Reverand James Meeks...oh ya, he is the state senator too...
Posted on: August 5, 2008 - 8:14am
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Reverand James Meeks...oh ya, he is the state senator too...
There is a problem in Chicago with our religious leaders. Reverand James Meeks has gathered his flock:
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Chicago religious leaders, to protest what they are calling ‘segregation’ in public schools, have asked their congregations to keep their children home from school this fall. They are hoping the move will force Springfield into more funding for inner-city schools.
First- What place does the church have in politics
Second- What will keeping the kids home from school do for the kids?
Third – The inner-city is populated with people. Those people have kids who need education. Black or white the issue should be funding for a failing school system.
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Let me say that I am a devout atheist and a staunch supporter of seperating church from state, as far as possible.
Yet the Rev.Meeks seems to have a lagitimate beef with his state government. Rich Illinois is ranked 49th in educational spending, if Illinois spent to its means (top ten) Meeks would have no beef at all. His boycott is schedualed for one day his plan (threat) of church based educating is if the boycott goes beyond one day. I like his idea of enrolling inner city kids in richer suburban schools, I wonder how well that will work out.
Unfortunately reverands and other religious types involvment in politics is also democracy. At least when you see Rev. or Rabbi in front of their names you know what you are voting for, I worry more about fundies who get in with a hidden agenda. R.C.'s don't, back in the late 80's Pope John Paul II ordered his priests to get out of politics or get out of the priesthood.
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I agree that there are issues with the funding and spending in the city and Meeks does have a beef, as he should.
But
Why can't he get his voice heard in Springfield? Is he not getting through, is he too 'preachy' in his seat? Has he put people off and now has no other choice but to utilize his connections with the church? In my eyes, he is manipulating, the church is manipulating and the kids will suffer. I highly doubt Springfield will end the issue within a day so once again those kids will start the school year one step behind.
Chicago has a problem with school attendance, has for quite awhile. It was a main focus last year that religious leaders were involved in preaching 'go to school' I find it hypocritcal that they are now preaching 'stay out of school'.
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Well according to one of the people in the comments section its says "The state spends approximately $1200/year per New Trier student as opposed to approximately $4000/year per CPS student." so i don't know about you but the inequality doesn't add up, at least in the money situation...
As much as I dislike a religious leader being a senator, he does actually have a very valid point here. Again, I'm not sure about a boycott, but I have no idea about the way schools are funded in America. Clearly something has to change.
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Schools are generally funded via local property tax. Schools in richer neighborhoods get better funding than kids in poorer neighborhoods, sometimes dramatically so. This is one way in which the poor are kept at an economic disadvantage, and one of the major problems with the US education system.
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Where i live all the schools are funded equally within our school district...but i can tell you right now that the schools in the town that i live in get more funding than any of the others because they are the oldest buildings the school district owns and so they require more repairs... If you deciede to go to a different school than what you have offered to you within the school district tho the money your parents pay in property taxes doesnt go to the school your going to it still goes to the old school district. IDK maybe its because I live in rural PA and its a Prodominatly white community and no one has had a problem with this so far... I know everyone keeps having a problem with the property tax increasing but thats for a different subject...
It's the differences between school districts - a district in an inner city is obviously not going to get as high taxes (and therefore funding) as one in a wealthy suburb.
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Which hat is Meeks wearing in this protest, reverand or senator? It is very troublous that the pulpit is being used to air government issues. This violates their tax exempt statutus does it not? Meeks has his own office, there is no excuse to not use it for this, so why isn't he?
In my opinion it is better that these schools are left with their problems unaided than to bring religious organizations into the picture. This precedence creates a dangerous slippery slope.
I think we can surmise what their latent agenda is.
ZERO!
For one thing the biggest difference in the budgets between school districts is the luxuriousness of the buildings. Will building equally luxurious school buildings in the inner city actually improve the education of inner city students? Perhaps it will some what, but I think there are more problems involved in the inner city schools than just new carpeting, social problems.
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.
Oh...well there is only one school district in my county so... There are a couple of private schools and there is a couple of christian schools but there is only one school district. So all property taxes go to the one district, i don't think any of the other schools get any money from the Population through taxes...
Nope. This won't make him lose his churches tax exempt status. Even churches that clearly are engaging in partisan politics rarely lose their tax exempt status. Also this is like you said: is he speaking as a senator or a reverend? The disturbing things is that I can't tell which it is, so I assume that he has effectively combined his government and church position as much as possible.
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Well, that's clearly the problem. It is impossible to ensure that property taxes will turn out equal in different parts of any country, especially one with so many inequalities in wealth as America. In the UK, the funding of state schools (public school over here confusingly means private) is taken from all tax revenue and is centrally controlled. There is still massive inequality, the establishment of 'league tables' making it even more unequal. Tony Blair's government also set up a state-private education initiative, in the form of the academies. With academies, a private trust, company or individual proposes to build a school, for which the government will pay 90% of the costs for. The private entity will be in charge of running the school, setting it's ethos and it's curriculum. One extreme example of this is mentioned in Dawkins' book the God Delusion, whereby a wealthy, evangelical car salesman now runs a school up in Sunderland, and is actually allowed to teach children creation science as opposed to real science. He is systematically indoctrinating children into an iron age mythology which teaches that the world is younger than the domestication of the dog. Blair justified this simply using the buzzword "diversity" which everyone seems to like these days.
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