Tag Archives: Elections

Q: Why are so many states pushing charter schools now? A: ALEC


Michigan, Massachusetts,
and


New Jersey,
plus Georgia.
Why are so many states attempting pro or con charter school referendums
this year?
Because many states have a push for charter schools,
especially

Louisiana.
Where’s that coming from, at the same time in so many states?
ALEC, that’s where.

Ed Anderson wrote for The Times-Picayune 12 January 2011,

Gov. Bobby Jindal says charter school proposal is based on Florida initiative,

Jindal said his proposal will be fashioned on

a Florida law known as
“Charter-Schools-in-the-Workplace Initiative” which also has been
introduced in 14 other states.

Excuse me?
Which “also has been introduced in 14 other states”?
Then it’s not just a Florida law, is it?
And who introduced it?

Mattreichel wrote for FireDogLake 5 April 2012,

Jindal Puts Louisiana’s Schools Up for Sale: ALEC’s Education Reforms Rammed Through

Continue reading →

Louisiana, the poster child for private school privatization

The poster child for charter school privatization is Louisiana.
It started in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,
but the man-made education disaster has spread to the whole state.

Mattreichel wrote for FireDogLake 5 April 2012,

Jindal Puts Louisiana’s Schools Up for Sale: ALEC’s Education Reforms Rammed Through

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has wasted no time this legislative


session in pushing wide-reaching education reforms designed to
expand the charter school footprint, while opening the door to
vouchers and tying teacher tenure to student test results. In the
early hours of the morning on March 23rd, after a marathon session,
the Louisiana State House passed two bills that form the core of a
wide-reaching education reform agenda designed to expand the charter
school footprint, while opening the door to vouchers and tying
teacher tenure to student test results. Governor Bobby Jindal wasted
no time in pushing these reforms through in the first weeks of the
legislative session, and the urgency with which he has advanced this
agenda has infuriated teachers and left even some charter-school
advocates alarmed. “The governor’s expression of urgency for
these bills is specious at best. [They] did not have to be passed
under cover of darkness,” says Louisiana Federation of
Teachers (LFT) president Steve Monaghan. Even Senator Mary Landrieu,
a Democrat who has been an avid charter school advocate, criticized
the Governor’s haste: “I am by no means naïve, and know full
well the Administration’s political advantage of pushing legislation
through with as little debate as possible.” With these bills,
Louisiana is set to join Florida, Ohio and Minnesota amongst the
states that have enacted the most far-reaching of these school
reforms. This marks the latest wave in a concerted nation-wide
effort by right-wing advocacy organizations and their corporate
supporters to ravage the public sector.

While “reform” usually has connotations of “making better”,
in this case, “better” means more profit for private school companies,
not better education for students.

Why would Louisiana’s legislators vote for something so counterproductive
for education?

Continue reading →

JC Cunningham against the charter school amendment and for HD 175



JC Cunningham, running for Georgia House District 175
against incumbent Amy Carter,

spells out his opposition to the charter school amendment.
-jsq


Video by George Boston Rhynes for bostongbr on YouTube.

Actually, it's even worse than JC indicates, because
because
HB 797 specifies more money per pupil for charter than for public schools,
and the difference has to be made up out of local sales or property taxes.

-jsq

Charter school referendum in New Jersey?

Here’s another potential charter school referendum
that

BallotPedia doesn’t seem to have caught yet, in New Jersey.

John Mooney wrote for NJ Spotlight 3 February 2012,

Assembly Committee Votes to Put Charters Under Local Control:
Bill calls for local referendum on any school that wants to be granted a charter in a NJ district,

The Assembly education committee yesterday moved a bill that would


give local voters the right to approve new charters in their home
districts. If passed by both houses, the law would make New Jersey
only the third state to require charter schools to face a local
referendum.

First proposed last year, the new bill has been toughened for the
new session. Amendments filed with the bill would make those
referendums retroactive for as many as 30 urban and suburban schools
awaiting their final charters.

The votes would come after the state’s preliminary approval, but
often as much as a year can lapse before the final charter is
granted and a school can open.

NJ bill A1877 seems to have

gotten stuck in the NJ state Senate Education Committee back in May.
It has 21 sponsors, starting with

Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex),
shown in the picture above.

Related bill A2147

got as far as a second reading in the Assembly in February.

Charter schools in Georgia already have to be approved by local school boards.
Let’s not give up that local control.
Vote No on the charter school referendum in November.

-jsq

What other states have had charter school referendums?

Thanks to Jim Galloway, we learned that charter school proponents say

“No other state has had a positive outcome for a charter-positive ballot initiative.”
OK, what other states have had any sort of charter school referendums?
Such ballot initiatives have at least been tried in

Massachusetts,

Michigan,
and

Washington.

BallotPedia

records some state charter school referendums.

Massachusetts



In Massachusetts,

charter school proponents couldn’t even get enough signatures to put a
pro-charter school referendum on the ballot this year.

The measure would have removed limits on number of charter schools,
their funding, and enrollment. Other changes would have been made in
laws that governed charter schools, including requiring approval of
qualified applications for charter schools to be in districts where
there was low student performance.

Michigan

In Michigan,

a referendum to ban for-profit charter schools
may be on the ballot in November:

Continue reading →

Support for charter school referendum falling?

