Last week, Hoffman argued that contrary to the claims of charter school advocates, charter schools aren’t actually public schools. Today, he’s responding to numerous challenges he received in the comments section — challenges that he says haven’t changed his mind.

Hoffman writes:

While charter schools are clearly not traditional private schools, by design they are not like traditional public schools, either. Even if we acknowledge that there are differences between different charter schools, and between charter school laws, neither of these terms seem appropriate. … This leaves us with a need for a third term, as neither “public” or “private” would be appropriate.

First, no one has come close to rehabilitating the argument that charter schools are public schools simply because they accept public funds. Many organizations have their operations paid for — in whole or in part — by public funds, and not all of them are public in the way that “our public schools” are. If charters are public schools, this is not why.

Second, I raised the issue of democratic accountability. To what degree do elected officials and their appointees have authority over arbitrary aspects of charter school operations and staffing? For example, years ago Mayor Bloomberg required all schools to hire parent coordinators. Under mayoral control, Bloomberg can mandate curriculum and spending decisions, and any spending not controlled by existing contracts. Generally, elected officials and their appointees can even remove principals and other administrators for arbitrary — though not discriminatory — reasons. (Because New York City principals have a union contract, this authority is severely constrained. But this is unique to the city and could be negotiated out of the contract.)

There have been many arguments raised against this point, but they generally fall into two camps. One was that there are other public institutions that are led by people who cannot be so removed, but these responses have been based on admitted ignorance (e.g. how are members of the NY Board of Regents appointed and how can they be removed?, what are the laws regarding removal of charter board members? etc.). The other response has been that elected officials and their appointees can pressure charter schools to remove a principal. My understanding is that this pressure only comes in the form of withdrawing a school’s charter. I am sorry, but I do not think this argument works. By this argument, major accounts of a private company have the authority to fire salesmen at that company because they can threaten to move their account if the company does not accede to their demand. Going back to one of my examples, the private construction firm who builds schools for a district could be threatened with losing the job if some kind of site supervisor is not fired. That does not make the company part of a district or a public entity.

To state this more plainly: Demands that only have power if backed by the threat to pull a charter or contract do not equate to the sort of ongoing democratic oversight that fits into to my understanding of public schools

Third was my most important criteria, the obligations to educate all comers. One reader, Gideon, wisely pointed out that this would imply that our so-called public universities would be excluded. I do not have a problem with that. I think that the distinction between public and private higher education is rather thin and am therefore happy to say that public universities are not public at all like our public schools are.

Another response, perhaps the most common one, has been that many public schools do not serve all comers. There are exam schools, for example. And the kind of school choice model we have in New York City means that few, if any, schools serve all comers. However, I anticipated much of this argument before writing last week. School districts have a responsibility to educate all comers. It is our public schools who collectively – in the form of districts – meet that obligation. District offices are obliged to figure out how to do this and may not direct children to charter schools as part of their solutions

Let me be clear: Charter schools are not district schools. Virtually the entire purpose of charter schools is to free them from districts and their authority. Any argument that states that charter schools are part of the public schools because they are part of the mélange of schools that educate our children applies equally to unquestionably private schools. If those who advance this argument cite the use of public funds, they would have to claim that private schools that accept publicly funded vouchers are also public schools, an argument that I do not think they want to make.

However, I am also willing to concede that in most meaningful ways, selective so-called public schools are really not public schools. And I would further say that meaningful public status is certainly questionable for any school that students cannot attend simply by following the standard normal procedures that all students/families must follow — including my own high school.

Ken Hirsh and others have raised the point that charter schools are subject to government oversight, including inspections and perhaps various well or lesser known state and federal legislation. The mere fact of regulation and inspection however, does not a public entity make. Meatpacking plants are subject to federal inspection. Restaurants are subject to government inspection. Most organizations are subject to regulation in one form or another, though the degree of regulation often varies from industry to industry.

