In the ongoing saga of the GCACS, it’s been revealed that the lease they “signed” for their school wasn’t actually signed by the property owner which makes it not really a lease at all http://www.gloucestertimes.com… It also turns out that their board which at one point had 11 members may be down to 5 by the end of the week. They have no executive director signed on and their enrollment policy is up in the air — they can’t decide whether to open with 4-7 as their application asserted or try and shift to k-2. All this in the face of a looming March deadline for their lottery/application process.
This is the organization that Commissioner Mitchell Chester, in his personal and professional opinion, judged as “viable” in direct contradiction to the Charter School Office’s evaluation and negative recommendation.
If this is the process in place for ramming even more charters into communities rather than addressing the issue of improving education for all children then we are in for a very bumpy ride.
There’s a pretty good summary/timeline on this issue: http://www.wickedlocal.com/man…
When you read this, imagine it happening in your community.
JG
Huey Long moves to Massachusetts, and tries to open a school.
I guess that’s why we need to put school prayer law into effect, so The Kingfish will feel at right at home.
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p>Oh my. We spend decades building a culture that celebrates ignorance and therefore has the attention span of one bumper sticker — and look what we get.
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p>This could be a long and tiresome ride.
Roller coasters tend to be quick and terrifying…
Nor could I find the story on the Gloucester Times’s website. Might they have taken it down?
GDT article
This whole thing reminds me of “Vaporware” from the .com days. You have an idea, make all kinds of silly promises about what it can do which it never really can, get people who don’t understand it to fork over huge sums of cash and by the time it all falls apart you have gotten paid and are on to the next thing.
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p>It’s better known as “fraud”.
It seems that no matter which side of the ideological fence one finds oneself on regarding charter schools, there is a growing solidarity behind the notion that Reville is the epicenter of this disaster — check out Pioneer Insitute’s Jim Stergio’s blog posting: http://www.pioneerinstitute.or… Secretary Reville does Mel Gibson — he rightfully admonishes Reville that perhaps he doth protest a wee bit too much.
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p>I just received my fundraising letter from the Patrick campaign saying that this election is about “values.” When he’s got a guy running point on education who considers it acceptable policy to inflict collateral damage on Gloucester’s school children (a tough but necessary pill to swallow) to further a political agenda, I’m stuck wondering if those are the kind of values I want to support. It sure as hell doesn’t entice me to crack my checkbook…
It’s this one issue (Reville and the inequity behind Charters) that has kept my checkbook in my pocket.
The letter from the Governor asking for money also talks about a “new kind of politics”. I’m trying to figure out what values and new kind of politics are reflected in Secretary Reville’s now famous email to Commissioner Chester.
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/d…
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p>At about 5 minutes 30 seconds of the video in the above link, candidate Deval starts a dialog with Natalie Jacobsen about charter funding. Deval Patrick makes the following comment..“We have a funding mechanism that is starving both charter schools and district schools.” The rest of the video is worth listening to and consistently, candidate Deval, cites the need to balance the needs of traditional schools with charter schools. He clearly has a problem with the manner in which charters are funded and says so as a candidate.
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p>So what happened? When did the policy change and why is Paul Reville, Patrick’s Sec of Education, so far off message?
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p>Clearly the Gloucester Charter mess became has everything to do with the imbalance in the funding formula.
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p>So when did Deval Patrick’s position on charter funding change?
The Pioneer piece is remarkable and gets at the issue that I find amazing about the Gloucester Charter discussion. What’s truly remarkable about the mess created by Reville amd Chester is that the backlash is bi-partisan and there are no party affiliations that frame the discussion. From the Pioneer piece..
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p>Kudos to Senator Tarr and Rep. Ferrante for working side by side for the singular purpose of representing their constituents.