What We’re Up Against: Privatization

The movement to privatize schools is diverting billions of public funding from public schools into private, non-regulated, largely-religious institutions. Engineered by profit-driven businessmen to gain money and power through the establishment of a private school marketplace, the privatization movement views our kids as a commodity. Through voucher programs, education savings accounts, tax education scholarships, and similar complex mechanisms packaged as “parental rights” and “school choice,” policy-makers are unraveling education as a public good and inalienable right. 

Students are losing necessary resources (most acutely impacting our special education students), educators are losing their jobs, and the educators that remain are forced to manage impossible caseloads and class sizes for a salary that has never provided a livable wage. Across the city, charter schools are occupying our public schools, using public school space, money, and resources – without the consent of parents, teachers, or the community. The alarming rise of the privatization movement has placed great pressure on educators and families all throughout Colorado Springs, and demands us to define (and defend) why public education is worth fighting for.