Danger to education

The Romney-Ryan ticket is the truest corporate and Wall Street ticket ever; I believe their corporate buddies do not have our welfare anywhere in their corporate equation.

Mitt Romney is rich (and even richer now with profits from the bailout of Delphi, part of the GM bailout). Ryan, a child born into wealth—along with friends, the Koch brothers—is no friend of the middle class either.

Romney and Ryan are backing the breaking up, not the building, of our educational system. The new-age corporate school rush started years ago, promoted by Jeb Bush and other investors like Rupert Murdoch for profits of an estimated $25 billion in 10 years. The aim apparently is to close down most public schools and put in their places corporate-owned schools like Digital Learning Now, K12 Online and the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, to name a few, plus promote virtual schools, all in order to get rid of unionized teachers with their union wages and benefits, so states can eliminate school boards and reduce their education budgets.

Yet another scheme, if passed, is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In low-income neighborhoods, the Republicans want, in essence, to close their schools, get them out of the education system and turn them into corporate charter schools. Privatizing public schools is, in essence, anti-labor and anti-public education, which means low wages, no benefits and no rights. We must stop this madness.

DIANE VASICA Hot Springs Village