Hey, welcome to Busted Pet Fools, fully-led in education talk, educated educators talk
in education. It's home room. We got some special things to announce for this week. I mean, Jacob
so much going on in the world, right? So much happening. We've had exciting show on Saturday. We
had AFT President Randy Weingarn, regular guest on Busted Pencils. Good friend of not only teachers
everywhere, but the educated educators here at Busted Pencils. We got to talk about her new book,
Why Fascists, Fear Teachers, right? I'm struggled to get that one out, but excellent. Hopefully,
you got to listen to that show. If not tune into it because Wednesday's class and session,
we're going to talk about it more. I don't want to belabor that book any further today, Jacob,
because it's home room. I'm going to check in with you, my guy. How you been doing?
Johnny, I've been doing pretty good. I think I don't know what it is, but these last couple weeks,
the show's been on firing all cylinders. I feel here on Busted Pencils.
Unfortunately, Tim couldn't be here today because as people may have heard before, you guys are
educated educators. And sometimes there are things related to education. You actually have to go
and do. And we try our best to make the schedules work, but you guys are busy people.
Yeah, man. Sometimes you got to miss home room. Tim's missing home room this week. I think it's
probably a bigger problem, Jacob, if we both miss it the same time, you know, then it's I want
to happen, Johnny. I'll be educated, educated educator talking with the big dog at the desk.
Chairman of the board, Jacob, but it's it's Monday. We're excited to have this show. Hey,
Jacob, before I get going any further and we'll have her on soon, but Heather from the Wisconsin
public education network. Yeah, Heather's fantastic. You know, woman of the people for sure
representing public education. But more than that, and she always says this, you know, she's an
angry, concerned citizen about why we're not taking care of children in our schools better,
especially given that, you know, it's sort of the government's responsibility to fund education.
It's tragically, I would even say not tragically, it's violently underfunded. Those aren't her
words. I'll sort of put that out there. But you know, she's usually on here talking with us.
And there's an event that I want to make sure gets out to our listeners, especially those of you
local, you know, to the area. The Wisconsin public education network has an event on September 16th.
So if you're listening to this traditionally on Monday, that's tomorrow, folks, right,
from 630 to 830. It's on Zoom, you know, it's free, but it's the Go Public Transparency Project.
And this is really special. Go Public Transparency Project, right? It demands transparency and
accountability for all schools that receive public money, right? This isn't amidst the larger
conversation around privatization and vouchers, right? So the Wisconsin Public Education Network,
WPEN, is hosting a free training and toolkit kickoff party. Go Public Project. I mean, I love public
stuff. Like public transparency is paramount to a strong democracy. So is public education.
And as you listeners know, public education is under threat, right? It's under attack
by privatization and the voucher movement. So the demand here being demand that private vouchers
and independent charter school costs be listed on your property tax bills to stop hiding.
How much privatization scams cost? Local kids and tax payers. So this is one of those things,
Jacob, where if you're like me oftentimes, and I'm an expert on some of this stuff, right?
Not the expert, but an expert. We have had the experts on before to talk about how schools are
funded, but I am an expert on it. You know, I teach school funding and policy to future teachers
and school leaders. And even I sometimes I'm like, wait, I better read that a little more closely.
How what? What's going on? Where are the funds coming from? Where are they going? How are they
being used? So, you know, transparency, right? And understanding is really important for us to make
good decisions together to better understand how our support for public schools can be recognized
by our legislators because we currently are not funding schools at what's necessary to just have a
base level of quality education. Furthermore, threatening that underfunding, like we'd like to
see that funding be more, but threatening what's also already a too small of a amount is privatization
in school vouchers. And once we start to talk about those things, we've had a guest on a couple
weeks ago, you know, representative crews. And she had said, you know, it's intentionally
confusing. So even with transparency, even if we were to say, well, you can look it up and you
can figure out how school funding, I mean, it's not actually a public record in the detail that
it ought to be. But even if we got access to that, it's intentionally designed to not be very clear.
And so I think, you know, this event, go public by the Wisconsin Public Education Network, the
Gold Public Transparency Project, man, Jacob, I'm hyped up about it, you can tell, but it's
exciting because it's an opportunity for anyone who'd like to participate, right, to learn about
how this works to gain that transparency and be part of a collective voice, right, that demands
transparency and accountability for all schools that receive public money. So demand private voucher
and independent charter school cost be listed on our property tax bills so that we stop hiding how
much privatization scams cost local kids and taxpayers. In other words, Jacob, the short tagline
for the event is stop the scam, right, demand public transparency. So if you're interested in that
listener, I think it's going to be a phenomenal zoom opportunity. If you'd like to join, you can
register and we'll put the, we'll put the link to the event in our podcast description.