In fact, there are many regulations that only apply to those who receive public funds. For example, the City of New York enforces much of its own legislation by requiring compliance as a condition of contracting with the city. The fact of regulation does not make these entities public.

*****************

So, what am I getting at? I think that public schools must be both responsive to and responsible for the public.

There is no question that charter schools — like many private organizations and entities — are somewhat responsible to the public (as expressed in the form of democratic government). They certainly are more responsive to the public than traditional private schools, but it is not at all clear that they are more responsive than other private entities (i.e. other than traditional private schools) that accept large portions of their operating budgets from the government. By design, they are less responsive than traditional public schools, even if they are more responsive than traditional private schools

Clearly many charter school operators do personally feel responsible for the public and its children. Many charter school leaders work hard to build a school culture that will outlive them and that is infused with that sense of responsibility. I, therefore, understand why some who work in charter schools think of their schools as public schools. However, they build this culture voluntarily; it is not intrinsic to charter schools generally or even a requirement of their charters. The very fact that they are only required to select a student body from among those who apply in the first place makes for a qualitative difference from public schools. Districts cannot place additional students in charter schools when all district schools are overcrowded, nor can they enroll students whose families failed to take part in the normal school selection process in charter schools. In this respect, charter schools are more like traditional private schools than they are like traditional public schools.

And so, while charter schools are clearly not traditional private schools, by design they are not like traditional public schools, either. Even if we acknowledge that there are differences between different charter schools, and between charter school laws, neither of these terms seem appropriate. Those who insist that they are “public schools” or “private schools” clearly have some sort of agenda and some idea other than a full examination of the meaning these terms carry. This leaves us with a need for a third term, as neither “public” or “private” would be appropriate.

Luckily, we already have the term “quasi-public” from other sectors. I do not love this term — or even really like it — but it is surely better than either of the others.

And so when I saw a commercial for last Thursday’s broadcast of “Morning Joe,” featuring a forum on education, I wondered if the panel of experts would include any teachers. Although I haven’t seen the show in a while, I wished that I wouldn’t be commuting and working while it was airing. During my lunch period, I did a little reading about the event and learned that there most certainly were teachers present.

They were in the audience.

Audience members — that’s what we have become in this national debate about everything that’s wrong with our schools. We sit back while other people, who were probably still using Clearasil the last time they spent any substantial time in a classroom, proclaim themselves as “experts.” They have us in their crosshairs, and it’s not hard to find us, because we’re sitting in the audience.

Why have we allowed this? Why is it that our expertise, ideas, and insights remain in classrooms, faculty lounges, the blogosphere? That’s an easy answer: The “experts” haven’t asked us. Because the conversation would get really complicated if we got to speak. As I see it, the fixes they suggest mainly focus on tenure (due process rights and academic freedom are evil), merit pay based on test scores (because we’re all about money and want to invest even more time preparing kids for tests) and a longer school day and year (kids are immune to burnout, and since many kids in my school are already here from 8 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., we should just make it an even 12 hours)

But if you asked a teacher, a true education expert, about the problems and the solutions, you’d get an array of concerns, especially from teachers in high-needs schools. I worry about my kids’ families in these difficult economic times, especially when I need to reach a parent and can’t. I worry about my kids’ health because many of them don’t seem to sleep enough and think that soda and a bag of Doritos is an acceptable breakfast. I worry about the kids who are chronically late and absent and the ones who never do their homework or never have school supplies.

And I wonder about other things too — like why I only saw 27 parents during our last round of parent-teacher conferences, even though I have 59 students. I wonder what a really terrific language arts curriculum looks like, and wish I had time to really devote myself to writing one. I wonder how I can incorporate things I love into my lessons, like art history, while still making sure the kids are ready for the test. If they don’t perform well during those two testing days, in the eyes of the city and state it doesn’t matter what we were doing during the rest of the year. And I see so many things that can’t be measured by tests but still mean a lot, like my homeroom students’ low-level but wonderful obsession with American presidents, or how all my kids love when I read stories to them. It kills me to have to say, “I wish we could keep talking about FDR, but we have to get back to test prep.” But there might come a time when I won’t keep my job if my kids don’t do well enough on those tests, and so many things that are interesting and engaging to my kids will go out the window.

