Approximately 50 parents, teachers and administrators from the Roslyn and East Williston school districts traveled to the Empire State Plaza in Albany Saturday for the “One Voice United Rally for Public Education” rally, joining forces with other like-minded individuals from across New York to express their outrage over what they argue is excessive testing, budget cuts and the state’s required teacher evaluation system, Roslyn and East Williston school officials said in a press release.
According to Roslyn teachers Kelly Denig and Wendy Svitek and East Williston Teachers’ Association President Meryl Fordin, who authored the release, protestors wearing union and school colors “waved signs and cheered speakers such as [American Federation of Teachers] President Randi Weingarten, [New York State United Teachers] President Dick Ianuzzi and president of the [American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations] Mario Cliento.”
“The bottom line is the state education department is making decisions and they’re not making them based on the children and people in the trenches with the children every day,” Fordin said by phone. “This is about standing up for children, and children are required to take hours and hours of tests and it’s just not right.”
The event included guests such as folk singer Tom Chapin, the release’s authors wrote, who led the crowd in a rendition of his 2007 song, “Not on the Test,” as well as 2013 Syosset High School graduate Nihkil Goyal, who “blasted the ‘drill-kill-bubble-fill’ culture of public education” and announced plans for a student boycott of the standardized tests that are used to evaluate teachers.
John Nichols, reporter for the weekly journal The Nation, reminded the crowd “that public education is the cornerstone of any democracy,” the release’s authors wrote,” and introduced high school student Olivia Castor, who recently led a 500-student walk out protesting budget cuts in the East Ramapo School District in Ramapo, New York.
Two men dressed as a pineapple and hare, alluding to a set of questions that appeared on the state’s eighth grade English Language Arts exam last year that reportedly confused students and teachers statewide, also posed for pictures with attendees, the authors wrote, as protestors “still managed to use their humor and wit to express their outrage.”
