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You might almost think the people running the pro-charter campaign aren't from around here
By adamg on Tue, 08/09/2016 - 9:44am
Heshan Weeramuni, an active supporter of Boston Public Schools, noticed this tweet by a group working to lift the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts that turns "education" into a verb and sings the praises of the O'Bryant - which people who actually live in Boston know is a BPS school, not a charter.
Oopsies: The Great Schools campaign took down their tweet this morning after Weeramuni posted a copy - just like Boston 2024 did last year.
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Comments
You have the wrong school
The charter school is called "John D. O'BYRANT," per above. Rhymes with "tyrant."
Great school if you don't need your kids to be able to write or spell, apparently.
Was
Great Schools tweeting while drunk from NYC?
Wow you don't say
A self-described socialist, Heshan Weeramuni doesn't like unions and government losing/giving up control education. I wonder how he feels about private ownership and taxation....
What he likes least
What he likes least is the chronic underfunding of public schools - especially at the expense of Charters
Rarely do two sides of an argument
succeed so well at making their own positions look indefensible.
Which side should I pick? Team "Let's make it a race to the bottom for everyone" vs. Team "Privatize everything and crush the unions"?
I'm married to a charter school principal. You'd think it would be clear. And yet here I am in August, trying to decide between getting kicked in the face or in the kidneys come November. Ugh.
Would it help to know...
Would it help to know the law in MA currently allows for 120 charter schools, though there are only 71? Also, because most charter schools do not backfill empty seats (empty due to kids leaving), according to state auditor Bump's report 10,000 existing seats are empty. It's hard to justify lifting a cap when seats sit empty, and charter proponents have not created the 49 available charters. There are many other problems with charters, but seats and opportunities to create new ones are not among them.
Statewide, maybe
In Boston, it's nothing like that. The really strong schools (notably Brooke and Excel, though there are others that are catching them) are expanding their networks as quickly as the state will allow them, and are backfilling every lost seat, every year.
I don't really want to get all Ron Swanson here, but anti-charter advocates also makes it really difficult to take them seriously by spouting a lot of obviously false stuff about charters. The best charters in Boston are reliably outperforming the best public schools in places like Wellesley and Carlisle, and they're not doing any of the nasty things that charters in general are accused of, cf. pushing out special needs/ELL students. Those schools are a small minority of the extant charters in the state, so now we're talking about a small percentage of a small percentage. If they can replicate that at a larger scale, I want to see them do it, because it will mean BPS is actually a viable option for most people living here. If they can't, well, that's useful information too.
I mean, fundamentally,
I mean, fundamentally, Charters self-select for the most important educational indicator of them all: Parents who give a shit and are involved. The kind of parents who do the research and do the footwork to get their kids into a charter are, statistically, more likely to have kids that are going to preform better, even if those kids were in the shittiest public schools. So by requiring the extra work beyond the usual BPS rigmarole (to say nothing of kids who just show up at various PBS not having even managed that), they're starting off ahead of the game in terms of student population.
Not the fault of the charters, not the fault of public schools, just an unfortunate reality that all the back and forth over educational policy is never going to fix.
Is this the part where I come in and say: Not necessarily?
Because there are plenty of parents who care and get involved and put their kids in public schools. Ask me how I know.
Not quite the point I think?
There are lot of great, involved parents in BPS. However, there are undeniably lots of kids whose parents aren't supporting them in terms of getting an education. That's not the fault of BPS and BPS puts enormous amounts of effort into reaching and helping those kids. The extra application step just filters out the DGAF parents out of charter schools.
It's a bit parallel to the fact that AWC classes are less disrupted classes within BPS due to filtering.
Yes, thank you -- I wasn't
Yes, thank you -- I wasn't saying there weren't plenty of involved parents in BPS (look at Latin, jeeze). But EVERY parent who gets their kid into a charter is involved.