As far as I can tell, none of the “experts” have been able to put forth a clear, comprehensive strategy for improving schools, one that supports, not punishes, students and teachers. Personally, I am not opposed to becoming a better teacher; I always enjoy learning new ideas and strategies. I have wondered if the teachers I’m friendliest with at my school have become my friends because we are very interested in improving our craft, but too often conversations about teaching take place while passing in the hallways or in the ladies’ room before school. The current organization of time doesn’t allow us to have the kind of discussions we not only need, but really want.

I know a lot about the problems that plague our schools; I’ve only given a brief synopsis here. And I’ll be honest and admit I don’t really know how to implement the solutions. But I am positive that ignoring teachers’ input and continuing to make noise about tenure and merit pay won’t really make things better. I’m not being dismissive of the non-teacher “experts.” Everyone has a stake, including students, parents and communities. We need to broaden the conversations because we all have something to say.

New York was not widely expected to be a first-round winner; even its advance to the final round of competition caught many observers by surprise. Today’s announcement will send state education officials back to the drafting table to refine their plan — and will likely re-ignite a legislative battle over the state’s teacher evaluation laws and cap on charter schools — before the June 1 deadline for the next round of competition.

In the 500-point scoring rubric federal officials used to judge applications, New York lost the greatest share of points on the sections of its application dealing with statewide data systems, teacher evaluations and charter schools.

“This is like going to the doctor and getting your bloodwork back,” Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said.”They told us our cholesterol is high and we need to fix it.”

“We’re going to need the legislation now, obviously, to help us,” Tisch added.

In January, state officials asked the legislature to lift the cap on charter schools, but lawmakers froze, in large part because of opposition from the state teachers union. Union leaders have refused to endorse a charter cap lift without significant changes to how the schools are opened and run that charter supporters say would kill the schools.

In a change from the first round, states applying in Round 2 will be required to submit budgets that fall within the ranges suggested in the competition’s original guidelines. This change will force New York to revise its budget downward by more than $100 million. In the first round, the state applied for $810 million in grant funds, though the Race to the Top guidelines suggested states of its size are eligible for, at a maximum, $700 million.

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein signaled today that the city would lobby even more aggressively for a charter cap lift and for changes to state law that would mandate the use of student data in teacher evaluations and make it easier to fire teachers who do not fare well in those evaluations.

“Support for initiatives like these helped Tennessee and Delaware win today and is the only way New York State will succeed in the next round of the competition,” he said.

The selection of two relatively small states in the first round means the U.S. Department of Education will only spend $600 million to fund its initial grants, leaving $3.4 billion to be doled out in the second phase of competition. Duncan said today that he expected 10 to 15 states to be named winners in the second round.

In a conference call with reporters today, Duncan said that first round finalists do not necessarily have an edge for the second phase. “It’s a new competition,” he said.

Here are the final score sheets for New York’s application, along with comments from five anonymous federal reviewers. Score sheets from all of the states who applied are available on the USDOE website here.

About 8,500 students listed one of the high schools the city had planned to shutter among their top 12 choices, and more than 900 students had listed one of the schools as their first choice. In a statement released to reporters today, Klein said that students who are matched to one of the formerly closing schools can choose to attend that school, or the school to which they were originally matched.

On Friday, when the city began mailing out high school acceptance letters, Klein indicated that no students would be matched to any of the schools that the city had planned to close, though he said students could choose to attend them if the city loses its court appeal.  The president of the city teachers union, Michael Mulgrew, threatened to sue the city again to force them to enroll students at those schools.

Here is Klein’s full statement:

“We have now sent high school acceptance letters to more than 70,000 students–nearly 90 percent of students who applied. To provide options for those students who selected a school originally slated for phase-out as one of their choices, we will run the matching process again including schools originally slated for phase-out. If a student is matched to one of those schools, he or she will be able to choose between that school and the school he or she was matched to in the main round.  If the court’s decision is overturned on appeal, the student will attend the school he or she was matched to in the main round.”

