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There are a lot of reasons to oppose school district merger plans for Windham Northeast and the Windham Southeast supervisory unions: increased bureaucracy and standardization, no long-term savings, possible loss of school programs, less responsiveness to the needs of individual students and families, loss of school choice, potential forced moving of teachers and students, possible school closures, increased centralization of control in the district office and less flexible school practices, and a slew of potential unintended consequences, the most worrisome of which is the loss of participatory democracy and the character of our communities.

We live in an era when many are frustrated by national politics and what feels like our powerlessness to change policies we find disagreeable. Whether it is corporations or the top 1 percent or special interestsor unfettered presidential power, we citizens feel ever more removed from governance on issues that affect all our lives.

One of the few areas where we still have a voice in Vermont is looking out for the quality of our schools and the future of our children. We vote for our neighbors to serve on school boards. We determine how much we spend on education and the programs we support. We can scrutinize the local school budget and look for creative solutions that enlist the strengths of our community. We can attend school board meetings, and we can talk to our board members to have our voices heard. Our board members hire our teachers and administrators, and we can serve on hiring committees (and other committees) that can shape the tenor of the school. And maybe most significantly, we can join our neighbors at town meeting to speak face to face with each other about issues that matter, not only to our pocketbooks, but to the spirit of our community. Proponents of school district merger dismiss the importance of our participatory democracy. They note that not that many people come to school board meetings or town meeting. They remind us that we have already lost a lot of control regarding school policies to the powers at the state and national level. And they assume that this loss of democracy is simply the price we have to pay to comply with a state mandated, one-size-fits-all directive that has little evidence of its effectiveness.

I worry that the notion of local control gets misinterpreted as a question of governance rather than educational quality. The ultimate determinant of a students educational experience is the quality of teachers, the school principal and programs at the local level. Student learning is not an abstraction of educational policy or governance the most effective schools know students well and are responsive to the individual needs of kids and their families. The more bureaucratic and standardized our schools become, the less responsive they can be to the unique needs of the children they serve.

Local control really is about schoolbased responsiveness to the needs of kids, the initiative of teachers, the input of the community and the leadership of principals to shape an inspiring, dynamic, personalized learning environment that works for every child. Decisions made in the superintendents office or by a unified board cant be based on knowing the uniqueness of our children or the unique needs of individual schools. Our schools give us a venue to shape the character of our community and bring our voices together for a common purpose. Our children are unique our schools should be as well.

We stand at a precarious time for our democracy. There are many ways in which citizens feel further removed from decisions that affect our lives and our communities. Our local schools, school boards and town meeting are among the few institutions that continue to provide opportunities for direct citizen voice. These are the traditions that give communities the space to come together, to feel connected and to make decisions that make a difference for ourselves, for our children, and for the future of the society we wish to see.

Rick Gordon is a member of the Westminster School Board and director of the Compass School in Westminster.

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Yes to democracy, no to mergers - Rutland Herald

Polands ruling Law & Justice party contested the mandate of the countrys top judge after she criticized the government for undermining the judiciary, deepening a rule-of-law dispute that has set the nation on a collision course with the European Union.

Fifty Law & Justice lawmakers asked the Constitutional Tribunal to assess whether the 2014 appointment of Malgorzata Gersdorf as Supreme Court first president was constitutional, party member Arkadiusz Mularczyk said Thursday. The request follows comments from Gersdorf last week in which she accused the party of seeking to take over the courts by naming judges dependent on the justice minister.

The motion is a further step by the party to reshape Polands institutional framework in a political push that has prompted the first ever probe into an EU country overrule of law. Since winning a 2015 election, Law & Justice has overhauled the constitutional court in moves that the tribunal has ruled illegal, ignored those rulings, and stacked the court with its allies despite criticism from the European Commission.

At the heart of the dispute is the judiciary, which Law & Justice describes as a privileged caste and plans to revamp by giving politicians a dominant role in deciding judicial issues, including which judges get promoted.

Our motion is not revenge or a vendetta, Mularczyk told a news briefing Thursday. Since the first president of the Supreme Court is wearing the costume of a defender of the rule of law in Poland, we have to make sure that the rules that allowed for her appointment are constitutional.

S&P Global Ratings handed Poland its first ever downgrade last year, citing concern over the independence of key democratic institutions. Polish markets were bogged down by political risk last year, but have recovered some losses in 2017, with Warsaws WIG20 stock index showing the biggest returns among EU peers.

