Inflating the resume?

It's troubling to address this, but I've noted two otherwise worthy organizations doing the same thing: listing projects on their websites as done deals when they're actually still in the proposal stages.

The Coalition for Essential Schools is working to start up a new SFUSD high school, the Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice. It certainly isn't in existence yet; they hope to get it going in fall '08. That's still not a done deal.

In at least one spot on the CES website, The Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice is listed as an existing school begun in '05-'06, albeit with a "care of" Oakland mailing address. In another place, it's listed as scheduled to open in '08, which as I say is still not a certainty.

These could be innocuous clerical issues — plans change and not every part of the website gets updated. But when there are millions of dollars in Gates Foundation money at stake, it looks suspicious. I have been asking the organization about the "'05-'06" claim for at least a year, so it's not that they aren't aware that the misinformation is posted.

In the same vein, the San Francisco organization Urban Sprouts, which runs school garden programs, claims in several places on its website to be operating a program at Aptos Middle School.

Each year we work with over 550 youth at five San Francisco public schools: Aptos, Excelsior & Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle Schools; June Jordan School for Equity (high school); and Ida B. Wells Continuation High School.

I'm in my sixth year as an active Aptos parent, and I had never heard a thing about a garden or Urban Sprouts involvement at Aptos. I asked some knowledgeable people at Aptos and they hadn't heard about it either. When I asked Urban Sprouts, the director said they've been in discussion with three Aptos teachers about starting a program at Aptos.

I'm sorry, but that's not the same as "Each year we work" at Aptos. Urban Sprouts' website even describes the Garden Educator who is said to work at Aptos. Marcus Gallegos, "Garden Educator, Excelsior & Aptos Middle Schools, "enjoy(s) teaching kids in a garden environment about gardening, health nutrition, habitats of living species and Mother Nature" and "find(s)it very rewarding to be a part of an effective program that interacts with children and the earth and the connection we all share." (As far as I know, Urban Sprouts DOES have a garden program going at Excelsior Middle School/June Jordan High School, which share a site.)

I just think it looks dubious when organizations that rely on grant funding — which inherently means impressing the funders with how much they're accomplishing — jump the gun on, or amplify, or exaggerate, or misleadingly overstate, their projects. I admire both of these organizations otherwise, but this raises some concerns to me, and if I were funding them, it would raise more. Disclaimer: I don't know if these claims appear in any grant proposals; I only see them on the websites.

And a further disclaimer: While I admire much about the Coalition for Essential Schools, I have issues with the planned Bayview School and have been publicly asking questions about it, to which I haven't gotten answers.