In the GothamSchools community section, Bloomfield writes:

We should rejoice when the judiciary checks illegal use of political authority. That’s what happened in Mulgrew v. Board of Education …

But the decision should also be greeted with sadness. That the city should so brazenly violate the letter of the law is contemptible. That the identified schools, hobbled by instructional incompetence or supervisory negligence, will continue to maltreat students is equally appalling.

Bloomfield also offers up his prognosis for the city’s appeal: Not good.

But the decision should also be greeted with sadness. That the city should so brazenly violate the letter of the law is contemptible. That the identified schools, hobbled by instructional incompetence or supervisory negligence, will continue to maltreat students is equally appalling.

Mulgrew will be difficult to overturn on appeal. The decision is squarely based on facts admitted by both parties and established law about Environmental Impact Statements, the direct legal precursor to the new requirement for Educational Impact Statements issued by the DOE to justify school closings. Again and again, the court castigates the DOE for its actions, finding “significant violations of the Education Law.”

The DOE posted Educational Impact Statements for each closure on its Web site despite a statutory requirement of hard copy distribution. It unilaterally determined the time, place, and manner of hearings despite the requirement that these proceedings be jointly undertaken with parent bodies. In its arrogance, the DOE even argued that its handling of the procedures was outside court review, an argument not only rejected by the court but ridiculed through a highly unusual footnote pointing out a typographical error in that section of the DOE’s brief. Further, implying that the DOE made initial decisions about which schools to close in bad faith, the court ordered the city to “to re-examine in good faith the various programs in the schools they are preparing to close, and obtain meaningful community involvement, as required by the Education Law.”

This underlying accusation of bad faith on the part of Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg permeates the opinion. “[The DOE's] very arguments would appear to trivialize the whole notion of community involvement,” the court wrote. Reviewing the mayor’s attempted nullification of statutory obligations he doesn’t like, the decision states, “That entire legislative scheme must be enforced, and not merely the portion extending mayoral control of the schools.” Also scorned is the DOE’s hubris

that the lack of compliance is of a de minimus nature and should be dealt with only prospectively. Furthermore, they suggest that even prospectively, rather than being ordered to comply with the Education Law, they should be permitted to develop their own guidelines for compliance with the statutory requirements, revising the chancellor’s existing regulations.

What will be Mulgrew‘s impact? If reversed on appeal, that will be a new cause for sadness. But even if upheld, it appears that the city’s students, at least in the short term, will still be denied quality education under the rule of law. As of now, the city says it will not only appeal the decision but go forward with high school placements not directly related to the closed schools, continue to place students in the schools created as replacements despite law regulating co-location, and attempt to dissuade students from attending the schools given a reprieve. In plain terms, the DOE plans to let these schools continue to sink, keeping a shell staff and student body for those who didn’t get the message that they are passengers on an educational Titanic.

Which brings us to the enduring question of why these schools have to die. It is possible that each targeted school, individually and thoroughly analyzed, is beyond saving or too difficult to save. Maybe their present and future students (including, according to the court, infants in closed child care programs) would do better elsewhere with little or no adverse impact on other schools. But perhaps aid has been withheld in an intentional, unethical strategy of triage to score political points through headline-grabbing closures rather than the slower, less dramatic work required for true instructional success. Those are the very questions that the DOE failed to address in its sketchy, boilerplate Educational Impact Statements. Those are the questions that deserve good faith answers now.

When we reported Klein’s numbers (and when we updated our report with new numbers Department of Education officials gave us shortly after our original post), we wondered how the distribution of teaching experience in the ATR pool compares to that among active teachers in city schools.

Kim Gittleson, the research assistant to one of GothamSchools’ funders, Ken Hirsh, had conveniently already sought out those numbers from the DOE. Over in the Community section, she reports that the distributions of teachers by years of service in the excess pool and among the city’s active teachers do not match.

