School Closings in Sacramento

By dianeravitch

January 18, 2013 //

Eleven elementary schools in Sacramento are going to close.

All are in low-income, diverse communities.

Some are high-performing re test scores.

Please, someone, write and explain.

Categories Closing schools

12 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Mark Collins says:

January 18, 2013 at 8:04 am

Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee.

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- TeacherFromTheWest says:
  
  January 18, 2013 at 8:25 am
  
  Mark, my first thought as well.
  
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- Linda says:
  
  January 18, 2013 at 3:47 pm
  
  But she lives in Tennessee of does she?
  
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  - Mark Collins says:
    
    January 18, 2013 at 3:50 pm
    
    I’m not sure. In her mind, she’s a democrat, a “public-school parent”, and most likely a citizen of the US and parent to all those children stuck in public schools. I’m glad it’s Friday!
    
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  - dianerav says:
    
    January 18, 2013 at 4:07 pm
    
    She can’t truly believe she is Democrat. A Democrat would not closely with all the far-right Republican governors. Does she live in Tennessee? Maybe she lives everywhere and nowhere. Residence is a state of mind except when you register to vote. You can only vote in one place.
    
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  - Lucy says:
    
    January 18, 2013 at 5:12 pm
    
    She lives off of Folsom blvd in the fabulous forties neighborhood!
    
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Florence says:

January 18, 2013 at 12:57 pm

A “Broad” superintendent who follows its “play-list” to “capture” the school board and privatize the district as much as possible:

– Convinced the board of education to turn all the power over to the superintendent.

– Keeps secret all the contracts and consultants hired by the superintendent. In fact, it’s been said that the latest consultant working with the superintendent was the principal of Kevin Johnson’s St. Hope H.S. None of this information can be found on the district’s web site. Even the organization chart with unfilled positions is dated July 2012.

– Consistently and knowingly breaches the contract to keep the union busy with grievances and court procedures.

– Whittles away at teacher tenure by creating a class of teachers in the district’s “priority schools” whose jobs are protected from last hired, first fired. (Yes, the union is
grieving this.)

– Increases class size to 30+ in all grades except those in “priority” schools.

– In “failing” schools the district insists on split grades rather than keeping class sizes
low.

– Forces remedial programs (more test prep on top of test prep) onto “failing” schools
without any input from the teachers and wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars on
consultants and test prep companies.

– Closes the neighborhood schools under the pretext that there are too few students in
the school. But in fact, it’s because they are “failing” (read: poverty and neglect.)

– “Allows” a private charter school to locate in the former “neighborhood ” school.

– Parents who want and need a neighborhood school drop out of the public school and send their kids to the charter.

– Pink slips for union teachers.

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- Lucy says:
  
  January 18, 2013 at 5:21 pm
  
  The numbers of the capacity at Joseph Bonnheim are false! I know, because I work there! The “district expert” came in (i didn’t see one) and counted our library, RSP room, parent resource room, LH class, computer lab, preschool and our teacher’s lounge as classrooms to accommodate 31 students each. So that would give us a low enrollment percentage rate! The math does not add up! No wonder the district is in PI!
  
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Ken Mortland says:

January 18, 2013 at 1:58 pm

In 1992, I wrote an editorial that projected the rise and growth of for-profit education providers who would need to convince the American public that their public schools were a failure before they could expect to create a market big enough to be profitable.

Today, I read yet another blog about charter school providers seeking access to schools that are going well. Up until now, the market has primarily been low performing schools, which are expensive to run and difficult to produce significant gains. Now, for-profit charter school providers are setting their sights on schools that are doing reasonably well to quite well. What is driving the effort to expand the market?

Could it be that for-profit charter school operators have quietly acknowledged the difficulties in turning around low performing schools and are seeking access to adequate to high performing schools to balance out their profitability? And if they succeed in accessing that new market, how long will it be before they begin unloading their low performing schools to further increase their profit margins?

If that happens the modification of a universal, free, public education system to a two tiered system of for-profit schools and pubic schools will be complete. And once again, the greed of American investment firms will have damaged or destroyed yet another of America’s signature institutions.

As I said in 1992; I hope I’m wrong about this possibility. But, I wasn’t wrong in 1992 and I fear I’m not wrong now.

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David Fisher says:

January 18, 2013 at 3:06 pm

The district is closing schools supposedly because of under enrollment. However they are protecting several so called “priority schools” with even lower enrollment from closure. These schools are exempt from seniority for layoffs etc.. And now other schools are being sacrificed to save these “priorities.”

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Lori Jablonski says:

January 18, 2013 at 3:53 pm

Florence and David are absolutely correct.

I would only add that this situation has been brewing for years as the school district embraced one expensive, unproven and divisiive “reform” plan after another, beginning with the charter “give away” of Sacramento High School (2nd oldest high school west of the Mississippi River) to Kevin Johnson, an act that not only has deprived a huge area of the city from a neighborhood comprehensive high school for the past ten years but launched the political careers of both Johnson and Michelle Rhee.

The district was an early adopter of the Gates ‘small high schools” initiative which broke up the large school into small learning communities (most of these have disappeared) and, more to the point, initiated the construction of new small “boutique’ high schools during a time of declining enrollment, costling millions and necessitating the slow shift of funding from the neighborhood schools to keep these programs financially viable, despite their low enrollments. The result today is now faced with a structural budget deficit despite the passage of Prop 30, the district is looking to neighborhood elementary school closures — yes many if not most serving low-income students and their families — to keep things afloat.

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retiredbutmissthekids says:

January 19, 2013 at 3:30 am

People–take heart in what has happened in Chicago–big headline in the Chicago Sun Times about CPS keeping high schools (that were slated for closing) open. LOTS of community pushback, which continues. (Read Mike Klonsky’s Small Talk blog, which covers CPS).

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