But you can just go to the Wisconsin Network, uh, Wisconsin Network.org, right, and you can link
through there to get to it. But we'll make sure you have a link to it, uh, you know, Heather from the
Wisconsin Public Education Network will follow up. Tell us how the event went, um, you know, some of us
will be there. So come on in and check it out. But it's an awesome thing for all of us to gain
sort of more literacy and understanding, especially what's happening locally with school funding
related to the charter movement to the voucher movement in Wisconsin, which is hurting an already
underfunding school's problem. So that's a big thing coming up, Jacob. I'm glad we can, you know,
announce it in whole room and have it out there for our listeners. Yeah, I'm glad we could get
that information out there, Johnny, because to me, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems
to me that this, the, uh, the intention of the Go public transparency project is to just get the
information out there. And if you're a good faith advocate for charter schools and vouchers,
I can't see a reason why you wouldn't have, uh, you, that you would have a problem with just having
the information out there. Uh, it seems to me that only somebody who wants vouchers and charter
schools, but doesn't want taxpayers to know what they cost would be against something like this.
And that seems pretty disingenuous. Yeah. And I, and it's a great opportunity, Jacob.
Unfortunately, as everyone listened and knows, you know, last week, you know, things, things
around how we, you know, discuss our differences have culminated to an unacceptable tragedy,
right? And so we don't want to also belabor that talk, uh, of, you know, the unfortunate death of,
uh, you know, of, of a public figure. And I don't care what side of the things you're on,
it's disappointing, you know, Jacob, you shared a little this last week. And, you know,
if I, I've experienced in the, in the past days, you know, people celebrating this awful moment.
And I think that's absolutely ridiculous. And so, you know, transparency, public transparency,
learning about gaining information, about perspectives, about understandings.
It's not as, as tense as ramped up as maybe some of the Charlie Kirk topics and the things about
turning points on college campuses have, have, have that dimension to it. But it's certainly a
kin. And, and why I bring that up, Jacob, is because this is one of those great opportunities
wherever you're at in it. And the things, maybe your pro charter schools and voucher movement
for all of us to better understand accountability for all of our schools.
And I think that's, that's nonpartisan that doesn't belong to conservatives or to, to,
to, uh, you know, liberals or Democrats, uh, you know, it belongs to all of us, the people who care
about children in our community and where they go to learn. And also we care about the teachers
who are teaching them there, or the principals who are leading those, you know, school efforts,
or, you know, the librarians or the school nurse, you know, everyone involved in public
education, you know, wants to better understand how we can fix this underfunding of things.
Right? And so, yeah, it's always a win-win when we gather to share information, to learn together,
and to listen to one another so that together we can do better. And that's kind of that thing we
ended last week on, you know, was, how do we, and I love that Tim, you know, he brought it up at the
end. I had to draw it out of him. I had to use my, my mental telepathy into Tim's brain.
But I knew he was thinking it how we give peace a chance. Yeah. This peace is not passivity. I
said that last week, but it's active. And being active as a, as someone who is interested in peace
isn't adverse to difference, isn't adverse to conflict, but understands how to listen and have
those conversations. And a big piece of that is sharing and getting information and having
transparency and trust. So I love our friends at WPN. I know that it's not planned to connect
those things, but another opportunity for us to practice this, to get information together,
you know, in spaces where we are invited, no matter who you are, you're a parent, you're an
educator, you're a concerned citizen from however you situate yourself in regards to the
discussion around, you know, vouchers and school funding, you can learn more, and you can be
part of advocating for transparency, which in my opinion, which, you know, educated educator,
talking education, kind of my training to better understand how to communicate the importance
of public education to democracy, with transparency and trust. When we have trust and transparency
with one another, our differences, right, are important to how we communicate. So I, you know,
what a great opportunity. That's coming up this week. So glad we could shout it out in
home room to kick off the week. This is going to be a great one, Johnny. And like you said,
denouncing violence does not mean giving up on the things you believe in. It means going about
things in a right and civil way. That's what they're doing with the Go Public Transparency Project.
That event kicks off Tuesday, September 16th on zoom. Link here in the podcast description.
Johnny, thank you so much for being here with me today.
You bet you a couple of J dogs chopping it up on home room. You know, we missed, we missed Tim,
but he'll be back. So don't you worry about it. And folks, thanks for tuning in,
getting going with our week. And now for your moment of zen.
Real heroes are not on national television or in the headlines. They are the nurses,
the doctors, the teachers, the social workers, the janitors, the hospital orderlies,
the construction workers, the people who keep society going.
Hey, pencil busters. Thanks for listening to today's home room. And if you want more
busted pencils podcast all week long, just go to Apple Spotify or you can always find us on
civic media.com or on our website, busted pencils.com. And remember, you can find great busted
pencils content, specifically every Monday, like today for home room Wednesdays for class in session.
And every Friday for producer Jacob's choice. And of course, pencil busters. You can always tune in
on Saturdays and listen to the busted pencils weekend broadcast at three p.m. Central time
across all the civic media networks for one hour of your favorite blue collar scholars,
Tim and Johnny air keep Boston pencils.