Gittleson writes:

Using information from the DOE, I found that younger teachers are underrepresented in the ATR pool at 13 percent versus 29 percent of active teachers. Teachers with 15 to 25 years of service are overrepresented in the ATR pool, at 31 percent versus 19 percent of the active teachers.

Here are some questions that we have about the way forward, and here is what we know so far:

What happens to eighth-graders who wanted to attend one of the 14 high schools the city slated for closure?

When the city’s eighth-graders begin receiving their high school placement letters this weekend, none of them will have been assigned to the formerly closing high schools, Chancellor Joel Klein said today. Instead, the 8,500 students who listed one of those schools among their top choices will receive a second letter along with their placement, telling them that if the schools do remain fully intact in the fall, students who want to can choose to attend them.

Teachers union chief Michael Mulgrew said today that approach violates the spirit of today’s ruling, which banned the city from halting enrollment at the schools until it goes through the school closing process again.

“First the Chancellor defies the law, now he defies the court,” Mulgrew said. He said that under the ruling, students who listed one of the closing schools as their first choice should be assigned to those schools. DOE officials said today that 916 students listed one of the schools slated for phase-out as their first choice. Mulgrew said the teachers union plans to sue the city to force them to place ninth-graders in those 14 schools.

What happens to the new schools that were supposed to open and replace the closing schools?

City officials are confident they will still open. Fifteen new schools, including four new charter schools, were set to be co-located in buildings with schools that were going to be phased out.

Department of Education officials said many of the buildings are already so underutilized that it is likely there will be room for the new schools to open in those buildings anyway.

“We’re telling them that we’re evaluating, but we expect that there will be room for the new schools next year,” said DOE spokesman Danny Kanner.

This is especially true for next year, because the new schools will open with only one grade and thus will need relatively little space in the buildings. In addition, what incoming classes the formerly closing schools do enroll is likely to be small because the DOE is asking students to opt in to attend schools whose struggles have been highly publicized.

If the city loses its appeal, will the school closure fight get postponed to next year?

Probably. City officials did not comment today on this issue, but if today’s ruling holds, then the time line for school closures required by state education law would seem to force the city to wait until next school year before launching the process again.

Under state law, the city is required to post an educational impact statement analyzing the effect closing the school would have on students and the community six months before the start of the next school year. The EISs were at the heart of the judge’s decision today, as Judge Joan Lobis ruled that the statements the DOE prepared this year were inadequate to fulfill the requirements of the law. If the city loses its appeal, it will have to prepare all-new statements for each of the schools. The deadline for doing so in order to begin phasing out the schools next year — March 8, six months before next year’s September 8 start date — has already passed.

David Bloomfield, a professor of education law at Brooklyn College and former lawyer for the city school system, said that state education law does give the DOE one possible “Hail Mary pass” it could use to avoid repeating the lengthy school closures process. The law specifies that in an emergency, the chancellor can decide to immediately close a school “for the preservation of student health, safety or general welfare.” In that situation, the city can only keep the school closed for six months, and the DOE must use that time to go through the complete public process to shutter the schools.

At least eight of the schools affected by today’s ruling are likely to eventually be shut down no matter what happens. That’s because they are on the state’s list of its worst-performing schools that state officials have targeted for replacement.

But the head of the city’s teacher union said today that he’s confident that if the city loses its appeal, the 19 schools will remain intact next year.

“It would look that way to us at this moment,” Mulgrew said. Rather than simply postponing the closures, he said, the city should use the next year to help make the schools better. “I would say we have an opportunity here to work constructively to move these schools forward,” he said.

Admissions letters will be mailed to all students beginning this evening.  Although a State Supreme Court ruling today found that 14 high schools slated for closure must remain open, the Department of Education didn’t assign any incoming freshman to those schools, Klein said in a statement.

