Please let me dissuade you from believing that I am feigning outrage…it’s real outrage. No, I am not affiliated with the UFT and have often been on the opposite side of their policies. On this issue, as an independent individual, I am outragds at the overt discrimination against chidlren with special needs, the tendency to cluster students with special needs in special programs and the disingenuous manner in which charter school proponents lump those who disagree into one bunch…the UFT sympathizers. And, before you jump the gun, I am aware of the under-representation of students with special needs at the UFT charter schools.

Despite your opinion, parents can, and do, decide independently about the educational issues facing our schools today.

Spencer and his prejudiced school administration think they are in Red Hook to “save the poor minority children.” Why can’t the parents at PAVE see them for what they are: a bunch of lying undercover racists who talk down to their own student’s parents & shut them out of the parent involvement equation. Name one successful school charter, DOE, catholic or private school without real parent involvement? NONE. Hello PAVE: Without parents you have no students. No students = no school.

How many more students & teachers will leave PAVE after this school year? How many have left since the school opened a year ago?

Everyone in the community is talking about it! The lie to families with children who have special needs and take them in knowing they can’t give them the services they need. The school doesn’t want parents involved. Their teachers are treated like modern day slaves without a voice – forced to work longer hours and made to feel less than professional.

This is why so many charter schools are anti-union and anti-PTA. The parents who have come to their senses and left the school will tell you the truth… just ask them. They have nothing to fear. Their children can’t be mistreated for speaking out!

Co-Location ruins communities. It is tearing Red Hook apart!

You hardly sound credible, as your bias against public education is clouding sound reason.  I also hate to burst your bubble, but colocations have nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with the undermining of our public education system.  Public education aims to provide every student, whether they are an English language learner, special education student, a student with a behavior problem or a student with a parent who is not involved, with a great education.  You minimize the overt effort on the part of charters to keep these students out.  You’ll probably mention opportunity charter as an example, but pooling high needs students in one school has been and is a bad idea.  Take PS 241for example.  PS241 is not only facing a land grab by eva moskowitz, PS 241 is facing the attacks of Joel Klein’s DoE, who’s staff continue to call PS 241 a failure even though they received an A in Bloomberg’s ridiculous farce of a grading system. Now the DoE wants to grade on a curve. Will the manipulation of numbers ever cease? Anyway, PS 241 not only received the A, but is also the 130th ranked school in NYC. PS 241 also made NYC’s top 10 list of schools with the greatest test score gains.  Despite these facts the DoE, which include Joel Klein and John white, to name a few, publicly refer, along with moskowitz, to PS 241 as a failure.  Joel Klein then attempted last year to push PS 241 families to leave the school so he can give PS 241′s building to moskowitz, a woman Joel Klein has an inappropriate relationship with.  This spits in the face of the fairness you are claiming to call for.  This smear campaign, which you are complicit in, is not the exception that you claim.  When Klein and his thugs, I’ve got no better word for them due to the misinformation they spread, refer to PS 241 as a failure, they are undermining a school filled with children with intense needs. PS 241 has a high needs student population that hovers around 50%, like OCS.  The PS 241 community, which includes their students and families, continues to get attacked by the DoE because Klein has a “thing” for Moskowitz. You want to talk about fairness?  This Charter School fiasco has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with privatization and deregulation by the same nut-cases who are raping our country’s economy by way of deregulation. So go on and talk about fairness Mr. Merriman, but we all know that the DoE, Bloomberg, Klein and Obama are hell bent on destroying our public education system and manipulating the public into believing that their education should be won in a lottery. I can barely believe that this is happening in America and I’m witnessing it with my own eyes. Don King had it right when he said, “Only in America”. You charter school, wall street thugs have fooled the public so far, but not for much longer. People are figuring out your game.  It will not be long before we send you wolves in sheep’s clothing packing!

I agree there is a lot of agenda setting behavior on all sides if the debate.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on why the Independent Budget Office in New York is not qualified to take on the task of sorting fact from fiction?  

I have, from time to time, spoken with them on education issues and found them pretty even handed.  Which is to say that from time to time even Joel Klein has complaints about their findings.

As a taxpayer I like the idea of using the resources I have already paid for, before hiring new ones. Even if Bridgespan is very eminent and qualified.