- There are a ton of open governmental meetings that people don’t really know about, and thus few attend them.
- Here’s one: November 13th at 12:30 you– all of you– all of us, are invited to an open committee meeting at the Utah Senate Building, Olmstead room. The Federalism Subcommittee will be discussing whatever’s on their agenda. I’ve politely requested that Common Core will be.
- Because there is such a thing as a legislative Federalism Subcommittee for Utah, (who knew?) and because its purpose it is to make sure the feds don’t step on the state’s toes and/or siphon off our sovereignty under the Constitution, I wrote to them today to ask them to study Common Core a little bit more closely.
- I wrote:
Dear Representative Noel, Senator Niederhauser, Representative King, Lt. Governor Greg Bell, Dep. Attorney General Swallow and Senator Romero,
I’m writing to ask you, as members of the Federalism Subcommittee council, to place a federal action for evaluation on the state agenda for the upcoming meeting November 13, 2012 at 12:30 p.m. to be held in the Olmstead Room in the Utah Senate Building.
“In accordance with Section 63C-4-107, the Federalism Subcommittee shall evaluate a federal law submitted to the Federalism Subcommittee by a council member.” Utah Code Ann. §63C-4-106(2).
There is a lot of solid research available about Common Core, its origins, authors, copyright, nonamendability, unpiloted and unverified claims, and the ways in which the Obama Administration has hijacked it, an initiative that started as a state-led initiative, but has become a federally-pushed agenda tied to the No Child Left Behind waivers and also tied to the State Longitudinal Database System, the P-20 tracking system, and ultimately, now appears to be becoming a form of federal citizen surveillance –under the guise of educational research and reforms.
No fight deserves our attention more than the fight against nationalized education via Common Core.
Our state’s top lawyers at the Utah State Office of Education have not probed this issue, and have not even analyzed it as an issue of federalism. We have not even had a hearing (even teachers are being turned away by the USOE who want to speak out on this subject) because Common Core has become so controversial and so hotly defended by those who introduced it to our state.
I am happy to share the research that national thinktanks, elite institutes, and even my Utah friends and I have found, including the Dept. of Education’s current lawsuit (led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center) due to Dept. of Ed FERPA overstep; the Dept. of Education’s Cooperative Agreement which micromanages education against G.E.P.A. law and against the provisions of the U.S. Constitution; including the “data mashing” programs of Utah’s John Brandt and the federal chief of staff, Joanne Weiss; and emails from the USOE that confirm the end of student privacy has come due to this network of “education reforms” that are radically transforming our state’s educational system without a vote and without public knowledge.
I will be out of state on November 13th, but as it is an open meeting, and as there are thousands of Utahns who feel as I do and who have signed a petition against Common Core at http://Utahnsagainstcommoncore.com I feel sure you will be well supported as you evaluate this initiative and its implications for state sovereignty.
Thank you for your consideration.
Christel Swasey
Heber City
COMMON CORE 