News
KS: Child Support Services On Schedule For Privatization. Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF) Secretary Phyllis Gilmore announced Thursday, efforts to privatize Kansas Child Support Services (CSS) are on schedule… In June, DCF announced the vendors who will perform full-service child support activities for all 31 judicial districts in Kansas. WIBW
IA: Union leader: Branstad needs to ‘man up’ on home. The labor union that represents many Iowa state employees is calling on Gov. Terry Branstad to “man up,” take responsibility for the Iowa Juvenile Home and immediately accept offers of free training for workers at the facility. Branstad said this week he is considering privatizing the home, noting that Iowa’s privately run residential facilities “do a better of job” of caring for troubled youth. In response to that suggestion, Danny Homan of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said Thursday that privatization would further diminish public control and oversight that is already lacking at the home. Des Moines Register
IL: Activists Want An Immediate End To Illinois’ Medicaid Privatization. Activists with the Alliance for Community Services protested at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services’ (HFS) Chicago office Thursday morning demanding that the state immediately end its $76 million contract with a private, for-profit company hired to “scrub” the Medicaid rolls. Progress Illinois
NY: Funding Plan for Public Housing Draws Flak. New York wants to offset federal cuts by leasing complexes’ parking lots, ballfields to builders of market-rate apartments. Wall Street Journal ($)
OK: Lloyd Snow: Top 10 reasons Oklahoma public schools are in a fix. I think Diane Ravitch gets it right in her latest book “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.” She says the only crisis in public education is the one ginned up by government bureaucrats, major foundations and an odd coalition of elitists and commercial hustlers who have made inflated claims about the virtues of vouchers, charter schools, virtual schools, standardized testing, merit pay, etc. They insist that poverty has no correlation to low academic achievement and that overhauling our entire system along business lines is the way to go. Tulsa World