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Mularczyk said he expected her appointment to be ruled unconstitutional. The lawmakers complaint is about how Gersdorf was nominated. While the constitution states the president may appoint a candidate that is presented by a general assembly of Supreme Court judges, Law & Justice says that the process, guided by internal supreme court rules in linewith a 2002 law, should be more transparent in how candidates are picked.

Click here to read more about Polands turn toward populism

The law on supreme court has been in place since 2002 and two other presidents have been appointed based on the same procedure, theres no grounds to question Malgorzata Gersdorfs appointment," Supreme Court spokesman, Justice Michal Laskowski, told reporters Thursday. I cant explain why doubts are emerging after 15 years, everybody should find their own answer."

A Warsaw appeals court last month asked the Supreme Court to assess if Decembers appointment of a new chief justice to the Constitutional court was legal. Law & Justice legislators gave President Andrzej Duda, who won the 2015 election as the partys candidate, new powers to pick the panels leader, instead of allowing the judges to decide themselves.

According to Gersdorf, the ruling party is trying to dismantle check-and-balance safeguards without having a mandate to the change constitution. In a speech to a gathering of judges in January, she said the epoch of rule of law in Poland had ended and judges had to be ready to fight for judicial independence, including by risking disciplinary measures and removal from their posts.

The government has brushed off the EUs concerns that its backsliding on democracy, and says that the disputed changes that its made have strengthened the rule of law. The Polish zloty weakened 0.4 percent against the euro, its main currency pair, as of 4:24 p.m. in Warsaw, curbing its 2017 appreciation to 2.5 percent.

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Polish Ruling Party Attacks Top Judge in New Democracy Row - Bloomberg

Forbes

If 'Democracy Dies In Darkness,' Dave Workman Will Light A Torch With Gunpowder Forbes The Washington Post's new slogan Democracy Dies in Darkness is apt given all the pressures now reshaping journalism (some from the Oval Office), but then, when you consider how the Post treats a few highly polarizing issues, their new slogan at times ... and more »

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If 'Democracy Dies In Darkness,' Dave Workman Will Light A Torch With Gunpowder - Forbes

And it wasnt just the mishandling of the migrant crisis, fuelled by EU member states destabilisation of the Middle East and exacerbated by Angela Merkels decision to throw open Germanys borders to refugees, that forced the EUs hand. The detentions, the deportations and the grubby deals with Third World dictators have been going on for years. In August 2010, Muammar Gaddafi met with the EU to strike a deal aimed at avoiding, in his words, a black Europe. The EU offered Libya 50million over three years, to stop Africans and Arabs crossing the Mediterranean. Everyone knew this was going on. In 2014, Amnesty International criticised the EU for outsourcing migration control to Turkey, Morocco and Libya.

Leavers should take no lectures about immigration, openness and egalitarianism from supporters of this brutal institution. The chaos across Europes borders gives the lie to the neat divide between inward-looking Leavers and open-minded Remainers. If these people were so compassionate, so open to outsiders, how can they stomach whats going on? And isnt it suspicious that a political elite that cares little for liberal values, which across Europe bans hate speech, e-cigs and, er, power vacuum cleaners, has suddenly discovered a passion for freedom? Indeed, for the most controversial and potentially disruptive freedom there is: the freedom to move, work, live and flourish in different parts of the world. Clearly, they never gave a damn about it in the first place.

Given their horrendous track record on migration, what are we to make of the EUs and leading Remainers sudden interest in defending migration against what they see as backward Brexiteers? This is where their behaviour becomes deeply cynical. They are interested in free movement now only insofar as it can be used to dilute democracy. Weve glimpsed that in the wake of the Brexit vote: immigration has become the primary means through which Leavers are deligitimised, their 17.4million-strong vote for greater democracy reduced to a nativist howl. But it runs deeper than that. The dissolving of borders between European nations, enshrined in the EUs four freedoms, and its imposition of non-EU-migrant quotas on member states, look more and more like an expression and institutionalisation of disdain for the ideal and practice of national sovereignty. The attack on borders is really an attack on the democracies, and the democratic citizens, contained within them. Migration, scandalously, is now used as a weapon in that attack.

