The North Carolina legislature recently voted to expand the number of deregulate, privately managed charter schools in the state. One that opened last fall, StudentFirst Academy in Charlotte, announced that it would close its doors on April 11, leaving nearly 300 students unprepared for state exams and scrambling to find a school.
The school struggled financially almost from its first dy, when enrollment was less than projected. And there were other problems.
“Many employees were laid off in December, after the board fired Head of School Phyllis Handford and Deputy Head Sandra Moss. The board was reacting to a consultant’s report that said the two founders had boosted their own salaries, put Handford’s family members on the payroll, overstaffed on administration, fallen behind on bills and failed to document expenses. Handford and Moss are now suing the StudentFirst board for breach of contract.
“The remaining StudentFirst employees will lose their jobs effective April 15…..”
“When the state approved a budget of $3 million in public money for StudentFirst’s first year, it was based on projections for 432 students. The school opened with 338, and Medley said the latest count he heard was 266. The dwindling enrollment reduced the amount of local and state money available to StudentFirst, though the final tally was not available.”
Parents said they chose the school because it promised strong academics and a cultural arts program.
Privatization and deregulation are perilous.
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/03/4814539/studentfirst-charter-school-to.html#.U0HnyOi9KSO#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My cousin’s children attended a charter in Phoenix until they showed up and the doors were chained; the school was shut down. Just like that. I think it was in April as well.
She had to scramble to get them into the public school and the whole thing was such a mess.
Every school year is a stressor for her; she has to have a Plan A, B and C lined up. She says, “All I want are decent schools my kids can walk to!”
Politicians who tap into her unmet need will sail into office.
When charters close abruptly and hundreds of students return to the public schools, the children’s test results are part of the public schools and their teachers.The VAM will be part of the teachers who were not responsible for those students’ education prior to returning to the receiving schools. However, all the punishment and so-called accountability defaults ALWAYS to the public school and it’s teachers.
Even if charters are not closing, but send SpEd or ELL kids back, public school teachers are held accountable. Can’t win for losing…designed by CorpEdReformers. A perfect world designed by them to inflict pain on teachers for their sick demented pathological needs.
Charters come and go, open doors, close doors, here today gone tomorrow – public schools pick up the broken pieces while the reformers call all the shots for Public Education and make $M on charters, foundations, speeches, conferences,CCSS,Pearson,
Terrible news for the kids. Hate seeing this.
I was thinking the same thing as you mention. And they won’t be included among the charter results.
When will this lunacy end?
In 2012 I wrote:
“But, people say that, if there were “real competition,” good schools would be popping up like mushrooms. Ah, so a school having been open for three years with shiny brochures looks really attractive. So, you bite and give them your child to teach and your voucher to pay for it. Assuming in the first place that the voucher would be enough to pay for it, a very unlikely assumption, what are you going to do when that school declares bankruptcy mid year. (Half of all new businesses fail in the first five years. I know, I have had a few.) They can’t return your voucher as they spent it trying to stay solvent. Home schooling may be an option because the remaining “public” schools will not be in a place to do any charity work.
“When someone gives you an argument like “if there were “real competition,” good schools would be popping up like mushrooms” try to think of counter examples, like, say, the food deserts in black communities. There is a huge need for stores to sell healthy foods in urban black neighborhoods. Do you see the major chains rushing in to fill that need? Do you see anyone rushing in to serve that need? No? Then what makes you think those same neighborhoods will see a rush of good schools cropping up to harvest those school vouchers?”
… and I am not that smart. Why are we falling for the stupid “choice is good” meme?
Question: Do these folks hate students, teachers, and this country? I keep asking myself this question. People learn through cooperation. As one of the students in a K-6 mountain schoolhouse, when asked how we learned together, “We just HELPED one another. Isn’t that what learning is ALL about?” Paste this on the walls of your school everywhere. People have forgotten that more gets done when we cooperate with one another rather than use FALSE COMPETITION to promote BAD stuff.
Diane, I have agreed with your statement about how parents in the future of “all privatized schools”, will hate trying to figure out which school their child will get into each year. That would be an awful thing to have to worry about every summer. I never thought that you might also worry that they will stay open all year. Our children deserve to never have to worry if their school exist next year or next month. Public schools offer that opportunity, charter schools do not.
Imagine if we all had to wonder which highways will be open tomorrow for the commute. Or if we had to wonder whether or not the hospital near us might shut down unexpectedly between Friday and Monday.
This is why public ed cannot be privatized. Americans need and want certain institutions.
Our state has timelines by which students have to be in the public school in order for their test scores to count for the school or district. Do not all states have such timelines?
What is that timeline? and What state?
Thanks!
The madness will end when public schools don’t have to take the kicked out charter students back. Then parents will make the wise choice at the beginning of the year…PUBLIC SCHOOLS. They may serve all (instead of pretending to be elitists) but they do it well and have been doing it for a long time. There are rules in place for budgeting constraints for a reason, public schools are responsible to the public at large, not a small group of financial backers. Public school employees don’t get raises at will, we get them when we earn them, either through time served well or increased education. This will only change when people stop sending their kids to charters and stand up for their own tax payer supported public schools (don’t like your public school, get involved and change it…you can do that as a tax payer but you can’t as a charter school financial supporter).
Reblogged this on onewomansjournal.
ONE dead porpoise on the beach doesn’t mean that they are ALL necessarily sick. The board is doing the right thing, but it clearly hired the wrong folks to begin with.
Florida does. All teachers sign FTEs that are student rosters and you verify the students. Later a report will be generated and student scores will be on that roster. The students will either say eligible or ineligible based on their attendance at the school and in your class. At least this is how it’s done in Hillsborough county.