Word: jeffersonism
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Which is what these scholarships, once they stop coming out of Forstmann's pocket, will ultimately do. For then they will be vouchers, which set off alarms because they involve tinkering with what Jefferson envisioned as the "gratis" common school, the one institution that could make good on the Constitution's promise of equality. According to a 1997 Gallup poll, most Americans are happy with public schools. Few parents in Greenwich, Conn., would take their child out of its fine public schools for a voucher of $1,600. But in inner-city Hartford, many parents would sensibly embrace them, which...
...Citizens of South Central Los Angeles (CCSCLA), Maria, Fabiola and Nevada are activists in the cause of environmental health. They've handed out containers in which oil can be recycled and given warnings about lead poisoning. Most of all, they're agitating for the temporary closing and cleanup of Jefferson New Middle School...
...Jefferson is the first public school to open in South Central Los Angeles in 30 years. Built on a site that was once home to a maker of refrigerator shells and, earlier, to a defense contractor that made fuel tanks for World War II fighter planes, it serves about 2,000 students, mostly poor, mostly minority. But across the street is the former home of a chrome-plating shop, a site so hazardous that it is scheduled for cleanup under the federal Superfund program. During construction of the school, it was discovered that the soil and groundwater under the building...
That's what alarms Maria, Fabiola and Nevada. They don't go to school at Jefferson, nor do their brothers and sisters, but they are outraged just the same. Says Nevada: "It's terrifying that these kids are going to a school that's contaminated. In a way they are my brothers and sisters, because they are African-American and Hispanic children who one day may be my neighbors...
CCSCLA campaigned for months to keep Jefferson New Middle School from opening, and the group's junior members were on the front lines. Maria, Fabiola and Nevada called government agencies, passed out flyers and went door to door to alert parents. But the school district determined that Jefferson was safe and opened its classrooms last July. Says school-district spokesman Erik Nasarenko: "The problem with the groundwater and the soils deep beneath the surface...does not affect people on the surface...