In the below report from Oakland in the New York Times many will see similarities of the concerns currently being raised in Boston regarding the Boston Compact, the privatization of public education, unified enrollment, Eli Broad, and, oh yes, budget cuts…
The 70 teachers who showed up to a school board meeting here recently in matching green and black T-shirts paraded in a circle, chanting, ‘Charter schools are not public schools!’ and accusing the superintendent of doing the bidding of ‘a corporate oligarchy.’
The superintendent, Antwan Wilson, who is an imposing 6-foot-4, favors crisp suits and Kangol caps and peers intensely through wire-rimmed glasses, has become accustomed to confrontation since he arrived in this activist community from Denver two years ago. One board meeting last fall reached such a fever pitch that police officers moved in to control the crowd.
Mr. Wilson is facing a rebellion by teachers and some parents against his plan to allow families to use a single form to apply to any of the city’s 86 district-run schools or 44 charter campuses, all of which are competing for a shrinking number of students…
…A few weeks ago, at another board meeting, teachers protested the proposal to unify district schools and charters under one enrollment process.
Mr. Wilson says that a single application form, where parents rank their choices among all schools and students are assigned through a computer algorithm, will reduce the ability of well-connected parents to place their children in the most desirable schools and force charters to be more open about how they admit students. Similar systems have been put in place in Washington and New Orleans and are being considered in Boston.
Opponents fear the proposal would simply hasten an exit of more students from district schools to charters. On a recent Sunday, Kim Davis, co-founder of a new parent group, explained her concerns to 19 people crowded into the living room of a fellow parent. If district schools are diminished, ‘teachers will be laid off, students displaced, and schools will close,’ Ms. Davis warned, ‘which just adds to the downward spiral of the district as a whole.’