About 8,500 eighth-graders listed one of the 14 schools among their choices in applying to high school. Klein said that if the city loses its appeal and the schools end up remaining open next year, students will be able to elect to attend one of them.

Klein’s full statement is below the jump:

Statement by Chancellor Klein on the Distribution of High School Acceptance Letters

“Beginning tonight and continuing through the weekend, we will be sending out high school acceptance letters to students’ homes. We anticipate that by mid-week all students will have received their letters.

“No students were initially matched to schools that were slated for phase-out. Depending on the outcome of the appeal of the judge’s decision, those schools might accept new students. As a result, students who applied to those schools will also receive a letter stating that, should the schools remain open, they may select one of them.”

But for the 8,500 students who applied to one of the 14 high schools the city tried to close this year, there’s little guidance in the 14-page ruling.

The ruling adds even more confusion to an already complicated high school matching process. It doesn’t explicitly tell the city to release high school placement letters, originally set to go home Wednesday, to students who didn’t apply to any of the schools whose closures were contested. But it also says that the court doesn’t intend to prevent most eighth-graders from finding out their placements.

“The court wishes to make clear, however, that this decision is not intended to prevent completion of the matching process for any students who are not directly affected by the proposed closure or phaseout of the 19 schools, and such actions shall not be construed as a violation of this decision and order,” the decision reads.

That’s good news for most eighth-graders, and Chancellor Klein is sending a letter home today explaining that match letters will be mailed home “as soon as possible.” But the ruling doesn’t tell the city what to do for the 8,500 students who tried to pick one of the schools that were later slated for closure. Department officials say they won’t know what will happen with those students’ letters until they finish reviewing the court decision, according to spokesman Daniel Kanner. The delay is especially likely to frustrate students who included one of the closing schools among their 12 choices but who actually preferred to be matched at another school.

Here’s the letter Klein is sending home with eighth-graders today:

March 26, 2010
Dear Parent/Guardian,

A decision has just been reached in the lawsuit brought by the UFT and others that has had an impact on the high school admissions process. As soon as possible, the Office of Student Enrollment will mail your child’s high school admissions letter to the home address listed on his or her high school application.

We know how difficult this delay has been for you and for your family, and we thank you for your patience. In the meantime, please continue to check the Department of Education’s Web site at www.nyc.gov/schools, or call 311, for updated information.

Sincerely,
Joel I. Klein
Chancellor

The bombshell decision leaves the fate of all 19 schools and their staffs up in the air and could force the Department of Education to rewrite arguments for why they deserve to be shut down. The ruling is the first time a court has interpreted the new mayoral control law Albany put in place last summer.

A lawyer for the city, Michael Cardozo, said the Department of Education would appeal the decision.

“We are disappointed by today’s ruling, which, unless it is reversed, requires the Department of Education to keep open schools that are failing our children,” Cardozo said.

In February, the teachers union sued the city, arguing that the DOE had violated the law that governs school closures.

The city received the decision at 12:30 this afternoon, two days after the deadline for high school students to be told which schools they’ll attend in the fall. In her ruling, Judge Joan Lobis wrote that her decision should not affect the 80,000 students who did not apply to the closing schools.

She acknowledged that the decision would be an “inconvenience for respondents and hardships for students who are awaiting the results of the school matching process.” In total, there are 8,500 students who applied to the closing schools.

But she wrote, “the court cannot overlook what it reluctantly concludes are significant violations of the Education Law by respondents.”

DOE officials said students who didn’t apply to the 19 closing schools would get their high school matches “as soon as possible.”

If the court’s decision is upheld, Department of Education officials could be looking at another month of bruising public hearings at each of the schools slated for closure. In another possible scenario, the department could decide that it’s too late in the year to redo the process and decide to postpone the closures until next year.

In a statement sent to reporters, Cardozo disputed the judge’s ruling that the city had not followed public notification and hearing regulations, but did not argue with the claim that the city’s impact statements lacked necessary information.

A spokesman for the DOE said department lawyers are reviewing the decision and did not have an initial comment.

