AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. Ahead of the last Democrat presidential debate of the year this Thursday in Los Angeles, seven candidates appeared Saturday at a historic Democratic Presidential Forum on Public Education in Pittsburgh, an event organized by public education groups, unions, civil rights groups.

Well, for more, we’re joined by three guests. In Atlanta, Georgia, Keron Blair is director of the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools. In Chicago, Jitu Brown is the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. And in New York, Carol Burris is executive director of the Network for Public Education Action, who recently authored a report titled “Still Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in a Pileup of Fraud and Waste.” I spoke with them and asked them about this forum, that didn’t get very much attention. We began in Atlanta with Keron Blair and asked him how they organized the forum and what he felt was so critical.

KERON BLAIR: Good morning, Amy. It is so good to be with you.

I should say that, you know, as the director of the Alliance, we pulled together a number of groups, including the folks who are joining me — the Journey for Justice Alliance, the Network for Public Education. And we all put time and staff and energy into making this forum possible. For us, it is historic, because it is one of the first times in recent memory where public education was at the center of the conversation with folks who are looking to be president. The idea for this forum emerged months ago, after we worked together to actually introduce the Keep Our PACT Act. And folks had a meeting where we said, “Given the importance of this issue, we need to figure out how we raise education to the national level and really get folks on the record on the issues that we care about.” And so, for months, folks have been working, pulling together resources, staff, relationships.

And Saturday was phenomenal on a lot of levels, because what we had, again, we had parents, we had students, we had educators, we had education professionals, we had school staff, we had higher ed advocates, in one room, under one big tent, naming the issues we cared about, like investment in public schools, ending the school-to-prison pipeline, ending the privatization and charter movement, deepening our commitment to racial justice and the infrastructure and what we know is required to make learning possible. And so, we are happy to have been a part of that and happy to have joined partners in labor, on the community side, parents, students, school staff, in making this event possible.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn back to the moderator, Rehema Ellis, asking Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren about charter schools.

RAHEMA ELLIS: Right now the majority of children who find themselves in public charter schools are minority children, are black and brown children. Some parents of those black and brown children say, “What do I do while I wait for my public school to get up to speed to provide my child with the kind of academic excellence that they deserve?” What do you say to those parents who are looking for that public charter school option?

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: So, I’ve met with many parents and grandparents who have put their children in public charter schools. And I have no doubt about the sincerity of their efforts to educate their children. And they’re looking for the best educational opportunity they can find. I believe that. But I believe that it is our responsibility as a nation, and will be my responsibility as president of the United States, to make certain that every public school is an excellent public school.

RAHEMA ELLIS: Yes, that’s future-oriented. We’ve been trying to do that for years. We’ve been spending billions of dollars in education reform in this country for decades, and we are not there yet in terms of the academic excellence. You know what the Nation’s Report Card just came out and said — 

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: Look —

RAHEMA ELLIS: — in terms of our students being able to read in fourth and eighth grade.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN: I’m not — I’m not proposing cutting funding for children who are currently in charter schools. I believe that for-profit charter schools should be closed, but that’s a different issue. I also believe that all charter schools should have to meet exactly the same requirements that all other public schools have to meet.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Massachusetts senator, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. Carol Burris is with us, who was also at the forum on Saturday, executive director of the Network for Public Education Action, who recently released the report, “Still Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Results in a Pileup of Fraud and Waste.” She previously served as the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Centre School District in Long Island, New York. Prior to being a principal, she was a teacher at both the middle and high school level. So, this issue of charter schools divides the Democrats. Respond to what Senator Warren said, and then what you have found.

CAROL BURRIS: Yeah. I mean, I think Senator Warren is right on target. And it’s been a shame because the advocates of charter schools misrepresent her position. They keep saying that she’s trying to cut off funding. That is not anybody’s position, that I know of, to cut off funding for present charter schools, whether it be state funding or federal funding.

