Buffalo Schools
Charter School Moratorium Unresolved

A September 22 Buffalo Board of Education vote on a proposed three-year moratorium on charter schools in the district ended unresolved. The moratorium is regarded by many as a sensible effort to think through the proposal to create in Buffalo a charter district.

Four board members voted in favor of the moratorium, four voted against. Ralph Hernandez of the West District sponsored the moratorium. Also voting in favor of it were at-large member Dr. Catherine Collins, East District member Vivian Evans, and Ferry District member Betty Jean Grant. Opposing it were Johnson, Park District member Jack Coyle, North District member Denise Hanlon and at-large member Christopher Jacobs. Central District Board member Janique Curry withheld her vote until others had cast their ballots, then abstained. In a prepared statement, Curry said she has "been lobbied from here to Albany and back" and she denounced "the grandstanding, headline-seeking lobbying efforts of many who I have encountered daily."

Controversy then arose over whether the 4-4 vote meant the motion had carried or had not. Board President Florence Johnson, who voted against the moratorium, initially agreed with other Board members who said the abstention counted as a "yes" vote and declared, "The motion is carried." Objections were raised and finally the Board agreed to seek procedural advice of a nationally registered parliamentarian. The Board agreed to recess its meeting until Wednesday, September 29 at 5pm. What kinds of secret negotiations and pressure will now be imposed remains to be seen.

The vote itself was a reflection of the broad desire in the city to calmly and seriously look into the issue of how to strengthen public education in the city and draw conclusions that favor the interests of students, teachers and the city as a whole. What is the place of charter schools in serving enlightenment? in further wrecking the public system? The problems under consideration are not simply approval or disapproval of a particular proposal for a charter school.

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Chicago’s "Renaissance 2010"
Eliminating Unions and Government Responsibility for Public Education

Described recently by the New York Times as "one of the nation's most radical school restructuring plans," business and government officials in Chicago are preparing the groundwork to replace 40 elementary schools and 20 high schools "with 100 new ones, and in the process turn one in 10 of its schools over to private managers, mostly operating without unions" by 2010. These include "30 additional charters and another 30 new contract schools, created by private groups that sign five-year, renewable contracts with the district." The schools have not been named.

Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 plan, "intends to give the private groups creating these schools full freedom of action and control over hiring and firing. That hasn't been done anywhere on this scale," said Dr. Paul T. Hill, a major advocate of charter schools and privatization, reports the Times.

Chicago’s school superintendent is already known as a Chief Executive Officer of schools. Similar to the monopolies, government is organizing to attack unions and remove its responsibility for providing public education, while further opening the state treasury to various corporate interests. Concretely this involves setting each school up as a business, each with its own "owners" and non-union workforce.

In a memorandum written last fall to Arne Duncan, "CEO" of Chicago Schools, R. Eden Martin, a lawyer for the Civic Committee of the Chicago Commercial Club, a powerful business group, stated, "The school unions will not like creation of a significant number of new schools that operate outside the union agreement. But operating outside the agreement is a key element of this strategy," Tom Vander Ark, executive director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation added, "What this new plan offers schools is a complete break with the past." The foundation has pumped roughly $25 million since 2001 into "school reform" in Chicago.

The justification given by business and government officials for the plan is that too many city schools are not meeting governments’ arbitrary mandates for "progress" as determined by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Currently, the Illinois State Board of Education claims 22 city schools must dramatically improve test scores this year or "face a state takeover, a reopening as a charter school or a wholesale firing of staff." Another 250 could face the same fate next year, according to Chicago’s Sun-Times. In this manner, while government takes no responsibility for guaranteeing the right to education, it does ensure the public treasury is handed over to business interests.

The people of Chicago are organizing to oppose these broad attacks on education. This includes a legal challenge on behalf of homeless youth, a City Hall protest, a Chicago School Board meeting packed with 300 protesters, and broad leafleting to defend the right to education. Parents have consistently said that they have been given no notice, reason or input as to why their schools should be closed. Numerous community and housing groups are also joining the struggle to defend public education and demand increased government funding, not wholesale abandonment of government responsibility for the schools.

