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Were we at the same meeting? I think this report doesn’t represent what really went on last night. It was one of the few times where a massive opposition to the way charters are placed has occurred, akin to the Marine Park protest against the Hebrew Charter last May and the PS 15 protest in Red Hook against the PAVE expansion in Sept. But that meeting was somewhat balanced between the groups. The CEC 1 meeting was overwhelmingly opposed by an extremely large number of people, while Girls Prep had little comparative representation. (They probably don’t have the same resources Eva Moskowitz has to hire buses.)

The innocuous quote from a John Liu rep when 2 local politicians made passionate statements? (see ed notes post for links to their videos.)

The fervor of the crowd reached epic proportions of anger and condemnation of the DEO and its policies toward shared space. There were few attacks on Girls Prep reps though they were outnumbered at least 10 to 1. Almost every public school in the area was represented, with a few principals getting up and making a statement. Many teachers and parents spoke about the DoE methods of judging whether a school has space. A method that doesn’t account for the realities of how schools really function. The theme of the evening was the divisive tactics used by the DOE to pit schools against each other. But that is the mantra of the ed deformers. Throw them all into the pit and see who emerges, but all along the way make sure to tip in favor of the charters. Strong statements were made by local politicians too.

Is there any question that Girls Prep, which as was pointed out yesterday moved out of PS 15 claiming they only would go to 5th grade, but is now reversing and asking to go to 8th grade. And one day will ask for more space to go to 12th grade I would bet.

The only question is which school gets caught with the hot potato. Bet on the one that had the least presence yesterday. PS 20 and PS 184 may have won a reprieve with their massive presences yesterday.

Note: I find it interesting that there is one quote from each side with the Girls Prep founder disparaging quote equating an art room with a civil rights issue being given such prominence when there were a hundred things said by opponents of all the plans that were more relevant.
Fair and balanced?

David Bellel has posted video. I have video too. More to come later. Links at ed notes.

The point that was not brought up last night is a simple question, and that question is, who serves the community? It is has been told to me that 60% of the girls at Prep come from outside of the district. At the last CEC meeting, the majority of Prep parents who spoke came from other parts of the city. This time, it appeared to me that an effort was made to find residents of the Lower East Side to speak. District one already houses NEST-M that attracts its students from outside the East Village/Lower East Side.( just down the street from P.S. 20) Why are childred from outside of the district given a priority? We have good schools here, why is the DOE searching for alternatives?

Yeah Norm- I was at the meeting you attended last night.

It sure seems the GS bias is showing in this report.

I hope more of the 500 or more parents, teachers, administrators and community folks in attendance last night write in to say what they saw and said, to help create a fuller, more balanced picture of the event.

Lisa

Actually 80- 85% of D One schols are housed in buildings with one or more schools.
The few that do not include PS 20, PS 110 and PS 184, Shaung Wen ( a New Visions small school) which was incubating first in PS 134 then out grew it and expanded its MS into PS 137.
Then the DoE gave Shuang Wen the 137 building, moving PS 137 into the 134 building 4 years ago.

Lisa

Just to be clear, I should have said, “charters do not explicitly cream” instead of just “charters do not.” I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s belief that charters counsel out low performing/at-risk kids, because I don’t pretend to speak for a very diverse movement.

But I think we can all agree that whether charters cream or not, none of the charter operators are saying they do (as opposed to magnets).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8gM53ZCvi0

This guy says it all …. we need to oust this Mayor and Klein!

Thanks, Norm.

I would hope that people have an opportunity for more thoughtful decision making about where their child goes to school than who brings the gun to arrest a burglar in their home or handles other emergencies. I would not agree on its face to “charter precincts,” and it’s an interesting parallel so I’d like to give it more thought.

On the other hand, if I worked for the force and had more “inside the sausage factory” information about the blood and guts on the floor – as I do with DOE schools in poor communities – I might feel differently.

Thank you for your comment about holding schools accountable through a public mechanism. It helps me understand your passionately displayed angst about this administration, which is explictly not run in a democratic fashion. It’s funny; I’ve always held on to the impression that schools, and that means primarily school leaders, are more accountable under the charter law than in the DOE. True, it is a “private” board – but one that has to hold regular public meetings under the Open Meetings Law – that makes the decision, but there is no barrier to removal. I once worked at a school that took over a school that had been closed for poor performance (this is pre-Klein, mind you). There were no lamentations in the streets about the closing of this particular school, and I saw why when I was part of the team of teachers that absorbed the kids at the new school that was organized as a replacement.

Why had things gotten so out of hand at this school? The principal’s contract and the associated politics prevented a series of chancellors and district superintendents from pulling the plug (we’re talking 11 years of failure at this particular school – that’s from the former superintendent’s mouth, not David Cantor).

Why had the school finally closed? The principal retired.

Sounds a lot less accountable than a charter community – which can be closed within five years and where principals don’t have those kinds of job protections that can hurt kids.

Sure, that’s anecdotal evidence, but I would challenged you to find a charter school that has been allowed to flounder by its board of trustees.

You may not trust the charter process for other valid reasons, but on this one, I certainly disagree with your sentiment and I trust the massive DOE bureaucracy, a necessary evil in a system so large, a lot less than an independent, disinterested board to make good decisions for an individual public school.