But there is a real concern — it was expressed by the NAACP, it’s been expressed by our organization and also by some of the leading candidates — that the continued proliferation of charter schools without real reform is becoming a national problem. And the Federal Charter Schools Program has been complicit in all of this, especially under Betsy DeVos. The Charter Schools Program has spent over $4 billion starting new charter schools all over the nation. What we found in our report was that a lot of the money goes to charter schools that don’t even open, ghost schools. Hundreds of millions of dollars also go to charter schools that open and then close, some within a matter of just a few years, some longer. So, the program has been very veiled.

And what we are doing is we are digging deep into the data. And all of the evidence that we have shows that about a billion dollars has been wasted on charter schools that have not opened or that have closed. At the same time, we see a lot of fraud. We see a lot of problems with mismanagement. We see a lot of turmoil from schools that open and then close. And we see a tremendous amount of drained resources from our public schools and our community schools that need the funding the most.

So, what Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are advocating for is — you know, and the NAACP — is: “Hey, let’s take a pause at this. Let’s take a look.” Our position at the Network for Public Education is: Let’s make charter schools true public schools. Let’s have boards of charter schools elected by the people, instead of, very often, being boards that are composed of millionaires.

AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of the presidential candidates, especially, here, the Dems, who are divided on this issue of charter schools? Whose proposal did you like the best, or what number of them, on Saturday, if any?

CAROL BURRIS: Yeah, well, you know, there wasn’t as much spoken about as I would have liked, but we did get little hints. We certainly know that Michael Bennet is full square in favor of charter schools.

AMY GOODMAN: And Michael Bennet’s history in education?

CAROL BURRIS: He was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, where he really instituted a lot of the Race to the Top reforms, that have now been abandoned by the Democratic Party.

We were very happy and surprised to hear Joe Biden talk about that he would like to see Betsy DeVos and her charter schools, as well as her policies on sexual harassment, go. That was — that was a first.

Mayor Pete says that he’s against for-profit charter schools, and we find that to be very disingenuous. The only state that has for-profit charter schools is the state of Arizona. Now, many states allow for-profit management organizations to operate their charter schools. He has yet to come out and say that he is against that. That is part of Elizabeth Warren’s platform, and also Bernie Sanders’.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Jitu Brown into this conversation. He’s speaking to us from Chicago, though he was there on Saturday at the Education Presidential Forum. He’s national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance. Can you respond to what you felt was most noteworthy about this historic public forum, where a number of the Democratic presidential candidates laid out their education programs, what you found inspiring and what you found lacking, Jitu?

JITU BROWN: Yes, ma’am. So, first, Amy, thank you for having me. I appreciate you always being a platform for justice and a place where our voices can be heard. So, thank you for the work you do and for having me this morning.

The first thing I will say is the fact that it happened was a major victory, the fact that Democratic presidential hopefuls had to speak to the breadth of the education justice movement. You know, unfortunately, corporate media, in their laziness, always says that teacher unions are leading the way. But if we really know what’s happening on the ground, often the tip of the spear are community groups, parent organizations, student organizations, who are cutting the issue at a very grassroots level, in particular around issues of racial justice.

So, young people that have been fighting against assaults by school resource officers are the ones who have led the fight to put regulations in place to protect students’ civil rights. Community groups that have fought against the closing of our schools and fought against the sabotage of public education have often been the tip of the spear in saying that school closings happens in certain communities. The question of equity, as opposed to only funding, was a community-driven initiative, where — and so you saw the name of the forum, “Equity and Opportunity for All.” So, I think the breadth of the education justice movement was heard this night, on Saturday, and I think that was important. So that was inspiring to me.

The fact that you had, in the beginning, Keron Blair setting the tone for the event, [John] Jackson from Schott, Angel Gober from One PA setting the tone of the event, but then you also had Lily García from the NEA, Randi Weingarten from the AFT, Derrick Johnson from the NAACP and myself frame event for the audience, for people to understand why this moment was so important. So, those things were important to me.