The population of Chicago is 2.9 million. Blacks comprise 36.2% of the city, Hispanics 26.0%, Asians 4.4%, and whites 31.3%. It is estimated that nearly 300,000 people live below one-half of the federally defined poverty level.

There are about 600 schools and 450,000 students in the Chicago Public School system (CPS), the third-largest school system in the country. 89% are minority (54.5% African American, 31.3% Latino, and 3.4% Asian and Native American). 15.4% are limited-English-proficient and 83% are low-income. 8,000 homeless children attend the CPS, according to the Sun-Times. The district has about 47,200 employees and a $5 billion budget.

Like many school systems across the country, particularly large urban school systems, CPS do not receive the funding needed and are chronically plagued with dilapidated buildings and insufficient staff and resources of all kinds. Over 1,500 education workers have been laid off over the last year alone. They are also the target of endless punitive measures by government and business officials.

A key historic marker in the history of the CPS is the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which placed considerable authority in the hands of parents. The Illinois State Legislature amended this act in 1995, removing a large amount of authority from parents and concentrating much of it in the hands of the mayor, Richard Daley. City schools are also under mayoral control in Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and New York City.

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California
Charter School Scheme Catastrophe for Thousands

Government and business officials in California have given rise to massive chaos, insecurity, and instability for thousands of teachers, students, administrators, and parents in California with the recent sudden collapse of 60 charter schools.

"The disintegration of the California Charter Academy, the largest chain of publicly financed but privately run charter schools to slide into [fiscal] insolvency, offers a sobering picture of what can follow. Thousands of parents were forced into a last-minute search for alternate schools, and some are still looking; many teachers remain jobless; and students' academic records are at risk in abandoned school sites across California," reports the New York Times. 6,000 students are affected by this unprecedented failure which has angered parents all over California. Many had still not found alternate schools by the second week of September.

Dwayne Muhammad, father of a fourth-grader affected by the abrupt disaster, said, "The collapse was so disheartening…. we've been left by the wayside." Many teachers across the state could not find new jobs because most schools had hired their staffs by the time the academy collapsed. Moreover, many teachers had not been repaid the hundreds of dollars they spent on school supplies for their students.

C. Steven Cox, a former insurance executive, "founded the 60 satellite schools in low- and middle-income communities stretching from Chula Vista near the Mexican border to Gridley, 140 miles northeast of San Francisco, and under California's financing formulas the state paid him about $5,000 annually for each student he enrolled. As his business grew, he hired his wife, son, daughter-in-law and other relatives to work at his corporate headquarters in Victorville, near Oro Grande," reports the Times.

Cox used $100 million in state financing to establish the schools. He swiftly abandoned his headquarters with the collapse of the schools and refuses to return any phone calls, taking no responsibility for the crisis. The state has also failed to offer any assistance to those victimized or hold Cox accountable. "People are walking off with assets all over the state. We're absolutely sinking," said Ken Larson, a school superintendent whose tiny school district in Ore Grande, California, 88 miles northeast of Los Angeles, licensed dozens of the schools.

The collapse was so sudden and well-hidden that, according to the Times, it "blindsided even the charter school principals. Melody Parker, whose Village elementary school in Inglewood was one of the most popular schools in Mr. Cox's organization, said that although her budget had been slashed and Mr. Cox had grown aloof, she never imagined that his organization could fall apart." "It hit us like a tornado," said Park.

Education workers now face the huge problem of how to salvage whatever they can from the closed charter schools before they are destroyed or claimed by lenders and landlords. "The landlord of a school forced to close in Los Angeles was threatening to dump desks and student records in the street to make way for a new tenant," reported the Times. Larson said he thinks he may have to rent a truck with his own money, drive to Los Angeles, and salvage the desks himself.