Public schools are the heart of rural Missouri. Don’t defund them with vouchers and charters.
I tell you the story of rural schools because we are in a fight to keep our public schools funded and open in Missouri.
How Kansas Parents Take on the Anti-public School Legislature and Score Big
More than a decade after my advocacy for Kansas’ public schools began, I continue to believe in this work.
They called my school a failing school. It never failed me.
Kymberley attended the “failing” Jamaica High School which was closed right after she graduated. Let her tell you her story.
St. Louis Parents Rebel Against Charter Expansion
Supporters of a traditional, democratically run public education system stood up and demanded a moratorium on opening new charter schools.
There Is Nothing Worth Investing In More Than Public Education
Grassroots advocates have shouldered so much of the burden brought on by poor leadership. They do it because it is the right thing to do.
We Tried to Address Racism in Our School District. Then Came the Backlash.
For me, the mission of improving the culture of Carroll ISD is deeply personal. We will continue our unyielding fight for equity.
A Future Without Public Education Is Not Survivable
Public education is our path forward towards building that beautiful world where we can all survive and thrive.
Could the era of high-stakes tests be coming to an end?
None of us know what’s coming next. We know that Florida’s “accountability” experience will change; but we don’t know it will improve.
Sixteen Years after Katrina, New Orleans’ Parents Are Still Demanding a Voice
Sometimes I feel like a broken record when it comes to the schools in New Orleans. Sixteen years after Hurricane Katrina almost destroyed my hometown, and the city’s charter school experiment started, I’m still out here making the same demands. We need schools that meet the needs of and care for the children of this city. We need professionally trained teachers who look like the children they’re teaching. Our children deserve art, music and critical multicultural pedagogy that prepares kids for the world they’re stepping into. And we deserve counselors to help kids address the trauma they’ve lived through. And we deserve schools that don’t criminalize our children for being poor.
New Orleans’ is held up as a model by education reform advocates, but I refer to what we have here as ‘pretend choice.’ Our all charter system was sold to parents and the community as one that would give us choices and options, but at times it seems like we have fewer options than we had before Katrina.
Take the refusal to provide parents with a virtual learning option during this school year. For months, parents have been signing petitions, holding press conferences and showing up at the school board to demand a virtual option. And we’ve gotten nowhere.The official reason is that our students experienced learning loss during the pandemic. In fact, the Superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools claims that the city will lose “a generation of students” if virtual learning continues. I see it differently. To me this looks like the same pattern we’ve seen since Katrina as education officials ignore, not just the demands of the community, but the realities that we live with.
Children in New Orleans have some of the highest rates of asthma and allergies in the country, meaning that they have a higher risk of getting, spreading, and being impacted by COVID. This is also a city filled with front-line workers. They’re the grocery store workers and janitors, garbage men and window cleaners who keep New Orleans’ tourist economy going. They’re also parents, many of them living in multi-generational homes—the only way they can afford to live in a city with skyrocketing rents.
And because our all charter school system requires moving kids all over the city on school buses, you have kids being exposed to and exposing their families to COVID. What about safety precautions on the buses? As is so often the case with our decentralized system, no one is in charge or accountable; neither city hall nor the school district has oversight of school bus safety. In fact, when a local news station did an investigation, they found that only 16% of the more than 700 buses that transport our kids are even licensed.
The current policy is that parents or guardians can request a virtual option if they submit an official form that’s been completed by a medical professional. But the form is only in English, which leaves out our large community of undocumented students. Then there’s the problem that families without health insurance may not have a medical professional to go to. Even if families are able to navigate this process, it’s still up to the individual charter school to decide whether or not to honor the request. One parent at our press conference told the story of trying to get a virtual option for her children because their grandmother lives with them and is going through chemo for pancreatic cancer. The request was turned down because the grandmother isn’t a primary caregiver.
After Hurricane Ida shut down the schools in September, I started pushing for the sorts of services that I knew our traumatized kids would need when they returned: emotional support, music and art therapy—the same things we needed so badly after Katrina. I want our schools to make a sincere effort to understand what our children have just been through. Did they have to stay in a dark smelly house for days? Are they terrified that, in a hurricane city, it’s only a matter of time before this happens again? Don’t go back to just pretending everything is OK.