Affected schools:

New Day Academy
Christopher Columbus High School
Paul Robeson High School
W.H. Maxwell Career and Technical Education High School
Academy of Environmental Science
Jamaica High School
School for Community Research and Learning

Beach Channel High School
Metropolitan Corporate Academy
Choir Academy of Harlem’s high school grades
Norman Thomas High School
Global Enterprise High School
School of Business, Computer Applications and Entrepreneurship

Monroe Academy for Business/Law
Frederick Douglas Academy III’s middle school grades
KAPPA II
P.S. 332
Middle School for Academic and Social Excellence
Academy of Collaborative Education

Mulgrew v._Board of Ed.

First, let’s acknowledge what charter schools are. They are publicly financed schools that are run by private – usually nonprofit – organizations. Sometimes they are independent, and sometimes they are part of larger charter school organizations or chains.

The primary argument that charter schools are public schools is that they are paid for out of government funds. While they do get most of their budgets from tax dollars, that is not enough to render them public schools. There are many other organizations that pay for operations with public funds but are still private organizations. Defense contractors receive enormous sums of money from the government to provide design and manufacturing of weapons systems, but they remain private corporations. Blackwater provided labor, training and services to the Department of Defense and the State Department, but it remained a private organization.

If a construction firm is hired by a school district to build a school, it remains a private firm. If a new firm is formed to bid for a school construction job, and wins the project, it still remains a private firm. Even if that firm does such a good job that it wins future bids and does all the district’s construction work, it remains a private firm.

Frankly, I’ve not heard any other arguments that charter schools are public schools. Meanwhile, there are lots of ways in which they most definitely are not public schools

I think that it is pretty clear that at least some level of oversight of the day to day operations of our public agencies must rise up to our elected officials. Public agencies and offices must have some level of democratic oversight. Abuses, mismanagement and bad policy are subject to review by elected officials or those they appoint. Policies can be changed, budgets cut and/or senior personnel removed as a direct consequence of this oversight. This is quite different than contracted services. So long as the terms of the contract are met, the government cannot reach into the management of a contractor and force changes. They may try to embarrass the contractor, but they do not have authority to require changes. On the other hand, public schools are accountable to elected school boards, legislatures and/or mayors. There may be changes in who is ultimately responsible for a district, but it always is an elected official.

Charter school principals cannot be removed by elected officials. Their board members are not subject to removal by public elections. The executives of charter management organizations are not accountable to the government for their jobs.

More important, however, is the difference in moral mission. It is the responsibility of the public schools to educate every child who shows up. All children who live in a school district have a right to attend a district school. Furthermore, no public school can in good conscience “counsel out” a student. Private schools are well known to engage the practice of “counseling out” when a student does not seem to fit in or is too disruptive or the school believes that it cannot well meet that student’s needs. As the student has the public schools to fall back on, the moral import of this practice is surely debatable. But the public schools must find another placement for students whose needs they cannot meet, because they – in the form of the district – have a moral and a legal obligation to educate every child that shows up.

Charter schools do not have that obligation, either legally or morally. To the extent that many charter schools are oversubscribed, it would be difficult or impossible for them to do so. While the public schools have to cram in more students – hopefully, eventually, leading to more classrooms and even schools – charter schools only have to serve as many students as they specify. Charter schools are free to say that they do not offer support services for English language learners or autistic children, but the public schools must provide schooling for every child. Charter schools are free to “counsel out” students.

Charter school employees do not work for the government; they are not public employees. While the government has contracted with charter schools to provide a service, they do not act as the government when the provide it. Their operations are not subject to democratic or public oversight; rather their contracts (i.e. their charters) come up for review for possible extension periodically.

If you can make a more thoughtful argument about why charter schools are public schools, I would love to hear it. If you agree or disagree, please share your own thinking as to why.

[Note: I have posted a follow up piece, and the conversation has continued there.]