No one benefits from this. Turning migrants into battering rams against any sense of attachment to sovereign principles, against the right of nations to control their borders, is a recipe for conflict. It pits migration against national democracy. For those of us committed to free movement, this weaponisation of immigration is a tragedy. Its clouded the issue. Immigration is no longer a question of freedom but an instrument of elite control, used to burnish politicians moral credibility, fulfil treaties and batter the native demos. Its taken immigration out of the publics hands and in doing so turned it into a symbol of peoples feelings of disorientation and lack of control. The real divide in Britain, and across Europe, is not between open-hearted liberals and fearful nativists its between democratic citizens and the elitists who loathe them. Its only by embracing democracy that we can demystify free movement, and reclaim it from its phoney defenders.

Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

For permission to republish spiked articles, please contact Viv Regan.

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How the EU uses migration to batter democracy - Spiked

NEWS Center for Politics to host fellows for five weeks by Mairead Crotty | Mar 01 2017 | 13 hours ago

Twenty-three nonprofit, journalist and civic leaders from 11 countries in the Middle East and North Africa arrived in Charlottesville Feb. 18 to participate in the Leaders for Democracy Fellowship. The Universitys Center for Politics Global Perspectives on Democracy Program operates the fellowship in Charlottesville.

The goal of the fellowship sponsored by the Department of States U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative is to provide civic leaders with experience and practical skills they can use when they return to their home countries.

For five weeks the fellows participate in workshops and design a civic action plan for Charlottesville that will serve as a model for projects in their own communities. The fellows remain in Charlottesville until March 26, and after they go to Washington, D.C. to participate in internships for eight weeks.

The internships are coordinated by World Learning, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people, communities and institutions around the world. The fellows will be placed in organizations related to their interests.

Maram Suleiman, from Amman, Jordan, works for Oxfam and volunteers with the World Youth Alliance. She said her passion is working for youth and womens rights, and she applied to the program to learn different advocacy strategies.

Im hoping to gain more tools to work with youth and gender, especially mens enrollment in womens rights projects, Suleiman said. Im hoping I will have some new ideas and initiatives that I can work on as a personal level and in my community with youth and the people in my network. Maybe our project will open more doors for grants or sponsors and donors.

The fellows have participated in workshops and seminars, such as a briefing on U.S. politics by Center for Politics Director and Politics Prof. Larry Sabato Tuesday. The fellows also have the opportunity to tour the University and meet with University and Charlottesville advocacy groups.

We also get a chance to meet with very good speakers from Charlottesville, like women in leadership positions, Suleiman said.

While many of the fellows have different interests, Suleiman said she believes the program will provide each fellow with the knowledge and experience to better their communities.

Theres exchange experience, theres many experiences you can have, and it will open the doors for us to learn from each other, to network and to get the chance to gain more expertise from the State Department, World Learning and U.Va, Suleiman said. So I think its a very interesting opportunity for all of us, and it will open many doors.

The fellowship will specifically benefit Suleimans work in Amman, as she applied to learn more about lobbying, advocacy and campaigning. She is interning with Youth Service America in Washington, D.C., where she will learn those specific skills.

My work in Jordan for the rest of the year will be an advocacy campaign on my project, so it will be interesting for me, Suleiman said.

Abdulrahman Elgheriani, a Libyan who recently earned his masters degree in the United Kingdom, applied to the fellowship program to learn more about American politics.

Since I studied in the UK, Im familiar with the UKs administrative model and Westminster model of politics, Elgheriani said. I was excited to learn about the American model of politics and administration and to network.

Elgheriani was recently appointed acting manager of a new government organization in Benghazi, Libya called the Elmresia Free Zone. He hopes to be able to implement what he learns as a fellow when he returns to Benghazi.

I would love to apply as much as possible from what Ive learned, but it would be quite difficult because of the context on the ground, Elgheriani said. However, it would be great if we can establish channels of communication.

Libya was one of seven countries affected by President Donald Trumps executive order signed on Jan. 27. Until the suspension of the executive order was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Feb. 9, Elgheriani was unsure he would able to attend the program.

Elgheriani said he was relieved when he learned the executive order was suspended.

I was excited as much as when I applied to the program the first time, Elgheriani said. I knew from the beginning it was going to be a great opportunity to learn, network and sharpen my skills to hopefully better serve my country.

The fellows are part of the 21st exchange group that the Politics Global Perspectives on Democracy Program has hosted at the University.

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Leaders for Democracy Fellows arrive on Grounds - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily