Who will protect vulnerable schools?

The Chronicle coverage of the flap over the Excelsior and Denman situations gets it right in pointing to encroachment by charter schools as the problem here.

"Blindsiding ethnic minority school communities to appease aggressive charter school machinations is an injustice," Denman parent Craig Wong told the Chron's Jill Tucker.

Tucker's article sums it up here:

The district is required under the state's Proposition 39 to provide classroom facilities to charter schools that request space. Charter schools and their advocacy groups have filed lawsuits against school districts that they say don't fulfill the complicated requirements under the law.

San Francisco Unified has been threatened with such suits, which means the school board can legally meet behind closed doors to hammer out agreements and settlements with the specific charters, district officials said.

"It isn't that the staff hasn't considered the impact on the school," said school board member Jill Wynns. "We wouldn't do any of this if we didn't have to."

In following news coverage about charter schools around the state, I've seen many, many articles about situations like this: charter school demands space; school district has no choice but to come up with some; existing school (somehow always one serving low-income minorities) protests the disruption of having to share space with a second school. Now I'm sorry I haven't been archiving those articles. It's an ongoing problem and one of the ways charter schools harm other schools and their students.

The charter schools have all the power in this situation. The current interpretation of Prop. 39, which requires districts to provide sites for charter schools, allows charters to displace existing programs. The charter schools, I note as usual, are fervently backed by the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations, their own well-funded lobbying groups such as the Center for Education Reform and the California Charter Schools Association, and the whole array of right-wing "think tanks," advocacy groups and policy organizations. Oh, and oceans of funding from the billionaires whose hobby and plaything is school reform, of course.

It's really time for advocates to stop feeling like they can't speak up lest they offend someone and start protesting this situation. As we've seen in SFUSD, it's the schools that largely serve low-income minorities that wind up the targets. Those who defend this situation need to step up and say, "Put it at my school." Miraloma? McKinley?

SFUSD handled this badly. But that is not the root of the problem. The laws giving charter schools the right to do this and the clout to wreak as much havoc as they want are the problem.
I just wonder when the situation will get extreme enough that activists become willing to step on some toes to raise a protest.

Quoting from Sharon Higgins' Perimeter Primate blog:

Some of the primates position themselves at the perimeter of the group - where they sit, and watch.

Their role is to warn the inner, oblivious members of the group about dangers that approach.

I already know the charter folks' responses will be: "Nobody reads your charter rants ... ho hum ... whatever..." As the charter defenders don't seem to have any actual case they can make in response to this and other criticisms, they routinely resort to ridicule. I'm sorry that's the case, because I would like to hear how they defend this situation.