Every three years, the UFT contracts its internal election out to the American Arbitration Association, and on March 12, the AAA sent out 167,000 ballots to UFT members. Those ballots went to members who have retired as well as to those who are still working, landing on doorsteps across the five boroughs and in sun-soaked places like Florida and Arizona where retirees often cluster.

The thick packets arrive via snail mail — union officials say this is because they can’t count that retired members will have an internet connection — and contain the names of the 1,485 candidates running for about 900 positions. (We’ll have more on who those people are tomorrow.)

Once a member opens and fills out her ballot, she places it in an envelope marked “secret ballot.” The ballot is sealed, sent to the AAA, and counted on April 7. To help the organization figure out what kinds of UFT members voted, the ballots are color-coded. Functional members (paraprofessionals, guidance counselors, nurses, etc.) have green ballots, high school teachers have pink ballots (or “coral,” as a UFT spokesman told me), elementary school ballots are blue, retirees have white ballots, and middle school ballots are ivory, which I’m told is more of a beige.

Of the more than hundred thousand ballots sent out, most don’t make it back to the AAA.

In 2007, the last time the UFT elected a president, 46,735 votes were cast — a participation rate of about 30 percent.

About 38 percent of the total vote came from retirees, who are much more likely to vote than active members. The percentage of active members who vote declined from 29 percent in 2004 to 22 percent in 2007. When asked why this is, a UFT spokesman said that retirees are more likely to have witnessed the union’s foundation and seen it come to power, making them more enthusiastic about unionism in general. They’ve also reaped the pension benefits that younger teachers can only anticipate. Plus, they have more time on their hands to fill out ballots.

In fact, retirees are so enthusiastic that the union has had to cap their votes at 18,000 so they don’t outnumber active UFT members and effectively govern the union. In 2007, 22,500 retirees voted, which means that for retirees, the “one person, one vote” rule effectively turned into “one person, 0.8 vote.”

That same year, only 24,235 active members voted. Along with carefully watching the margins they win by, UFT presidents are routinely concerned about how much of the active teacher vote they get. If the population currently teaching in the city’s classrooms starts to stray to opposition groups, or is too apathetic to vote, the union could be in trouble.

NYU has committed to building a new 600-seat public elementary school as part of its plan to add 6 million square feet of space to its campus, the university announced today. The school offers a bright bargaining chip to NYU in its battle to expand its campus by 40 percent without alienating the neighboring community. Parents in the Village have complained about overstuffed classrooms and long wait-lists for neighborhood kindergarten seats.

But Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who has been a fierce critic of how the city has handled Manhattan’s school crowding problems, said he is confident that the plan is more than just an attractive ploy.

“The school is now off the table,” Stringer said. “It’s happening.”

Still, many of the details — including where exactly the school will be located, when construction will start or even if the university’s broader plan will be approved — remain up in the air.

Lynne Brown, senior vice president of NYU, said the university plans to include the elementary school building in one of the three superblocks NYU wants to build between Washington Square Park and Houston Street, but the exact location has yet to be determined. NYU will select the site with the input of the School Construction Authority and members of the Greenwich Village neighborhood, she said.

Another crucial detail that wasn’t immediately clear is whether the city or the university will own the school building. In some cases where the Department of Education has partnered with a university for school building space, the university has asked the school to leave when it needs the classroom space. (That was the case with University Heights High School, which must leave its space at the Bronx Community College after this year to accommodate a spike in the college’s enrollment.)

Some members of a neighborhood task force on the expansion questioned the university’s preliminary site for the school. “We’d welcome the school,” said Terri Clude, a member of Stringer’s task force and a resident of a building that will face one of the new superblocks. “We’re not really sure the superblocks are the right place.”

As the superblocks are currently imagined, Clude said, they include tower buildings for university classroom and dormitory space surrounded by open park-like grounds. To add the school building, the university will probably reduce the amount of open space in a neighborhood Clude said is nearly as pressed for park space as it is for kindergarten seats.

“Our children need places to run around, to learn how to ride a bicycle,” she said. “Do you trade that because you also need a place to go to school?”