don't know how much national play this Meeks nut has gotten
This horse's ass Meeks using kids like this :stfu:
Same goal, different paths
1ST DAY OF SCHOOL | Kids urged to attend -- and skip
August 20, 2008
BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter mihejirika@suntimes.com
As the first day of school nears for Chicago Public Schools, two movements to improve education for its mostly low-income, minority students are on a collision course.
The Black Star Project and its Million Father March -- a five-year-old movement steamrolling across the country -- are calling for men, especially black men, to take children to school en masse Sept. 2.
But state Sen. James Meeks' Save Our Schools Now campaign wants them to stay away, as he and supporters rally CPS parents toward a massive boycott of CPS' first day of school. Meeks is also pastor of the Far South Side mega-church, Salem Baptist.
"This began as black fathers doing this for black children because the system is failing our children. In America, per the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the average 17-year-old black child has the reading and math scores of the average 14-year-old white child," Black Star Project founder Phillip Jackson said. "We want men to go up to schools to be fathers for children who might not have fathers that day. Our motto is any child, any man, any school."
Jackson's vision, hatched in a 2004 meeting with 10 other men in the basement of a South Side church, today is a nationwide movement with 475 cities participating.
Its premise is based on research showing children with fathers who take active roles in their educational lives are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, and that the first day sets the tone for attendance and academics.
But many of the statistics he quotes, such as CPS graduating only 37 percent of black males from high schools -- Meeks quotes as the reason for his stay-away campaign.
"It's our kids that are suffering," Meeks said. "They've suffered for the last 30 years, and now they're producing children whose parents were not educated and so cannot properly educate or provide for their children. That's why we have the social ills. These are children of products of the school system."
Meeks is asking CPS parents to send their children to Winnetka on Sept. 2 -- to attempt to register at New Trier High and Sunset Ridge Elementary there. On Sept. 3, 4 and 5, he wants students to converge on the lobbies of corporate buildings downtown, for a sit-in and classes with retired teachers.
Anthony Robinson, father of a Dvorak Elementary fifth-grader, says he's participating in the Million Father March because he believes his child will lose out awaiting change.
"I've taken him the first day for the last five years, and it makes a difference -- along with the time I spend volunteering at his school during the year," Robinson said.
Come Sept. 2, both leaders say they'll do what they must, as common ground ends at the premise on which the movements are founded.
This horse's ass Meeks using kids like this :stfu:
Same goal, different paths
1ST DAY OF SCHOOL | Kids urged to attend -- and skip
August 20, 2008
BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter mihejirika@suntimes.com
As the first day of school nears for Chicago Public Schools, two movements to improve education for its mostly low-income, minority students are on a collision course.
The Black Star Project and its Million Father March -- a five-year-old movement steamrolling across the country -- are calling for men, especially black men, to take children to school en masse Sept. 2.
But state Sen. James Meeks' Save Our Schools Now campaign wants them to stay away, as he and supporters rally CPS parents toward a massive boycott of CPS' first day of school. Meeks is also pastor of the Far South Side mega-church, Salem Baptist.
"This began as black fathers doing this for black children because the system is failing our children. In America, per the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the average 17-year-old black child has the reading and math scores of the average 14-year-old white child," Black Star Project founder Phillip Jackson said. "We want men to go up to schools to be fathers for children who might not have fathers that day. Our motto is any child, any man, any school."
Jackson's vision, hatched in a 2004 meeting with 10 other men in the basement of a South Side church, today is a nationwide movement with 475 cities participating.
Its premise is based on research showing children with fathers who take active roles in their educational lives are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, and that the first day sets the tone for attendance and academics.
But many of the statistics he quotes, such as CPS graduating only 37 percent of black males from high schools -- Meeks quotes as the reason for his stay-away campaign.
"It's our kids that are suffering," Meeks said. "They've suffered for the last 30 years, and now they're producing children whose parents were not educated and so cannot properly educate or provide for their children. That's why we have the social ills. These are children of products of the school system."
Meeks is asking CPS parents to send their children to Winnetka on Sept. 2 -- to attempt to register at New Trier High and Sunset Ridge Elementary there. On Sept. 3, 4 and 5, he wants students to converge on the lobbies of corporate buildings downtown, for a sit-in and classes with retired teachers.
Anthony Robinson, father of a Dvorak Elementary fifth-grader, says he's participating in the Million Father March because he believes his child will lose out awaiting change.
"I've taken him the first day for the last five years, and it makes a difference -- along with the time I spend volunteering at his school during the year," Robinson said.
Come Sept. 2, both leaders say they'll do what they must, as common ground ends at the premise on which the movements are founded.
