Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Waiting for Superman

Oh how I would love to have coffee and chat! This is all so complicated partly because charter laws are so different from state to state. Some are more charter friendly but regulated (CA) others are very hard to get a charter approved (I've heard WA and OR) and others it depends on who you know!

Our original buildings were all leftover portables from other district schools. As school district bonds have passed, we have rehabbed or built new buildings. We do have one very large and quite beautiful theatre that was only recently finished. It was funded by bonds, local arts groups donations (who now have a discounted rental rate) and a couple of corporate donations. Up until the theatre was finished, both high schools in our district had better facilities. We now have a comparable theatre to one and the other has all the good athletic facilities.


Our school (like all charters in CA) has a public lottery. The only thing parents have to do is fill out an application and turn it in. We have preference categories where of the 90, the top 30 get in based on their art audition. The other 60 go in preference order- siblings of existing students, transfers from other programs within our school then anyone who lives in our district, then anyone who lives out. The lottery is heartbreaking and usually we end up in tears. If I could teach them all, I would!

What you've said about transportation is completely true. It is hard for many students to get to our school. However, our district has NO student transportation at all. So it's hard for them to get to any school. The city bus goes about 1/2 mile from the school and many students bus in and walk together. But most everyone, like every school in our district :(, walks or gets a ride. Due to budget cuts, this is our second year with no school buses at all. 15,000 kids have to figure out how to get to school.

Our school started 18 years ago and trust me, there were no donations as part of the start up expenses. It was a rickety old place with a crazy guy at the head (who is now our executive director!) Now, when charters start up they receive a statewide "Charter Block Grant" funding to get open. This is part of CA state law that allows startup funds for charters. This is very similar funding to when a district looks to open a new elementary in an area with an expanding population.

Donations now come in through three major fundraising campaigns. Each of the admin team is required to work these as part of their regular job and participate heavily. One is a major student field day where the students run booths and games for local families. Kids come from all over and play silly games or get their face painted and each student program makes money. The dancers teach quick little hip hop lessons, the music kids let the elementary kids "pet" their instruments in the petting zoo, etc.

You mentioned something about test scores and I wanted to speak to that for a second. Our test scores are not fantastic, they are very high average for the area. There are many far better high schools if you're searching for great test scores. We do not put heavy emphasis on test scores, test prep or student achievement data from the state's perspective. Students from 6th grade thru 12th grade spend almost no time in test prep before the high stakes spring test.

We spend a LOT more time teaching critical thinking and analysis. For example, in junior year, each student has to choose an American Artist to research and write an analytical paper (usually 8-10 pages) and present on the impact his/her artist made on American history. It can be any artist in the past 200 years and students choose a huge variety from painters and dancers to modern rappers. This is a huge cross curricular project that panels of 3 teachers work on with the kids.

We pay a lot more attention to SAT scores, college acceptance rates and how many of our students actually stay and finish college. It's a long range view beyond high school and we've taken a LOT of criticism for it because we don't heavily prep the kids for testing. But if you're looking out at a room of 40 students who are all artistically minded, usually daydreamy and thinking about the song they're writing or the painting left unfinished, bubbling pages after pages just doesn't work well.

Dottie- we have one city bus that runs the major north/south road through our neighborhood. It runs every 30 min on weekdays. That's it. From most big city perspectives, we don't have any public transportation either ;-) It is all downtown or in the bedroom communities.

We have recently pulled DD from a highly rated charter. Though the charter had some great things about it, it was very small, and really lacks the resources of a larger school. At various points we were actually concerned that DD might be kicked out. She occasionally melts down at school and there were simply no staff available to deal with this, as the school reminded us in tones of horror. Also, certain important school staff did not like her and in a school of this size, it was really an issue. Finally, they did not follow the proper legal procedures regarding G and T testing or IEPs. We feel the school has major bright spots but that power is mostly in the hands of one person, and oversight is lacking. In some ways, it is rather frightening. The school also tacitly discourages parents of children with special needs of any kind from enrolling. I know of other parents who have left the school for this reason--the child's educational needs were just not being met. The school DOES cherry-pick and is pretty open about this (our state's laws are somewhat vague on this).

The charter also does not offer buses or after-school care and recruits almost entirely through word of mouth, which ends up meaning the people who go there tend to know each other (the kids also often went to all the same preschools). They make virtually no effort to reach out to less advantaged students, and their enrollment reflects this. In a city that is about 50% minority, it is about 10% minority.

Overall, I have very mixed feelings about charters. I recognize that the system is in crisis overall and that some charters do excellent work and can really help certain kids. Our zoned school is absolutely not an option and I'm grateful that we have charters available, but they are a band-aid at best, and have some real drawbacks.

This is why the charters need to be based in the community they serve and entrance acceptance needs to be random or biased to families whose parents made poor choices earlier in their life, but who now are willing to make the commitment to do better.

Mr W has meltdowns from time to time and its a lot of hard work to get him to see that boo-hoo does not get him what he wants. We've come up with skits with his toys to get him to see how self control works better. He gets to do the skits for us and slowly it is making a difference. ( I got the idea for this from this forum. )

I disagree, because that effectively rewards parents who have "made poor choices" and punishes those who do not. My wife and I have worked to provide a stable and comfortable (but not extravagant) life for our children, and it bothers me when schools designate our children as "privileged" and therefore less worthy of certain educational opportunities.

I agree with Bostonian. Fair is fair.

I agree that Social Justice is as bad as racism.

But.

The original reason for charters and vouchers is because there are many poor areas and minority areas where the kids can be turned around by providing a stable, high-expectations environment for their education. This is done by rewarding the schools that succeed and penalizing the schools that fail.

It is very easy to set up a charter school and cherry pick kids. Its another to do it in the middle of the largest and poorest areas and make it work.

Which is harder - getting a bunch of kids whose parents are college grads and expect them to place in the top 10% of tests or taking kids from the other areas and get them to place in the top 30%? In which case are the expectations higher and the demands on the kids higher - and the comparable demands on the parents higher?

I do not think kids should be deliberately punished for their parents' errors. Every kid deserves to be educated to the best of their abilities.

In CA, the original reason for charters was to allow small educational experiments to begin and to be replicated in bigger schools and districts if they worked. You see some charters in academy models, some in technical models, some in residential school models. It is supposed to be a one-size fits some organization. The original charter law in CA had nothing to do with building up poor areas or supporting minority education. Some people started charters in these areas because of the ability enter education without a lot of fuss. It was easy to simply do no worse than the local school and still look better. Others had a true commitment to social justice and closing the achievement gap. But this wasn't and isn't the national intention of the charter school movement.


It is also illegal in many states to cherry pick students. A lottery is a lottery- numbers go in, numbers come out. Some charters are allowed lottery preferences where a certain percentage of students get in based on Title I, Free and reduced lunch eligibility etc. But it's still a lottery.

That's really the rub, isn't it? It's sad to me that we have to consider at all which kids get the "good" schools because of the type of community they live in.

Dottie,
That is our problem in Illinois as well. Property taxes are what drives school funding. How is that fair to kids in poor neighborhoods? The affluent areas here have better schools. And in areas where they have capped how much funding they can receiev, the parents (in affluent areas) have started school foundations which make donations to the local school for various needs.