HEY, SCREW EVERYBODY

If you haven’t seen the privatization of everything coming you must be living in that crater on the moon. Check the prisons. Or some toll roads. Or parking meters in Chicago. Or so much of the war in Iraq and Afg. Or our health care system Do you think some of the disasters we see are not related. Read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. The attack on govt supported services is widespread and very dangerous.

That is why the charter school movement, while in initially helping out a relative small number of kids, ultimately undermines the entire system of public education. Call it benefit the few to screw the many. The divisiveness it causes is part of the plan. I’ll respond to KS in another comment. And post The Plan.

The Plan
In my post on Ed Notes “Obama Supports Demise of Public Option in Education” on Nov. 9, I included a piece posted at Schools Matter with excerpts from the Plan on using charters as wedge to undermine and cause the collapse of public ed systems. Go to the post for the links http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2009/11/obama-supports-demise-of-public-option.html but here is some of it. If you don’t think that the major goal in the charter/privatization movement is not the removal of the union as a force (yes, there will be individual charter schools unionized with weak contracts here and there but the AFT/UFT/NEA over time will be rendered toothless, if they haven’t already reached that stage) then you are living in that crater. it is NOT at all about the children from the global perspective and people are being manipulated into that position by the marketeers with the “choice” and “quality’ teachern arguments. (By the way, is anyone blaming the individual soldiers in our army for failures as they do the teachers?)

One of the fascinating aspects of the health care debate has been over the offering of a public option to reduce costs while at the same time the Obama administration has been promoting policies (charters, etc) that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the public option in education. Here, in a series of posts over the last few days at the Schools Matter blog, we see the plan to undermine public education (and of course to destroy teacher unions) laid out by a former Bushie in early 2008. Now ask yourself: exactly what is the AFT/UFT doing in response? Think: who needs public education, let’s get our share. Thanks to Michael Fiorillo for finding this gem (and don’t forget, GEM in NYC right now is the only organized opposition to THE PLAN.)

Kenneth Libby in Friday’s post laid out the plan to eliminate the public option in education in this post:
From the Vault

This is part of an essay written in early 2008 by AEI/Fordham’s Andy Smarick, a former Bush II Domestic Policy Council member tasked with K-12 and higher education issues:

Here, in short, is one roadmap for chartering’s way forward: First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent. Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrict authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). For example, in New York a concerted effort could be made to site in Albany or Buffalo a large percentage of the 100 new charters allowed under the raised cap. Other potentially fertile districts include Denver,Detroit,Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.

Third, secure proven operators to open new schools. To the greatest extent possible, growth should be driven by replicating successful local charters and recruiting high-performing operators from other areas. Fourth, engage key allies like Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and national and local foundations to ensure the effort has the human and financial capital needed. Last, commit to rigorously assessing charter performance in each community and working with authorizers to close the charters that fail to significantly improve student achievement.

In total, these strategies should lead to rapid, high-quality charter growth and the development of a public school marketplace marked by parental choice, the regular startup of new schools, the improvement of middling schools, the replication of high-performing schools, and the shuttering of low-performing schools.

As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will still require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lopsided adult-to-student ratio, the district’s per-pupil costs will skyrocket.

At some point along the district’s path from monopoly provider to financially unsustainable marginal player, the city’s investors and stakeholders–taxpayers, foundations, business leaders, elected officials, and editorial boards–are likely to demand fundamental change. That is, eventually the financial crisis will become a political crisis. If the district has progressive leadership, one of two best-case scenarios may result. The district could voluntarily begin the shift to an authorizer, developing a new relationship with its schools and reworking its administrative structure to meet the new conditions. Or, believing the organization is unable to make this change, the district could gradually transfer its schools to an established authorizer.

I read over THE PLAN. Sounds good to me. I’ll tell you one thing: at any charter school in NYS, anywhere, the teachers are free to organize and collectively bargain.

And if you don’t think that “threat” is lurking in the background of policy and work life issue decision making by charter school boards, you’re underselling the UFT/NYSUT’s power. Charter operators who don’t have to deal with the union want to keep their teachers happy so they don’t have to deal with the union. And for the most part, that means providing many of the same benefits the union provides, without having to bargain for them.

Some charters even use the UFT pay scale, rigidly, to set salaries for teachers!

Pension obligations are probably the biggest difference.

Charter operators certainly prefer an at will work environment (yes, indeed, get rid of the bad teachers who are not on board with the school’s chosen curriculum or approach, or fail to grow sufficiently), but what do you think will happen to a faculty that finds reasonble due process consistently violated or absent? They will seek union protection!

For this reason, the charter school movement in NYC needs the UFT. But ironically, most of the charter school teachers…seem to think they don’t.

…the charter school proposed to move into my son’s school (ps20) not only serves out of district girls, but only girls! What does that mean for district one boys? Further marginalization? I am sorry but when you were waitlisted in the double digits and finally find a school with room, you are not inclined to give up and roll over for a population that is out of district especially when you know out of district kids were accepted by lottery to your first choice school by LYING about their address (out of district Earth School families SHAME on you!) and the girls prep girls find boys annoying! What is an honest district 1 boy to do?