A recent poll shows markedly lower support

Georgia Charter School Polls
for the November charter school
referendum than polls in March and July, which were already down from January.
At this rate, the charter school referendum can lose as badly in November
as T-SPLOST did in July.
Maybe people are catching on that diverting local taxes to control by
a state appointed body is a bad idea,
especially this time when the money would end up going to private profit.

Georgia Family Council wrote, presumably in January,

Poll Shows Support for Charter School Changes,

On January 24, the Georgia Charter School Association and My School,
My Choice Georgia held a news conference on Capitol Hill to release
the results of a new study regarding public school choice….

The new numbers showed that 52 percent of voters are dissatisfied
with the public system as it currently stands. A whopping 72 percent
feel that a group other than local school boards should be able to
authorize charter schools, the basis for HB 881. Moreover, Georgia
voters tend to support a “money follows the child” approach to
charter school funding.

So there’s a baseline for January for what proponents
of charter schools claimed: 72% support for something very like
the charter school referendum that ended up on the November ballot.

Or not.
That writeup includes a link to

georgiaschoolchoice.com,
but that domain is no longer registered.
This is probably it over on

the snazzy new gacharters.org website.
The gacharters.org writeup doesn’t mention 72%, and does say:

Continue reading →

Charter school preamble biased like T-SPLOST?

T-SPLOST proponents are up to their old tricks again,
starting with the preamble to the charter school referendum.
And

Bert “Little Goose” Brantley,
formerly of Lowndes County, defends that wording.

Paul Crawley wrote for 11alive.com September 12 2012,

Is Charter Schools Amendment wording biased?

Here we go again, apparently another ballot issue with questions
about whether it’s worded fairly.

First, it was the July 31st transportation sales tax issue, known as
T-SPLOST, which Georgia voters rejected overwhelmingly.

Opponents howled when they found out the ballot preamble wording
promised to “create jobs” and “relieve traffic congestion”.

Now, opponents of a November ballot question are also crying foul.



They’re upset over the preamble wording for the Charter School
Commission Amendment.

It reads, “Provides for improving student achievement and parental
involvement through more public charter school options.”

How can the preamble say that?

Continue reading →

“No other state has had a positive outcome for a charter-positive ballot initiative” —former T-SPLOST proponents now pushing charter schools

The same people who pushed the failed T-SPLOST tax referendum
on the July primary ballot are now pushing the charter school referendum
on the November general election ballot.
Four of their leaders are the same specific individuals,
including one from right here in Lowndes County.
They’re pushing something they admit has failed in every other state.
Let’s not be the first to fall for it.



According to the

Georgia Charter Schools Association (GCSA),

No other state has had a positive outcome for a
charter-positive ballot initiative

So even one of the major proponents of charter schools admits
no other state’s voters have thought they were a good idea.
Their slides
lay out a pair of statewide major money campaigns to push the referendum anyway.

We know about this because these slides fell into the hands of
the AJC, and
Jim Galloway published them today, saying:

Continue reading →

Resigning from Planning Commission; suggest appoint Jody Hall —John Page @ LCC 2012-09-11



John Page, recent winner of the Republican Primary for
Lowndes County Commission District 5,
spoke as a citizen wishing to be heard in

yesterday’s Commission meeting.
He said he was resigning from his appointed post on the Planning Commission
effective 31 December 2012


because he sees it as a conflict with his upcoming elected position as a
County Commissioner, plus he said he does not have time to do both.
(Since there is no Democratic or other candidate for District 5,
Page will be the Commissioner.)
Page recommended

his primary runoff opponent Jody Hall
as his replacement on the Planning Commission.

Update 2012-09-20: Fixed video embedding.

Here’s

the video:


Resigning from Planning Commission; suggest appoint Jody Hall —John Page

Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),

Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE), Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 September 2012.

I commend John Page for both of his decisions, and for announcing all this
in a public meeting in front of a video camera.
Maybe as a County Commissioner he will support transparency.
And I commend Jody Hall for being willing to serve on the Planning Commission.
Maybe as a Planning Commissioner he will support transparency.

-jsq

Charter school bait and switch

Proponents of the state-forced charter school constitutional amendment

Mr. Moneybags
on the November ballot have a

website
that is full of bait and switch.
Most of it is about what they claim are the benefits of charter schools.
But that’s not what the referendum is about.
Local school boards can already authorize charter schools,
and many of them have.
The referendum would change the Georgia Constitution to authorize
an appointed state board to force charter schools on local elected school
boards that don’t want them,

granting more money per student than in public schools,
with

the difference to be made up from local property and sales taxes.
The most substantive thing I have found on the proponents’ website
says that last is not so, but unconvincingly.

Tony Roberts, President of Georgia Charter Schools Association wrote
to All Charter School Leaders and Board Members
7 August 2012,

Response to Letter from Herb Garrett of Georgia Superintendents Association,


Tony Roberts
One final, but important point, local school superintendents and
board members were adamantly against any local dollars going to
charter schools that were denied by a local school board. The final
version of HB 797 was negotiated to ensure that was the case —
the language is written right there into the law. So, to recap, they
insist on no local money going to state-approved charters, and then
get upset about the state money going to charters.

Curiously, he doesn’t cite that purported language.
The closest thing I can find in

HB 797
is

a paragraph I already quoted:

Continue reading →