Up North Progressive

On January 28, 2015, Up North Progressive published an article about Hillsdale College’s very own project to inject Hillsdale style far-right authoritarian agenda into education and get taxpayer money to foot the bill. The article came about after Brighton local residents asked this blog to expose the degenerate savage trying to drill up support for a Barney/Hillsdale-based charter school in Livingston County. Pat Battaglia eventually succeeded and Livingston Classical Academy became the first Barney Charter School in Michigan.

Three years later and this article still makes it to the top of the stats page without any pings from the source of incoming traffic. Somewhere the link to this article is listed in a way that doesn’t reveal the source.

But that’s okay. From the comments, it’s obvious the article raises hackles on folks who think it’s just not fair to tell the truth about Hillsdale College and their Barney Charter School Initiative. Let’s take a look at a few of the recent comments, shall we?

Political Brew’s replied three times to the article so far. Political Brew’s real name is Bob Brewer of Tyler, Texas. Twice he posted the same link from Coors Brewing Company’s extreme right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation in his comments on Up North Progressive. Taking a quick look at all of Bob’s social media gives you a pretty good idea where he’s at politically. Bob’s favorite thing to do is scream at school district board meetings about Constitution Day by haranguing the board about everything else that has nothing to do with the US Constitution:

As you listen to Bob rant about God and Jesus and how democracy is unsustainable, remember that the only two times religion is mentioned in the US Constitution is in Article VI where it’s plainly laid out there will be no religious test for holding any government office, and the first amendment which ensures all Americans are free to practice the religion of their choice without government interference.

The next commenter hails from Orange Park, Florida, and his favorite thing to do is important enough to include in his Yahoo! email address. K4YLX is the Ham Radio call sign for Theodore B. Jahn the Second. Based on meeting minutes from the Orange Park Amateur Radio Club he’s pretty active in the Ham radio scene. His social media consists of proudly displaying the battle flag of losers, his grandkids, and eating at Carrabba’s Italian Grill on Blanding Blvd in Jacksonville. Still not sure what K4YLX’s issue is with the article, but here’s an excerpt:

Models are not of necessity replicas of an entity. This is especially true when complex entities are modeled. Educational systems fall squarely into the “complex” arena where modeling consists of various subsystems. With respect to the Barney project, the religious aspect of the private Hillsdale institutions is not included within the charter educational model.

But isn’t the whole point of a model to be a replica of something that already exists? So Ted here suggests that just because a charter school is based on the model of Hillsdale College, it doesn’t mean it actually will function in any way like Hillsdale College. If this is the case, then why are all of these Hillsdale College-modeled charter schools run by people with fundamentalist religious right-wing backgrounds?

And finally, our most recent commenter is a woman from Stuart, Florida. Danielle Borzillo left a long reply thanking Up North Progressive for helping her decide to send her children to a new Hillsdale College charter school scheduled to open for business next year in her hometown. Danielle Borzillo’s email address is her last name. That’s right, she and her husband bought a domain and named it after themselves.

Had no idea people in the 21st Century still did stuff like this on the Internet.

Danielle’s links go to her social media, her online stores with Amazon and eBay, and her church. The church is interesting in that it’s one of those ARC megachurches where the pastor is more likely to have an MBA than any actual time spent in seminary. ARC’s function like a fast food franchise: Plant churches all over the place and cram them with people who will buy products and lectures from the “pastor”. They follow John Maxwell’s idea of leadership which means as long as you have a compelling sales pitch you’re a leader. Works great if you’re hawking timeshares or imposing a fascist state to take over the world, not so much for people searching for spiritual truth. If you’re hungering for religion with hidden caveats and sales pitches, no one will ever beat the original and best church when it comes to hustling eternal souls for a buck.

So what was it that Danielle Borzillo found in the words of Up North Progressive that “convinced” her to send her kids to a Hillsdale “classical” charter school?

I wanted to thank you for giving me some great insight on BCSI both pro and con. I am on the finance committee for our local Barney Classical School. Your blog post helped confirm my decision to enroll my three children there next fall.

Up North Progressive finds the claim that a parent on the finance committee of a Hillsdale charter school had no intention of enrolling her children into said Hillsdale charter school until reading Up North Progressive dubious. As for that founding board member ponying up her own money to get the charter school off the ground, a quick search on that individual, a woman named Erika Donalds, is a member of the Collier County School Board; her husband serves on the Florida State Senate, and she supports a ballot initiative to impose term limits on elected (as in real public) school board members and remove charter schools from the jurisdiction of elected public school boards.

But Danielle only decided to send her kids to Treasure Coast Classical Academy after reading Up North Progressive.

Despite all of these commenters’ claims that Hillsdale College’s BSCI, a model developed by an ultra-conservative fundamentalist Christian college, in no way promotes religion into the charter school curriculum, all of the commenters are involved locally with ultra-conservative organizations and fundamentalist Christian churches.

Livingston Classical Academy aka “Tea Party Charter School” is the only Hillsdale College model charter school in Michigan. The school came into existence after a committee formed by a local church and tasked to research what the church would need to expand their private church school from K-8 to K-12 partnered with Pat Battaglia of Linbolm Classical Academy infamy in Brighton, Michigan. The committee deserted their original purpose of expanding the school at their church and instead created a for-profit charter school that not only competes for tax dollars with the local public schools but for tuition from the private church school as well.

It’s obvious what Hillsdale College’s real agenda is with their Barney Charter School Initiative.

So far today, the article that inspired all of these people to leave comments on Up North Progressive has 5 hits and counting. Please leave more comments about how Hillsdale College isn’t promoting their agenda in “public” education when everything points to the contrary.