The town of Scottsburg, Indiana, has fewer than 10,000 residents.
There is a proposal before the City Council to open a charter school.
This will split the town.
Some public school parents have started a petition to ask the City Council and the Mayor not to open a charter school.
Please sign the parents’ petition.
And be sure not to sign any other petitions on the change.org website or you may find yourself part of an organization you don’t want to belong to.
Ironically, this is the town where the recently defeated State Superintendent Tony Bennett got his start.
Help save public education for the children and families of Scottsburg.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t they need people from Scottsburg? I would be happy to help them, but why should the school board care what a bunch of outsiders think about the way they run their schools? I am totally opposed to public money being spent for private enterprises to run schools. Dividing resources can only hurt the public schools, but I am interested in the history behind this battle.
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I don’t think these people should be so panicky quite yet. I live in a town with under 3000 year-round residents and our school district has 3 charters. Our town is not split and we are actually bringing funds into our community through open enrollment in the charters. Maybe it’s different in our community because our charters are closer to being what charters were originally intended to be: an environmental ed. charter, an Ojibwe language and culture charter and a charter for homeschooling families. In other words, these charters are meant to supplement the traditional schools, not replace them.
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Where does the money come from to pay for the charters? In most states, it comes out of the public school budget. That means the public school has to lay off teaches and cut programs.
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Diane, these charters are public schools. So it’s entirely appropriate that their funding comes from the public school budget. As far as I know, no teachers have ever been laid off or programs cut. In fact, the three charters employ 5 teachers that weren’t on our payroll before they were formed. If anything, these charters have saved programs or started new ones for which there was an existing need.
The largest of the charters serves homeschooled students who mostly have never been in any public system, but for whom the district now receives funding from the the state, now that they are under our umbrella.
I’m not saying that some neighboring school district didn’t lose some funding when their students enrolled in our charters…but maybe they should have seen the need for these alternative educational settings and provided them first.
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The petition is open to anyone that supports traditional schools, and doesn’t want charters in our district. The charter was slid through under Bennett’s reign, with many many problems. The sunshine law wasn’t followed, the community support on the applications were false, and those supposed supporters turned in letters stating so at the public charter meeting held by the IDOE, people on the charter had resigned including the school leader, programs cited they would be using are programs that take years to be approved, many many falsehoods.
Bennett walked them through this charter process, including what to say at the open charter review meeting. We had hundreds of people that were against the approval of the application yet those voices were ignored by the committee that Bennett set up to sponsor charters in Indiana. Oh, and NOT ONE of our schools was failing according to Bennetts standards, the last two years ISTEP scores increased, etc.
The charter was approved, now they are trying to change zoning to build their school, and the community is against this, thus the reason for the petition. The city council will approve or deny the zoning change.
This charter has already divided the community with their lack of transparency including the supposed leader being one of our ex elem. school principals, using school letterhead, school time, and emails on on elementary letterhead to set up this proposed charter. He also recruited teachers and parents while on the job during working hours….the board investigated him, and he resigned before the investigation was complete.
We don’t want any part of this mess taking away from any of the students in this county…traditional school kids or those that might attend the charter school…privatization is a no win situation for all children. Thanks for your comments and questions, we all learn from these things!
Our situation is that the proposed charter school doesn’t want to work within the school district, they want to replace it. Our city council will listen to all comments and take into consideration our community comments also.
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Yet another thing we need to get the word out about somehow – that change.org is just yet another turncoat player in the progressive movement, along with Rhee, Duncan and Obama himself. It’s rather ironic how many people who are opposed to rheeform are using a petition service that automatically signs them up as members of the biggest rheeform group.
So far as I know, SignOn.org is still untainted – we should all be using that instead.
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Diane, please don’t discourage people from signing our change.org petition to Governor Daniels, Governor-elect Pence, the Indiana D.O.E. board members and the legislature declaring our support for our newly elected state superintendent, Glenda Ritz: http://www.change.org/petitions/governor-daniels-governor-elect-pence-the-indiana-state-legislature-honor-our-1-300-000-votes-for-glenda-ritz
Yes, beware of the Rhee connection, but this is already a done deal and we have over 8,000 signatures. Every time someone signs the petition, Governor Daniels and his friends receive email. We need this concrete, initial way of keeping voters engaged and showing our support not only for Glenda, but for her platform. Voters in Indiana crossed party lines and voted to show strong support for Ritz’s vision of the direction our schools should go. We rejected the big money, big players who backed their golden child, Tony Bennett, and we rejected the idea that schools should be for profit ventures. We believe in local control, less high-stakes testing, and public funds for public schools. We believe in democracy and in Glenda Ritz. Please don’t discourage people from signing our petition. Next time we will use SignOn.org…
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I posted the petition to encourage people to sign it.
It is important to warn them not to be lured into signing another petition, such as “do you support great teachers?” Because they may find themselves inadvertently joining Rhee’s group.
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Thank you very much. I had seen that.. and so appreciate it.
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Well at last I know how I ended up on the email of some of these charter movements, Probably from a change.org petition I trialed last year in my home to get my kids to do dishes. The last laugh is on me. Thanks for the heads up Diane. For future petitions in Indiana we can use your suggestion. Signon.org And I did sign the Scottsburg petition yesterday, signer # 3 or 4. Having to maintain the current public school infrastructure with less school dollars is a real consequence of public dollars shifting into charters.
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