Yvette Felarca of BAMN calls for action to stop the hiring of Edmond Heatley as Berkeley Unified School District’s new school superintendent.
September 2012
Open Letter to Members of the Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education:
I am writing to urge you NOT to hire Edmond Heatley as the district’s new superintendent. Mr. Heatley’s record reveals an administrator who is heavy-handed, opposed to unions and most importantly opposed to students. According to numerous news reports and parent blogs, he suspended 1500 students who wore jeans to school in protest of the uniform policy. How ludicrous! He also cut staff and essential programs like art and transportation at his former District in Clayton. We should not hire a superintendent who is a former Marine and who has demonstrated a military-style, dictatorial approach to public school students, teachers, and staff–especially in Berkeley which prides itself as a bastion of free speech and anti-militarism.
Equally alarming is the fact that Mr. Heatley is a graduate of the Eli Broad Foundation, the national think-tank for training former corporate executives and military officers to privatize public education. The Broad Foundation consciously recruits candidates who have no background in education with the intention of training them to promote anti-union, pro-charter school policies. Broad’s ideological mission is to transform public education into the free-market model and travesty of corporate America. Broad cynically recruits black and other minority candidates in order to try to get away with enforcing policies that lead to resegregation, privatization, and union-busting — policies which hurt black, Latina/o, and other minority communities the most and which also hurt school districts as a whole. The Oakland Unified School District is still reeling from damage done under Broad Foundation graduate Randolph Ward–we should not repeat that disaster.
Do not hire Edmond Heatley. His record reveals that his policies are the antithesis of the best that Berkeley Public Schools stands for. The students, teachers, staff, parents, and the Berkeley community deserve better.
Sincerely,
Yvette Felarca
Equal Opportunity Now Caucus (EON)
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
Teacher, Martin Luther King Middle School
510-502-9072
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SPEAK OUT at the BUSD School Board Meeting Wed. Sept. 12 at 7 pm, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Contact the BUSD School Board and tell them not to hire Heatley:
John T. Selawsky, President (2012), johnselawsky@berkeley.net
Leah Wilson, Vice President (2014) LeahWilson@berkeley.net
Beatriz Leyva-Cutler, Clerk (2012) BeatrizLeyva-Cutler@berkeley.net
Karen Hemphill, Director(2014) karenhemphill@comcast.net
Josh Daniels, Director (2014) JoshDaniels@berkeley.net
Maddy Roberts, Student Director (2011–12) roberts_maddy@yahoo.com
Contact Information for the BUSD Board of Directors: Individual email addresses above or boardofed@berkeley.net will send your message to all of the Board.
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Equal Opportunity Now (EON) Caucus equaloppnow@aol.com /
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) www.bamn.com letters@bamn.com 510-502-9072
