The War Report on Public Education, November 22, 2015
The War Report on Public Education with Dr. Miller and guests Eve Shippens and Kate Shangs Haq
Guest, Eve Shippens
Eve Shippens is a parent, teacher and alumni of the Buffalo Public Schools. She is fighting for the children's right to an equitable, quality, enriching public education. Buffalo has a child poverty rate of close to 50% and is one of the most segregated cities in the country. Eve became active in the fight when the state of New York declared her school, along with three others, out of time and decided to shut them down. She fought with hundreds of students, teachers, families and other activists to keep the schools open and public!
Guest, Kate Shands Haq
Kate Shands Haq has been a professional educator in the field of elementary school teaching since 1985. She is a graduate of Buffalo State College and the State University of Buffalo, where she received a Masters degree in Early Childhood Education in 1991. Kate has taught grades Kindergarten, second, third, fourth, and fifth. She has worked as a reading specialist and as the Response to Intervention coordinator and coach for her district.
The majority of her years have been spent in a rural school district on the outskirts of Buffalo, but she is a long time city of Buffalo resident. Kate and her husband have three sons, two of whom graduated from Buffalo Public Schools, and their youngest is presently in tenth grade at a criterion school in Buffalo.
Kate has been politically active since college and represented her local teachers' union in Albany for many years. She is currently the secretary of the Buffalo Parent Teacher Organization. Kate resigned her position as a fifth grade teacher in June of 2014 and is pursuing her PhD in Critical Literacy at SUNY Buffalo as a full-time student
The War Report on Public Education
The format of THE WAR REPORT ON PUBLIC EDUCATION explores one of the most important events in our life time - the total takeover of our educational system by corporate interests. This show is about the 'corporate' war on public education and the rising public resistance movement to the war. Dr. James Avington Miller, Jr. invites guests from all over who join the rising public resistance movement against the corporate greed taking on our public school system. He is interested in growing a grass-roots movement here in the United States and in Europe against the 'corporate interests' that are limiting both teachers and students everywhere.
This October 2015 he is taking his show on the road as he embarks on a very special project. His long awaited project ‘The People’s Story' is an effort to reach out to those individuals whose voices are not being heard in educational arenas everywhere. He will be interviewing, filming and collecting stories from parents, teachers, students and community members in the rural and urban areas of the Eastern United States to include Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington D.C. Many lives are being impacted and harmed by the ongoing corporate war on public education that exists today. The consequence of the rapid privatization of our schools is inhumane and devastating to our teachers, schools and most importantly, our children.
His primary mission is to create a documentary/television series for PBS and the Arts & Entertainment Channel that will expose the human cost of man’s inhumanity to man. The objective is to document people’s stories from each state and create a one hour TV Episode for that state evolving into a 30-35 part series. Dr. Miller expects to have the first TV show ready by next summer. This will propel the ‘corporate war on public education’ front and center as a local, state and national campaign issue. Determined to awaken the world on a national level by providing a series of programs that will lead to understanding the whole picture – he hopes to demand an end to the Corporate Elite and their destruction of public education.
Dr. Miller is seeking funding for ‘The People’s Story’ project from friends, family and the public to cover the expenses that this will entail. If you care about the future of education, please support this most important project and be part of history in the making. This has been and will continue to be Dr. Miller's dream to complete and certainly his life's legacy.
