ministerium of the UCC.

Marion Wright Edleman
She is President of the Children's Defense Fund and she spoke in support of the children of the world and especially of these United states
Sound Bites:

• SCHIP is up for re authorizations this is the bill that provides health care for poor children. Contact your congressman and senators about increasing the amount of money for this so that all children will have health care. This needs to be done THIS WEEK. You can send a letter to your senators on line on The Children's Defense Fund site. http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer
• Cradle to Prison we are dooming many poor and minority children to enter the Justice system by the way we treat them in school and fail to teach them to read at an early age.
• She said about some teachers: "If you don't love children don't go into teaching!"
• Children watch and do what adults do so every adult should do a audit of their practices eg drugs, drinking, lying etc.

For more information see the website of the "Children's Defense Fund".

OK More later.

UCC 50th Anniversary Synod

Friday, Saturday and Sunday

All I can say so far is WOW! I have been to many Synod's as a visitor but this one tops them all. On Saturday for the birthday party there were 10,000 people including 1,000 youth and young adults! It was awesome.
I hope you are watching it on the web in streaming video or at least you can watch the archives as they are posted on the web at www.ucc.org.
Bill Moyers talk is posted now. He said he was a member of a UCC church even though he could be a Baptist minister. His talk is worth watching. I ran into Julie Yarborough and told her that Chuck should invite him to speak at Christ Church. She said Chuck has been trying. Maybe we as private citizens should also try. Some sound bites from Bill Moyers speech:

• About founding fathers and race "We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal..... But some of them had slaves
• About Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming. Upon his death all the slaves were sold except Sally. Sally's children were set free. Moyers said: (Jefferson about the declaration of Independence) got it right --- but lived it wrong"
• Moyers also said "(Jefferson) "knew the truth but lived it wrong as we are today."
• "Churches of conscience must take the lead (against racism and poverty) or we will lose our democracy"

These are the sound bites that were of interest to me. I urge you to listen to the whole speech to make your own judgement.

• Senator Barak Obama spoke that afternoon (Saturday). His speech was billed as a non campaign speech and we were told not to wear campaign tee shirts. He was invited as a member of Trinity Church in Chicago to speak about his faith journey. He started out that way but then launched into a campaign speech. His speech is posted now on the web. The sound bites are:
  

• He would start universal health program.
• About poverty "If you work a 40 hour week you should not be living in poverty."
• About immigration "we must secure our borders, but we can't just walk away from the undocumented immigrants that already here, we must give them a chance to stay here"

On Saturday for Synod in the City it was a wonderful day. Even the weather cooperated, it was not hot in fact I wore a jacket! There we so many things to do that it was hard to chose. I chose to attend two workshops:
Stem Cell Research. The UCC has a science group that cautiously support Stem Cell research and funding by the federal government. If you attend the adult education about Stem Cell Research at Christ Church you have the same information that was given at the workshop.

No Child Left Behind: The UCC is the only denomination that has a staff member who is dedicated to support public education. This is because of it's history of starting schools and colleges especailly in the south after the Civil War. The UCC is working to change the No Child Left Behind Act during this year's re-authorization to be of better service to teachers and children. In fact there is a letter that you can sign and send to your senators and congressman in the UCC take Action. I have already signed this letter and I urge all of you to do so as well. You can read and change the letter before you send it. For more information about UCC and education I urge you to look at the the UCC website. The future of our government depends on an educated workforce for all people not just the few who can afford it.

Sunday June 24
This was an easy day for me. The morning was free so that people could attend community groups or a local church service or just chill, which was my option. Since I was singing in the choir I had to be at the Civic Center at 11:30 for rehearsal. I had not had a chance to review the music and as it turns out, it was not hard to learn on the fly. After two runs through I knew it. Don't tell my voice teacher as she is trying to turn me into a musician! I used my old skill of learning by hearing it. Singing is such a large choir 700 was great! The composers were over whelmed to hear their compositions sung by so large a group!
The church service was great. John Thomas preached and then we had communion. This was the reinactment of Jesus feeding the multitude! Imagine communion for 10,000 people!
In the evening I attended the Wider Church Ministries dinner and then came back to my hotel to chill. Delegates had to work and I could have watched them but bed seemed to be more what I wanted!

Monday June 25.
Today is Service Day for me so more later.