I have written to the city council members, too. I hope you will send your letter on to them as well. Heres what I said: Dear City Council Members, I am writing to you to ask for your help to oppose the Green (charter) School. As you may already know, I am the chairperson of our local “branch” of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education of Monroe County and have been working with some amazing people over the past couple of years to both raise awareness among citizens about the very real threat to privatize public schools and to encourage them to do something about this in their actions and at the voting booth. We have had some great success in beating back some devastating legislation at the statehouse and in the election of Glenda Ritz. But the damage already done is working against us—as is the “myth” of the failure of public schools. In our fabulous, progressive-minded town, education “reform” (or “deform” as some have renamed it) takes a different shape. Before much of the cut-throat climate of competition in education was felt, before the loss of teacher voices through the devastation of their unions, before the massive cuts in funding, before the pervasive and strangling test-based “accountability” took hold, the Project School took shape and was formed. Many of our own city government officials and progressive activists of this city found a like-minded and lovely school community for their children there. This conversation around new charter schools coming to town cannot devolve into a debate between the Project School supporters versus the public school supporters extolling the virtues of their choices. We simply don’t have the time or space to go there. Our school district could lose up to $1 million of funding if near 200 kids leave MCCSC with their per-pupil amounts to go to the Green School. That would involve cuts to the things that make kids want to come to school, that give them pleasure. Arts, the librarians, extracurriculars are all hanging by a thread thanks to the state’s gutting of funding through cuts, vouchers, and, yes, the proliferation of charters. The funding is not the only thing that will leave. Charter schools take engaged, active families away from public schools. As with TPS, we will likely lose those who would work, as I did, to pass the next referendum, to fundraise for the PTO of their schools, to work to find good candidates for the school board. None of these democratic activities will directly apply to them any longer. Parents’ time is limited and we are focused on our own kids. And that might further threaten the funding of our MCCSC public schools. Parents that choose charters are automatically the engaged parents. They have to find transportation and get on a waitlist. They have to be seeking alternatives. They are not the checked-out, working 2-3 jobs-single parents or the addict parents of kids who are the ones who are hardest to teach; kids who will now be “left behind” in public schools that struggle to meet their needs on a fixed budget and with more restrictions of how to do so. Our public schools are not failing as the myth would have us believe. WE are failing our public schools. We have become so consumer-driven that we are choosing our schools as we choose our food. Just as we have become a culture that throws out TVs and refrigerators rather than have them be fixed (and they are designed that way!), we are throwing out our system of education rather than becoming engaged and doing the work to fix it. Do we expect the trickle-down theory to work for our kids in education? What about all kids’ rights to high-quality free public education? The Common School was intended to be “common” as in SHARED by democratic citizens, common to ALL, regardless of economic, religious, cultural, background, not as in “for the commoners.” Public schools are accountable to our elected school board and the public. Charter schools rely on the benevolence of their appointed boards. They are at the mercy of their authorizers who open and close them much like businesses. As elected city officials I beg you to take a personal and political stand against the furthering of charters in this town. Remember John Dewey: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. Here is the address to send your email (we only have until midnight on the 8th of April): [email protected] Thank you for your time, Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer P.S. I hope you are all also aware of the Seven Oaks Classical charter school looking to form in our town soon and sponsored by Hillsdale College. This will appeal to yet another, entirely different, population of our community: the libertarian, Rush Limbaugh listening crowd. Are we going to begin the business of encouraging what my friend Rick Nagy would call ideological archipelagos as our education system?
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 23:14:51 +0000
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