Opinion: How Sanders would increase funding for public schools

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Over the past few decades, public schools have endured massive budget cuts that often ended up paying for huge tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals. While companies like Amazon pay zero taxes, we are seeing mass school closures and dilapidated classrooms, especially among those in poor communities of color.

(snip)

When parents enroll their children in charter schools, the public funding allocated to those students goes with them. In the Oakland Unified School District, for example, charter schools were costing the district more than $57 million per year. This amount would easily cover the budget shortfall of $56 million over two years that Oakland officials have projected.

(snip)

I am proud to stand with the NAACP, the Movement for Black Lives, the Los Angeles Unified School District, the United Teachers Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles school board in supporting this moratorium, and I applaud California lawmakers for trying to pass legislation to restrict charter school growth.

Sixty-five years after the Brown decision rejected the idea of “separate but equal,” we must reject charter schemes that aim to create a parallel school system to compensate for lack of investment in our public schools,Instead, we must defeat Trump in the election, and commit to providing good quality education to all.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/06/opinion-sanders-on-charter-schools/

[mopinko]

1. he is wrong about charters. that is some fuzzy math.

this idea of "lost" revenue, w/o any accounting for the costs of serving their students is unconscionable, imho.
unless the per pupil funding is a joke that it completely out of line w costs, kids going to charter schools should have zero impact on the local schools.

there are problems w charters, but they are hardly unsolvable. cory booker did it in nj. much of what he did is how we do it in illinois. we have some truly stellar charters in chicago, and few that are problems. and the problem ones never make it past their probation.
the bottom line is to not let them be cash pots. that's about it.
there are tons of dedicated and selfless educators out there w great ideas about education.
a lot of them address the needs of the kids who fall through the cracks of one size fits all public schools.

and fwiw, charters in chicago have not hurt the local schools, they have gutted the catholic school system. long the only alternative in town, when a quality alternative PUBLIC education became available, parents flocked to it.
and i live around the corner from a charter that made the usn&wr list of best in the country.

i strongly support public education, but i dont support the govt monopoly. i live in a city where it has failed too many children, too many communities, for far too long.
there needs to be room for those in the skinny parts of the bell curve, and i dont just mean the iq curve. howard gardener has been saying for decades that there are many intelligences, and the schools only cater to a few. and fewer and fewer every day.
small systems make sense for those "weirdo" kids to get an appropriate education.
and imho, our next great leaders and doers are in high proportion in those kids who "slip through the cracks"

[dsc]

2. You are dead wrong

First school funding is based on first 10 days of enrollment and if a charter school expels a child, closes down, or for any other reason a child returns from the charter school to the public school, the public school gets not one single cent for that child. Second, charter schools often won't take students with IEP's, don't offer lunch at the school, and don't offer transportation. Thus they leave public schools with expensive to educate students, and take out students whose parents have resources.

[mopinko]

3. all easily fixed.

all man made decisions that could be easily adjusted.

i'm giving you the pov of a parent of 5 of those weirdo kids in a big city w a lot of shitty schools.
simple solutions are almost always wrong. no to charters is a great applause line for the leftier than thou, but trust me, parents see it differently.

it is a totally wrong assumption that the kids who leave are not those same "expensive to educate". those kids' failures are expensive to the schools and to the communities.
there is also a great deal of misunderstanding about this issue.
it is just the way it works here that kids who need special services must get them through their local schools. it is also the case that they must fail in multiple settings, which mean at least one other school than the local school.
if they need more than that, they need to go back and enroll in their local school to get them. it isnt "dumping" them. it's how the system is structured.

most parents dont go looking for alternatives for kids who are flourishing in their local schools. they looks for alternatives for kids who are struggling. many of these charters try to serve just these kids. that they are sending them back to the local schools for more services shows me that they are more concerned w kids lives than their seats.



kids have nuanced needs. they need nuanced solutions.
one size fits all is not that.
monopoly is not that.