The poster didn't say
The poster didn't say "necessarily" but instead said "statistically" and that seems like a reasonable generalization. Obviously many who do the research will choose public schools. Few who don't will choose charter.
Bingo
Charter schools offer a good option for parents who aren't being served by BPS. However, we can't simply add more seats without fixing the funding issues and we shouldn't simply hand out more seats to unproven schools. It's very frustrating that this badly set-up proposal is serving as the litmus test for the issue. It would be like if the casino referendum was between 20 casinos with no territorial restrictions or outlawing all gambling including scratch tickets. So stupid.
Unlike the principal of Madison Park and unlike our former hotel dwelling superintendent Carol Johson, at least I know the founders of the Brooke live in Boston and send their kids to the same schools. More than you can say for much of the BPS ad BTU administrations.
Kimberly and John?
I've been to a picnic at their house! And the leadership at Excel isn't sending their kids to BPS, only because their kids aren't school age yet.
These arguments are frustrating to have in a public forum, because no one is talking about the actual issues with charters (specifically the fact that they run on an untenable funding model, have discipline models that are kind of questionable, and underpay their teachers while also running really high burnout rates) because they're too busy arguing about what I can only assume are straw-charters somewhere in western MA.
Western MA
The problems with funding there is much more acute because you have very small districts (100 kids per grade or so) so when kids opt out both through charters and local choice, you can lose 10%+ of the funding for a class with no major tax base to work with unlike Boston where there's $1b in school money alone.
I'd argue that the issue Tito Jackson raised here is a bigger problem - more kids who wouldn't chose BPS are chasing a free charter seat vs. paying for a Catholic school seat. So while BPS has 53k students, the number of kids who are actually getting publicly funded educations is higher when you lump in the charters. Anyone able to fact check that for me?
Popsicle guy
I think one real savings for charters is that they probably don't have to pay someone like the artisanal popsicle maker $300k for not working while living out of state for a year or two. They can just fire at will.
Information
The administration (staff) at the BTU children DO attend BPS. Most of the executive board of the BTU children/grandchildren also attend BPS.
Please check your facts!
If bad grammar bugs you
Don't read anything that comes home with your kid from bps.
I still remember this from last year
http://www.universalhub.com/2015/students-west-roxbury-high-school-will-...
Welcome to Common Core!
Welcome to Common Core!
exactly
Common Core will help fix this by setting minimum standards for curriculum quality.
"Is our children learning?"
I'm so glad I went to public school before the fiasco of charter schools began.
Not surprisingly
Interest groups from outside MA are weighing in on both sides of the debate with their money and their misspelled tweets.
O'Bryant teacher says thanks but no thanks
Difficult budget inequities?
I'm sure he means difficult for the charters who get only $15k per student (and have to rent/buy their own facilities) compared to BPS that spends $30k per student and has free real estate.
*Also just found a state database that after "aid from the state (facilities and chapter 46) the NET cost to BPS per student is $13k
Free real estate?
Owned by the city. Must be maintained by the city. Never allowed to deny a child who walks in its doors an education. Please.
The numbers stated for charter never include the cost of transportation, provided by the sending district.
The sending district
....is where the kids attending the schools live. If you want to argue that charters shouldn't be city wide but rather in various zones, fine, but that's not how they are allowed to operated.You seem to think they work like Metco.
I don't get this attitude which seemingly recriminates families for choosing a good free option for their kids in their city. If you want to roll back charters, fine, but don't blame parents for trying to do the best for their kids in a district where there are still plenty of sub-par choices in the poorer, minority neighborhoods.
Transportation
I'm just saying that transportation, which costs about $1300 (I think) comes from BPS budget NOT a charter school budget, and could mean sending kids across the city, vs. BPS traditional schools which tend to be much closer So BPS pays for this on top of the $15,000 "tuition" per student charters receive. Multiply $1500 (average per pupil BPS transportation cost) by 7,100 students and you are looking at over $10,000,000 in transportation costs for charter students. That's an example of a huge cost the charters do not bear, but BPS does.
