Dear Joint
Committee on Education:
I am the parent
of a 3rd grader
that attends a Boston Public School, the Ellis Mendell K-5 in
Roxbury.
On Tuesday,
February 23rd I
attended a meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary
Education. They were voting on approving some new charter schools and
on the expansion of some others.
Tito Jackson,
the Education chair of the Boston City Council, and Michael O'Neill,
the chair of the Boston School Committee, both testified before BESE
asking them not to add 1119 additional charter seats to Boston as the
proposed seats would remove another $17 million from Boston Public
Schools. The $17 million will be in addition to the $120 million BPS
already sends to commonwealth charters.
People from
Brockton were also testifying at the meeting. They were trying to
prevent a new charter school from opening up. To me, Brockton sounded
to be doing really well. It sounded like people are going to Brockton
to study how they have turned their schools around. The people
testifying said that if the charter school opened Brockton Public
Schools would lose $8 million a year. They said that this would
completely pull the rug out from under them and destroy everything
they had worked so hard for.
BESE eventually
deliberated. They even brought up the subject of “impact” and
should they take that into consideration?
The following
are some of Tracy Novick's notes from that discussion:
So I'm assuming
that no one does an impact study? Really? Someone needs to do an
impact study, because there's definitely
impact.
As it stands
now, the state can come into a district, one that's doing everything
right, one that's doing great with what they have and tell them
“we're putting a new school in to your district, we're going to
make you fund it in addition to your existing school(s), and you have
no say about it and there's nothing you can do about it.”
Am I wrong to
think this is insane(?) to rip millions and millions of dollars away
from existing district schools in the name of helping children?
What these
policies are actually doing is hurting
thousands of children's chances at receiving a good education by
defunding existing schools. It's crazy.
It's wrong, and it harms children.
I'm asking you
to stop this. Please vote no on Bill H3928. We need legislation that
takes into account the impact of forcing new schools into districts.
No more imposed, unasked for, unwanted schools.