I’ve never stopped advocating for the children of this city and I never will. I can’t. I have two kids in this system. Yet it’s painful that after all of this time my basic demand—that this city and its schools recognize our needs and humanity—is still unheard. How hard is it for us to care for each other? Hear the parents and the children of this city. That’s all I’m asking.
How I Got Scammed by My Charter School’s False Promises
I knew something was seriously wrong as soon as I saw the budget of the charter school my kids attended. As a member of the school site council, I was on the budget committee. Now, as I looked at the numbers, I could see for myself how dire the situation was. The school was paying five times fair market value to lease a property from a shell company created by the former CEO of the charter management company. We were on a fast track to bankruptcy.
How did a charter school created by parents and teachers morph into a series of shell corporations and a money-making scheme so complex that the Securities and Exchange Commission would ultimately step in? The story begins nearly two decades ago with budget cuts. Like districts all over California, the Livermore schools had been forced to make deep cuts, including shuttering two beloved magnet schools. The Livermore Valley Charter School, which opened in 2005, emerged from a grassroots desire to provide art, music and science—all of the things our district schools were being forced to eliminate.
To me it sounded like the promise of Disneyland: a private school education at a public school price. While classes in the public schools had 25+ kids in a class, the charter would cap its class sizes at 20. I bought into it–hook, line and sinker.
Within a few years after opening, the K-8 school was in financial freefall. That’s when the CEO proposed an ambitious plan that would not just save the school but create a high school as well as acquire two additional schools in Stockton. By the time my son started at Livermore Valley Charter in 2012, I was already hearing whispers about the company that now ran the school: Tri Valley Learning Corporation. By 2015, when my kids were in kindergarten and third grade, signs that something was seriously awry were impossible to ignore.
With visions of becoming a major charter management organization, the CEO and the board of TVLC, had embarked on a property acquisition scheme involving numerous shell companies. One “company” bought the property, then leased it back to the school. In the event of bankruptcy, the shell company would walk away with the title. The whole enterprise was backed by millions of dollars of bonds secured by using the charter school students’ public funding as collateral. Yet another scheme created a private international school to be shared with the high school. Students from China were recruited to attend the school at $30,000 a head, then enrolled as public students to get state funds.
As a member of the school site committee, I could see for myself that something was seriously wrong. When I saw that same attorney was representing Tri Valley Learning Corporation and the various shell companies, I started asking questions—and got a very threatening letter in response. Committee members started receiving “notices of violation” from the District Authorizers regarding TVLC and the multiple schools that it now operated.
By the spring of 2016, the wheels were really coming off. After teachers were told that there wasn’t enough money to pay them, they threatened to stop coming to work. Parents also started organizing. A local investigative reporter began looking into the story, and would end up uncovering layer upon layer of fraud, mismanagement and deception.
Our beloved Principal quit. And TVLC hired a person who had a disturbing public blog, then proceeded to rescind the offer when parents found the blog. TVLC then went on to extend the position of Principal to the man who was under investigation for failure to report the abuse of a child at the High School Campus. This is when I pulled my kids out. When I could no longer trust that my children would be safe on that campus, especially in the event that something could go wrong. And so much had gone wrong already.
Meanwhile the school was falling part. By the fall of 2016, 400 students had left, including my 2 children. Those who stayed were told that they’d have to provide basic supplies, including toilet paper. For the students who experienced the collapse of their school and the disappearance of their teachers, the impact was devastating—like a slow death. By November the charter management organization had filed for bankruptcy. The former CEO would eventually be charged with misleading investors by the SEC.
Today my kids are back in the public school district and I’m much wiser about the dangerous mix of public funds and private corporations. In short, public schools should not be in the hands of private corporations. We need accountability for anything having to do with public funds and the education of our children. While my kids’ school was a public charter school, the board was privately elected, stocked with people who weren’t qualified. By the time parents figured that out, we couldn’t do anything about it. Our school was being run by a company, no longer beholden to us, the parents.
Do you live in California?
If so, stand with Katherine
Here is our suggested message:
The recall election is over. It is now time for serious charter school reform. Put in the safeguards needed to make sure the public and students are protected from fraud and theft. We do not need another A3 or Livermore scandal in the state. Charters should be governed by the elected, not by private boards.