Yes and no
Free real estate - yes - there is the cost of maintaining it - but that's a fraction of what the imputed rent would be - so a better description is probably "virtually free".
Transportation costs are a fair argument - that is in the BPS budget - I think to the tune of about $10 million (??) or 1% of the city's school budget. Granted - this would all/mostly have to be paid for by the system whether they went to BPS or charter -but a fair argument that this is borne by BPS and not the charters.
Is that right? I need to help
Is that right? I need to help equation our children. . .
Grow up
or maybe start teaching and then you'll SHUT UP
Typical response
Of an anon that has no better response.
And BTW - taught jr high and sr high for 2 years out of college, have tutored a BPS student for several years and developed and taught an after school program for a Boston middle school charter.
New Market Tax Credits
New Market Tax Credits (taxpayer monies used to entice developers) are being used to outfit charters. They use taxpayer funds, then usually the for profit behind the non profit winds up owning the building. Quite a scheme with a 39% return on investment in 7 years. This is one of the reasons you see so many higher up real estate folks on charter boards instead of charter student parents.
Specific examples?
Which charters in Boston fall into this scenario?
Article on tax incentives for finding charters
Article on tax incentives for investors in charters:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/04/why-hedge...
To be honest, it's hard to find out who is on charter boards as charters are not held to the same FOIA standards. This report by Annenberg Institute outlines this and other legitimate concerns on charter transparency and accountability:
http://annenberginstitute.org/sites/default/files/CharterAccountabilityS...
except in MA charters are non
except in MA charters are non-profit and their tax returns and board members are public information. Just like any other non-profit in the state.
Like a lot of other things
Especially when it comes to education, we do it better in Mass. And given the charter students are doing so well compared not just to BPS but even compared to suburban schools for literally half the cost, i find it difficult to believe people are making tons of money off of charters in MA. Other states maybe. Not here.
Answers please!
Exactly this point here. Not having kids, I haven't really tuned in to the details of all of this but my gut reaction is that I don't trust charter schools. But when I look into them I see that they're mostly all non-profits. I ask union types to explain how IN MASSACHUSETTS "the private sector taking the public's money" narrative actually works and I get nothing in reply. I know form conversations with charter school teachers that the situation of working young and eager teachers down to a nub for little money - throw em away, repeat - is the model used to "be more efficient" and obviously monitoring & evaluation is one of those things that can be ginned up any way you want it -- but when I play follow the money I can't figure out how some sort of evil Bain Capital sort of figure is sucking the marrow out of the tax payer. I'm predisposed to hating charters but shit if I had kids I'd probably be sending them to one, so the anti-charter folks have to come up with some better arguments than just singing a rousing round of "Solidarity Forever."
I had a back and forth on Twitter
with an out-of-town charter backer. It was interesting to point out how, from my relatively non-involved point of view (no kids) the whole charter debate seemed to be out-of-state people wanting more charters and local families fighting them.
He repeatedly referred to it as similar to racial desegregation in the south in the 60s. That was just his go-to argument. Don't say it outright, but paint anyone opposed to charters as bigots over and over again.
It was fascinating, but ultimately boring. Especially considering he clearly had no real idea that school desegregation has a totally unique history in Boston.
So again, I don't really care that much, but I just find it really interesting that every (local) parent I know who follows this issue is not a fan of unbounded charters, and the only people who seem to be don't live here.
Really?
7500 kids in charters, 10,000 kids on the wait list, 5000 kids in METCO and you say parents don't want options? That is 35-40% of the student population right there that has already opted out or would like to. Take out the exam schools (which are WAY more exclusive than charters and nobody complains about equal treatment for special ed in those schools etc.), and about half the population of parents says no to BPS.
