If
If it is owned and operated by the local community and their duly elected representatives. If you can call the people who run your school to talk about your school, and it's not a long distance call, that might be a public school. If your school is run by a board of directors who must all stand for election by the taxpayers who foot the bill for your school, you are probably a public school.
If it is operated with financial transparency. If any taxpayer can walk into the main district office and request a copy of the budget and receive a copy, that's a public school system. If you have the opportunity to call or meet with those local elected board members t argue about how your tax dollars are being spent, it's probably a public school.
If it cannot turn down a single student from your community. Your school system may sort students into specialized schools, or it may pay the cost of sending Very Special Need students to Highly Specialized schools, but it cannot ever deny unilaterally responsibility for students just because they cost a lot of money or require specialized programs or just fail to behave compliantly. If your school system can't wave a student off and say, "She's not our problem," your system is probably a public school system.
If it provides students and staff the full amount of appropriate legal protections, it could be a public school.
If it operates in a building owned by the taxpayers, it could well be a public school.
If it operates under the assumption that it will stay in operation for as long as the community wants it there, and plans to be there for generations irregardless of how well the "business" is doing, it is probably a public school.
And if your school does not make budgeting choices based on the notion that the less money spent on the students, the more money some private individual gets to pocket, that's a healthy sign of a public school.
If it meets all these standards, then your charter school is indeed a public school. If not-- well, it may be a lovely, delightful, popular school, but it is not a public school. A private school that collects public tax dollars is still a private school.
And if your public school system no longer meets these standards (if, for instance, your elected local board has been replaced with state or mayoral control, that's a sign that somebody is trying to privatize it, and may have partially succeeded.
You can say that a pig is a cow. You can dress it up in a cow suit and just keep insisting over and over that it's a cow, correcting everyone who says differently. But at the end of the day, when you butcher it, you still get pork.
If your charter school can be forced to accept students they are not suited for, the students your school could help will suffer.
ReplyDeleteIf your charter school cannot kick out behavioral problems, the students who do follow the rules will suffer.
If your charter school leases a public school building, that means the local school district needs the revenue, not that your school should be subject to the special-interest rules they are bound by.
If your charter school must adopt cumbersome union contracts and seniority rules, you will not be able to remove unqualified teachers who should have retired years ago.
If your charter school can be run by an elected school board, that board will be taken over by the teacher's unions.
If however, your school puts students' education first, if it works alongside parents instead of against them, if it acknowledges that 1 student rolling on the floor of a classroom screws up learning for everyone else, it might be a very good school.
Regardless of whether it's charter or public.
Good Morning!
ReplyDeleteWondering if I can have your permission to post this blog post in my local newspaper?
Dan Kenley
Sure
DeleteAnother brilliant post! Thanks, Peter.
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. However: Irregardless?!!
ReplyDeleteThis is going directly to my FB page FWIW.
ReplyDelete