We car pool my child 17 miles (one way) every day to one of the charter schools in Gwinnett funded by tax dollars, because we were concerned about what we had heard from parents who had children in the public high school nearest to where we live. We also pay property tax, and for all of the aids our child uses including copies of handouts. We get no tax credit or anything special concession from Gwinnett County, because the school system does not provide transportation for any of the students going to this school.

This school like so many others is not perfect, however, we do not have to worry about our child’s safety (this child was teased and bullied all through middle school) which is not a distraction for either the child or us. The curriculum is HARD and WORKS the students’ butt off to the point of exhuastion. There is no easy “A’s” as had become the norm for children in middle school. Only time will tell if this charter school has been successful in actually educating these children and not just teaching them to take a test.

Maybe the perpetual stagantion which cause redundancies and failures are because if you look at the tenure of many members of the various school baords, many of them have been on the boards for a very long time. In Gwinnett County there is one lady who has served continuously for thirty-seven (37) years, her marignal rate of effectiveness becomes an increasing rate of diminished effectiveness (i.e. it is a fact of life that in any endeavor one engages in, one tends to become redundant and ineffective after a such a long period of time if there is no re-education). Maybe we should start looking at term limits for these board members, we cannot use the same sets of people for such extended periods of time and expect different results!

Really, this reminds me of the later start-date debate. A bunch of parents got a couple of legislators to propose a state-wide start-date a few years ago after they were unable to convince their local board to continue with longer summers (largely because most parents, teachers, and admins in that district actually liked the shorter summer, early start calendar). Or the bill to mandate that multiples be placed in the same classroom at parents’ request that 1) didn’t have any provision for parental requests to separate their kids even though it was supposedly a bill about parental choice, 2) gave the schools no right to separate siblings if being together caused classroom disruptions, and 3) had no age limit — that’s right, folks, high schools would have to have given 17-year-old twins matching schedules if parents wanted it. That bill came about because of inflexible policies by some schools on keeping multiples separated (parents were rightfully angry), but instead of building a framework to help parents and admins work together, Chip Rodgers sided with one interest group and tried to narrowly mandate policy for every classroom in the state.

The state legislature should not be in the business of regularly changing state law to benefit people who have lost their battles at the local level. The state approving charters that local boards have denied and diverting state dollars to those schools sends a very strong message of support for charter schools. It’s state money, so while I could see arguments against it, the legislature deciding to make distribution of those funds a state rather than local decision is reasonable. Overruling the local board’s decision and diverting local funds, though, is a very bad move that dismisses both the board and the majority of residents who elected them to make those decisions.

Chartering—which should be viewed as a process of bottom up redesign, allows one to play with more variables in that redesign and therefore allows for the possibility of “order of magnitude” change. But that change must have the “permission and buy-in” because all change requires an element of risk and no child should be experimented on without some degree of parental permission. For more and more parents, especially those that can’t afford the “move to a good school or put your kid in private” game—charter’s are the only thing different from the low expectations “take what I give you and like it, cause it’s all your worth” message from the traditional low SES school that is their assigned prison.

And so superintendents and local BOE’s usually find it more comfortable to sit with the status quo (which means they are in charge and stay in charge).

I seem to recall a piece of legislation in the last session to make some changes to the expectations on local school board members. It died… And so chartering is the detour. When the school board/ fix my local school path is closed, I’ll take whatever will get my child to the destination that I see for him, not the one implicit in the status quo…