Waitlist data
Following the state audit and DESE's charter school reports, I question even the updated waitlist numbers. I mean, BPS has 4,000 kids on preschool waitlists alone. And we know there are thousands of kids on waitlists for BPS schools for elementary-high school. I know anecdotally families who are on charter waitlists who do not intend to send their children to a charter, but the lists have not been updated (some charters were allowed to roll over lists from years ago).
So then why are the teacher's unions petrified?
If nobody wants to go to these schools, the only losers are the supporters of the school which will never open with no students.
This is another example of how disingenuous the anti charter movement is. They put out total BS info and scare tactics that may apply to other parts of the country but not Mass.
Multiple studies show thousands of kids are thriving in Boston's charters and thousands more want that opportunity.
The anticharters are led by people guided by gilding their paychecks rather than the facts.
These are vile human beings.
As Michelle Rhee said in "in search of Superman", it's not about the kids. It's about the adults.
Because haters will hate
Hate isn't rational. People would rather see all those evil teachers starve to death while demanding ever increasing test scores than admit that trained professionals ought to be paid well and that their petty jealousy and infantile demands and failure to form their own goddamn unions has induced dementia.
This tweet twice misspelled
This tweet twice misspelled the school, which is named John D. O'Bryant, in honor of the first African-American to be elected to the school committee. It identified the school as a charter when it is a traditional public school. It attributed the quote to a charter parent, but it was made by an O'Bryant grad. And it used bad grammar.
For all the money behind this effort to institute more charters (including the Swift Boat ad firm), you'd think even out-of-towners could do better.
Charter Schools have better
Charter Schools have better parent engagement longer hours and get results. So explain to me again why all under performing schools don’t immediately get put on longer days, more staff added outreach?
If you cut the transportation budget by reducing or eliminating busing and put that money into staff and extended days wouldn’t it make the whole system better?
Longer school years also
for example, the Brooke students start this Thursday.
You don't need
extra long days, longer school years and draconian discipline to get results.
So true
Just send your kid to AWC then BLS, right? I bet your kid had a great experience...
Draconian discipline isn't a thing at the Brooke BTW.
I did
I had that experience from AWC 4th grade - 6th grade then BLS. Was a good experience, happy I wasn't in some insular Catholic school such as Holy Name or the like.
Eliminating bussing would do
Eliminating bussing would do a lot to fix the system. Going to neighborhood schools lets economics and gentrification fix some areas of the city almost overnight; resources can then get shunted to neighborhoods that desperately need the extra $$ and specialty staff.
Of course, it'd take 10+ years for effects to be fully felt across the system, and in that time you have a whole generation of kids getting left out even worse than they do already. Triage only works for the ones not deemed too far gone.
Will you give up your house for new school construction?
Probably not. There aren't school buildings in every neighborhood or facilities that could be used given the need for accessibility.
The state wants schools on multi acre lots, and wants them to have libraries, cafeterias, and science labs, too.
You going to pay for all this?
Are they paying people to canvass?
Women showed up at our door the other day wanting to know how we were going to vote on this issue. And wasn't happy with the answer.
Maybe
EduShyster writes about the money behind the Yes on 2 campaign - and how they've had to pay canvassers in the past.
Holy crap
I had no idea the Swift Boaters were behind this. Koch brothers money, probably. Which makes this even muddier... they're throwing their money into an effort to expand charters in a state where charters are mandated to be non-profit. Presumably, it's so the GOP can point to the state's performance in a few years, and credit the removal of the cap. (Which is easy, since we already have the best schools in the nation--no need to draw any cause and effect arrows, just say that the cap was lifted, and blammo! Two years later, Massachusetts is the best. Yuuuuge.) That's a hell of a long-game, even for them.
You don't get to be the
You don't get to be the bazillionaire influencer of worldwide policy by only looking a day ahead
Thank you for that tip Mr. Soros
n/t
canvasing
I know that there are unpaid volunteers canvasing against charters since I have a friend who is a fellow BPS parent who has been doing that in the neighborhood.