How to get free money
It is really pretty shocking that even the lamest charter school proposals — like the aforementioned Willow Education and Sputnik — seem to automatically get a $450,000 war chest from the California Department of Education. I asked around about this and was told by someone at the CDOE that they get to spend $45,000 just on the sales pitch to school districts, almost no questions asked. The rest is just startup seed money.
With a little research I could find out how much the CDOE has budgeted for seed money for these scams — as usual coming out of our kids' education resources — but I almost don't want to know.
And of course that's on top of the private money. The proposal from the Coalition for Essential Schools to start yet another charter HS in the Bayview has Gates Foundation funding. That proposal was withdrawn from last night's agenda, apparently to be discussed later; I have no idea why.
— Caroline
With a little research I could find out how much the CDOE has budgeted for seed money for these scams — as usual coming out of our kids' education resources — but I almost don't want to know.
And of course that's on top of the private money. The proposal from the Coalition for Essential Schools to start yet another charter HS in the Bayview has Gates Foundation funding. That proposal was withdrawn from last night's agenda, apparently to be discussed later; I have no idea why.
— Caroline
3 Comments:
Why are they "the lamest"? Could you explain, please. I saw both proposals, and think both of them could be real success stories for San Francisco.
Willow Education, the outfit proposing one of the charters, runs a low-performing, segregated (by the standards SFUSD is required to adhere to) school in Oakland. That's its total track record. Do we need a low-performing, segregated school in SFUSD?
Its proposal significantly underbudgeted for some of the amenities it plans to offer; it relies entirely on free volunteer labor to run its afterschool program; and it proposed to pay teachers far less than SFUSD does. Teachers can't afford to live in the pricey Bay Area on what SFUSD pays them, let alone less. These are clearly major flaws.
All those concerns apply to the Sputnik proposal too, except that its organizers have NO track record running schools. Its proposal ostensibly is for a school focusing on Russian language, amth and science, but reportedly barely mentions math and science. Even those who are otherwise charter supporters are concerned that the school would likely (probably deliberately) be segregated.
These schools would be run by private entities aswerable to no one, unaccountable to and ungoverned by our democratically elected school board. For this, we would be draining resources from and doing harm to our existing schools.
Dear Caroline,
You are probably very busy to research this yourself, so I would like to give you some details. SPUTNIK math curriculum was approved by the UC Berkeley and Stanford Departments of Mathematics as well as Math and Science Research Institute, which are some of the top academic institutions in mathematics in the world. Additionally, I would also like to tell you, that Russian educational model in mathematics is proven to be one of the strongest; and in fact, schools with similar curriculums exist in the US already. One of them is a charter school in Boston area: http://www.amsacs.org
If you are still concerned, please take a look at the results of the 2006 National Math Competition School Honor Roll
http://www.unl.edu/amc/e-exams/e4-amc08/e4-1-8archive/2006-8a/2006-amc8schHonorRoll.shtml
You will see above mentioned school on the list along with the private school called Russian School of Mathematics. There is only one San Francisco school that made the list, Chinese American International. Even Lowell did not make it. So please, do not worry about it being the lamest. Not all charter schools are alike.
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