The Glendale, California, school board voted unanimously to reject a petition for a charter school for a variety of reasons. One was that the finances were shaky and there was a likely deficit of nearly $1 million. Another was that 74% of the prospective students did not live in Glendale. Now the charter school will appeal to the Los Angeles County Board of Education.
The school planned to offer a dual-language immersion program in Spanish, German, Italian and French for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Glendale administrators said the staffing was inadequate.
The state law governing charters was written by the charter lobbyists to help create more and more charters. If the County Board approves the school, the local board and the local Glendale community is out of luck.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Off the rails and breathtakingly stupid. The residents of Glendale should doxx those in charge of the charter. Or better yet, open a charter in the town of the charter board and owners/operators. Just a thought. Happy Holidays!
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Perhaps the charter operators should explain why the district needs their particular dual language immersion program, considering that Glendale already offers dual language immersion in those languages as well as three others. More redundancy, more expense.
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IF the County board approves it?! I’m not sure they have ever denied a charter petition. Their board of education–which is appointed, not elected like Los Angeles Unified School District’s–has a few reformster gems: Thomas Saenz – ally of Bloomberg-wannabe Antonio Villaraigosa; Katie Braude – launched the first independent charter school on Los Angeles’s west side, siphoning off 2000 students from the public schools. She is former fundraiser for KIPP; Alex Johnson – ran as the reform candidate against veteran educator George McKenna for LA school board. I don’t know the others. http://www.lacoe.edu/BoardofEducation.aspx
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Karen…isn’t it Glendale the district that recently hired Hill, who left LAUSD somewhat in disgrace over the MiSiS problem? He is a Broadie like Deasy. Or was that Burbank? Brain is not up to speed today.
FYI…to my friends…got auto smashed yesterday by a woman who drove right through a red light and totaled my car…and my bod is a mess too. First time today to get my fingers to work. Some holiday…yuck.
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Ellen, I’m so sorry to hear that.
Take care of yourself.
Hill was hired by Burbank Unified, in spite of a massive outcry opposing his being hired.
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Thanks pal…keep writing all your great exposes, Jack…such a boon for us to have you.
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Ellen Lubic: so sorry to hear.
Hope you make a complete recovery.
😎
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Thank you Krazy TA…
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“The school planned to offer a dual-language immersion program in Spanish, German, Italian and French for students in kindergarten through eighth grade….”
Meanwhile, don’t the public schools need immersion classes in ENGLISH? Or am I racist writing that? We have a town offering Chinese to kindergarteners…where 1/3 of the kids can’t speak English. Stupidity as far as I’m concerned.
What are the chances of the County board rubber stamping this “yes?”
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Glendale Unified is one of the top districts in the state that has had successful Armenian, German, and Spanish immersion programs in the past. In the early 90’s they handled the Armenian and refugees coming into that city beautifully with outstanding ESL (now ELD for English Language Development) classes K-12. Parent notifications were sent out in five different languages. My point is that this is an example of a district that does NOT need a charter because of their excellent reputation handling changing populations. They do it with well-trained, credentialed teachers who had a passion for kids. Because I saw the difference between Glendale and Adelanto, I knew something drastic needed to be done in Adelanto. Whether the charter there will become just like that district is my main fear.
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We do not need a charter school in Glendale. Beyond all the other reasons why charter schools are bad for communities, we already have excellent elementary dual immersion programs in our district. Languages offered include Spanish, French, Italian, German, Armenian, Korean, and Japanese.
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Josi Kneisel: let me get this straight…
Rheephorm is a movement/philosophy/approach that in this instance touts charters as a solution in search of a non-existent problem?
Perhaps this is just another example of the reflexive “soft bigotry of low expectations” of rheephormsters that anything, everything, whatever, to do with public schools is automatically inferior and a failure and must be replaced no matter how inadequate and unsustainable the rheephorm solution.
Freudian slip?
😎
P.S. For those immersed in David Coleman’s close reading of decontextualized informational texts—“Freudian slip: an unintentional error regarded as revealing subconscious feelings.”
Although in this case, perhaps not so unintentional and not so subconscious…
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Everyone who can afford to moves to Glendale so their children can attend excellent schools. This is nonsense. And now I know why we are doomed in Los Angeles — thanks Karen Wolfe for pointing out who the demons are on LACOE. Isn’t there anything we can do to get rid of them?
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Wait; what?
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