A raw feed from Ross Catrow at RVA News.

More on gentrification. A laughable comment: “...gentrification is here and after the change of Richmond’s charter to a Mayor-at-Large system, the white takeover is in progress.” Hmmm. For 30 years, the City of Richmond has been a laughing stock for lousy government, silly projects, racial animosity, poor schools and high murder rate. Hmmm. So gentrification--whites returning to the city--is bad?

Wasn’t there a famous comment about “the color of their skin...content of their character...?”

Please increase my taxes for schools, public, private, charter, I don’t care. Just make me provide more money for schools. Suburbs don’t need it, but pour more into the inner city. Go Richmond!

What is the old saying? “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Does it apply to those inner city schools? Naw! Just spend more money.

Bob,

Some charter schools may have failed miserably in the past but Richmond is ripe for this latest attempt. There really is a need to think out of the box, or to put it another way, there is less to lose by trying. If test scores are low now hard to do much worse than that.

One thing Richmond wants to avoid is lack of accountibility. They should have reporting and review after a startup period of a few years, and regular access to the classrooms from the SB or their representatives. This is particularly true of charter schools which operate as for profit.

Profit incentive and education don’t always mix well. I don’t see anything wrong with PHI designing the curriculum but the SB should have oversight to how well it works.

If the schools are left with debt, that is still just debt for buildings and salary for education, i.e. debt that would have existed to some extent regardless. Debt to educate.

One way to avoid having this balloon out of control is to leave the Charter school books open to and accountible to the SB.

Susan : Let me re-phrase that. I have read allegations from the Richmond Defender that the Lexington Institute was involved in advising the some of the parents.  I should have written that better. Maybe I need to go back to school.

Secondly, Charter Schools are not the panacea everyone thinks they will be. There have been Dept of education Fed) studies that show Charter schools have the following problems.

!. Results are no better or worse overall than public schools.
2. They have high teacher turn over rates at about 40%.
3. Many of the corporate sponsors later renege on the money leaving Charter Schools in the lurch with tax payers picking up the tab. Riverhead School in Long Island, NY was left with a debt of 4 million to the Edison School, a for profit charter school sponsor. Source (Newsday)
4. While Charter schools do serve a lot
of low income minority students, they have been lax in serving Special ed students.
5. Once up and running, they are hard to close if they fail to meet their objectives. Political pressure from parents, what to do with the closed school , what to do with staff, not wanting to admit it failed to deliver, potential debt all work against their closure.
5. In might also be added that there are about 4,100 charter schools in the nation. There would be more but about 400 have been shut down.
6. There have been complaints from some teachers, that in some not all areas, Charter Schools in collusion with school boards and the sponsors do not equalize teacher pay or working conditions. That might explain some of the 40% teacher turnover rate.

Personally, to me, its here we go again. Another panacea from the Education Industry to promise miracle results from a new innovation. Pandering to parental fears, promising miracle results, every child a potential Harvard grad, if only this, only that.
And that leads to another question.
Why was Patrick Henry School shut down to start with only to re-appear as a canidate to be a wonder-cure Charter school.

Bob - are you saying the Lex. inst. has conspired to close the Patrick Henry school 2 years ago in order to open a segregated charter school?  come on.  that is RIDICULOUS.  In fact, why don’t you read the application at http://www.patrickhenrycharter.org.  If you open your eyes and you mind you might see that the intention is for this school to be racially, ethnically, economically diverse.  Per the latest census a 1 mile radius around the school is 68% African America.  As for the lex. inst. they will show up anytime you do a search for charter school resources in the state of Virginia.  that’s what they are - an early source listed as a charter school supporter - they have given NO money to PHSI and have had NO hand in developing the charter application.

I have heard that the Lexington Institute, a right wing neo-con think tank, is advising this project. If this is the case, them maybe the NAACP is not as off the wall as Bart thinks. Reading their mission statement, they sound like the old White Citizen’s Council. The source is a small paper, the Richmond Defender.

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