I think — and it speaks to the growth of this emerging education justice movement across the United States. I know, as being with the Journey for Justice Alliance, that people are fighting for education justice all over the country. Young people in Camden, New Jersey, organized a 1,600-student walkout to protect their teachers. Young people in Chicago, Illinois, are organizing to make sure that there are more counselors in the school than police officers. Parents in Oakland, California, are fighting school closings. Parents in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, are organizing to win community schools. Parents and educators and community members in Chicago put the demand for 20 sustainable community schools in the teacher union’s contract and won five years of funding for 20 sustainable community schools in the city of Chicago. I can go on, all over the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me turn to Davonte Johnson of Detroit Action for a New Economy. This is Johnson questioning Senator Bernie Sanders.

DAVONTE JOHNSON: Today, I come to tell you that I never felt safe with police in my school. Since 1994, because of the crime bill, more than $1 billion have been spent on putting police into schools. So, Senator Sanders, my question to you is: Are you committed to ending the school-to-prison pipeline and ensuring — and ensuring that black and brown students both feel safe and welcome in their school? And if so, how?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Absolutely, I am committed. And that is one of my highest priorities. We have a criminal justice system, in general, which is not only broken, but it is racist. We have more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China, four times our size. So we have a long proposal on criminal justice. But one of the aspects of it is that if you want to keep people out of jail, then you invest in education, you invest in jobs, rather than more jails and incarceration.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Senator Sanders’ response. Jitu Brown, your response to what Senator Sanders said, and the overall issue and the position of all these candidates?

JITU BROWN: So, I think that the issue of equity is critical. And inequity rears its head not only in course offerings, it also rears its head in regards to how discipline is administered in school. If you view children as precious, if you view them as viable human beings, then you will treat them as such. If they struggle, you will counsel them. You will find out what their problem is, and then you’ll help to alleviate it. If you view children through a racist lens, then you will look at a 5- and 6-year-old, and you’d be willing to suspend that 5- and 6-year-old. You’d be willing to police those children as opposed to understand them.

And so, I think that Senator Sanders has moved, as many Democrats have moved, in the right direction in regards to this question of student discipline. We know that black children are suspended five times as much as their white counterparts for the same infractions. And, Amy, this gets to a point, some 65 years after the passage of Brown v. Board, we have not honored that mandate. And so, the reason why we have pushed the issue of equity, because we’ve done everything but equity. We’ve done virtual schools. We’ve done zero-tolerance policies. We’ve done storefront schools, storefront charter schools, charter schools in the basement of churches, alternative schools — everything but facing our ugly, which is that we have a system that views black and brown children through the lens of hate. And that’s the sickness. Our children are not the problem. The problem is that racism that infects public policy.

So, the fact that Bernie Sanders has moved on the issue of privatization, where he was not on the right side four years ago — Elizabeth Warren has moved, now Mayor Pete is attempting to adjust his platform — speaks to the strength of our collective organizing, parents, young people and educators working together to say that we want a education platform that is rooted in racial justice and rooted in equity. And so, I think that is a sign that we are moving in the right direction. Just because we had the candidates there, that is just the beginning of the work. We’re going to have to hold whoever goes into the White House accountable. But the fact that we were able to get them there and begin to move them in the right direction, because the failure to implement the mandate of Brown v. Board is a bipartisan failure.

I’ll say one other thing. People complain about Betsy DeVos. But if there was no Arne Duncan, there would be no Betsy DeVos. What is the difference between the two of them, except vouchers? Arne Duncan was just as unqualified as Betsy DeVos was.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jitu Brown of Journey for Justice Alliance in Chicago, Keron Blair with the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, and Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education Action. We’ll post the full interview at democracynow.org.

Also on our website today, we’ll be live-streaming the House Rules Committee hearing on impeachment.

A very Happy Birthday to my brother David! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.