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The Walton family is trying to spread the Walmart business model to classrooms across the United States.  Through their family foundation, the Waltons have spent more than $1 billion to support the privatization of public schools. They’ve funded an aggressive corporate education agenda that has resulted in mass school closures and the moving of public education tax dollars to for-profit schools. Most troublesome, the Waltons often seek to close schools in the very same low-income communities of color where their workers reside.

Now, teachers are fighting back. Educators have started to speak out against Walton-funded school closures. Teachers like Paul Kennedy are telling the Waltons to stop meddling in the school systems and children’s futures.

Kennedy is a teacher in Philadelphia and knows all too well how the Waltons do business. When his brother worked as a Walmart manager, he watched how the company hurt its employees. Then after eight years with one school, Kennedy was forced to transfer when he and all of his peers were fired after the Walton family helped push for his school to be replaced by a private charter school. Recently, he launched a petition calling on his peers to shop elsewhere until the Waltons change their ways.

He’s not alone. Other teachers have written blogs or tweeted to call on the Waltons to stop using their fortune to make schools function more like Walmart.

Local union activists and members can sign and share the petition to support Paul and teachers like him and call for an end to the Walmartization of education.