Parents at the Luis Munoz Marin public school in Philadelphia voted overwhelmingly to oppose a charter takeover of their school.
“After a bitterly fought battle, parents at Luis Muñoz Marín Elementary have voted to keep their school a part of the Philadelphia public school system, rejecting a charter organization’s takeover proposal.
“According to results announced Thursday night by Philadelphia School District officials, 223 parents wanted Muñoz Marín to remain a traditional public school and 70 voted for ASPIRA of Pennsylvania to take control.
“In a separate vote, 11 members of the school’s advisory council wanted to remain with the district. None voted for ASPIRA.
“Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. has the final say on the fate of the struggling North Third Street school, which has 700 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. A decision is expected soon.”
This is the second Philadelphia school where parents rejected a charter takeover. “Steel, an elementary school with 540 students in Nicetown, faced possible conversion by Mastery Charter Schools, but its parents overwhelmingly said they did not want that affiliation. Hite approved the parents’ choice.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is very good news.
Will the district fully fund this school based on the needs of the students so that it is successful?
Will curriculum control be given to the teachers who work with the students everyday?
There is so much hope with this decision.
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Kudos to them, but I fear, since Hite has the final say, their vote will be ignored, & the charter takeover will occur. As everyone knows, despite protests & pushback from Chicago parents all across the city, this has happened repeatedly–totally ignoring the parents and the community, CPS engineered the larget mass closing in the country.
That having been said, good luck to you there in Philly, and EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, continue the pushback.
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That was my first thought too, but then I read the last paragraph – apparently he has supported the parents’ choice at least once, which is downright stunning in this climate. Maybe there’s hope for this school too. Maybe.
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Hite has announced the school will not become a charter. The vote was so overwhelming I don’t think he had a choice.
http://tinyurl.com/pwgd2o2
The question is will the school be funded the way it would have been funded if it was a charter. Time will tell.
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There are two schools in Philadelphia which are being “transformed”. Blaine and Kelly. The staff is being terminated without hearings and must apply to other schools. Given that Steel School and Muñoz Marín parents rejected charters, we can expect the “Transformation Model” to be followed from now on. This post from the Caucus of Working Educators details what is happening at Kelly and Blaine.
http://tinyurl.com/k9xjr25
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What about the school makes it “struggling?” An assigned letter grade, or is it underfunded or what?
I never know what to think when I read that qualifier. “Struggling.” What does that mean in this case?
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I am struggling to understand struggling.
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All of the public schools in Philadelphia are underfunded. Teachers have to buy their own copy paper and some schools are asking for monetary donations from parents just to carry on. At the same time charters are well funded with public money and corporate donations. This week charters have been holding large graduation events which are just to advertise their “success”. One of the ways they have so much money is to only use a portion of allocated special education funds for special education. See this article for details:
City charters get $100M more for special ed than they spend; debate rages in Harrisburg | Philadelphia Public School Notebook
http://tinyurl.com/mnwghx4
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Struggling:
To be an underfunded, under resourced school.
Including but not limited to schools that serve high numbers of low SES children, ESL children, special needs children.
See also the myth of the 90 90 90 schools….as rare as hens teeth.
These schools lack paper, supplies, administrative support and many other things.
They do not however, lack very expensive testing.
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philaken: thank you for the updates.
Note a very telling aspect of this. The very bedrock, foundational, never-to-be-questioned data of the self-styled “education reformers” who are leading the “new civil rights movement of our time”—numbers&stats.
To quote from the posting:
1), “According to results announced Thursday night by Philadelphia School District officials, 223 parents wanted Muñoz Marín to remain a traditional public school and 70 voted for ASPIRA of Pennsylvania to take control” along with
2), “In a separate vote, 11 members of the school’s advisory council wanted to remain with the district. None voted for ASPIRA” and finished off with
3), “North Third Street school, which has 700 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.”
Now for a brief trip on Mr. Peabody’s WABAC Machine. The very recent past. Another widely proclaimed triumph of those leading the charterite/privatization movement. Adelanto, California. Parent Trigger. Parent Revolution.
[start quote]
But some school officials and parents expressed concern that only 53 ballots were cast in the charter election. Although the school has about 400 families with 610 students, only 180 parents who signed the petition for a charter campus during the campaign last year were eligible to vote under the parent-trigger law.
“Fifty-three votes cast the direction of the school,” said LaNita M. Dominique, president of the Adelanto teachers’ union. “That’s a little disheartening.”
[end quote]
Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/22/local/la-me-parent-trigger-20121023
Another miracle school, built out of the overwhelming support for a charter backed up by indisputably indestructible data points that prove that charters and privatization are riding a tsunami of democracy into the future!
Or not.
“Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t.” [“Dr.” Steve Perry,* “America’s Most Trusted Educator,” channeling rapper Jay-Z].
*Even a broken clock is right twice a day.*
😎
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This is good to see. NC is not very far down this road, but I am shocked at the number of parents who are signing up for the new charter up the street from the school where I teach music (our school is very good, beautiful facility, high scores, very diverse. . .we were a school of focus only because our gifted scores were stagnantly higher than the next highest). . .basically, no real reason to want to leave. And we have a dual language immersion program. Nevertheless, parents are tempted by the new charter up the street in the strip mall.
It’s called Imagine. http://investcollegiate.org/imagine-campus/
And the parents I have asked say, “well. . .they have a robotics lab.”
So, I think to myself. . .if we ever, God forbid, end up where this “struggling” school was, what would parents do? I shudder to think they would turn their back on the community school that is thriving.
Wow. I have a front row seat to a very strange movie. Very strange indeed.
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btw, I totally do not get the family white water rafting on the picture. Is the school taking family rafting trips?
Very confused. Looks like a stock photo to me. Yes, we’re in the mountains and there is rafting nearby. Is the school going to use rafting as a way to teach? Because you know there are liabilities with white water rafting. Is the tax payer covering that insurance I wonder?
Hmmm. I don’t know. All that glitters is certainly not gold. Particularly with stock photos of families white water rafting that have nothing to do with your child’s schooling.
Sigh.
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I am struggling to understand the whitewater rafting family photo on the charter webpage.
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Thanks for good news, philaken! I like the sentence, “The vote was so overwhelming, I don’t think he had a choice.” Too bad those at CPS (Chicago Public Schools) don’t listen to anyone but themselves (I have to say, though, that there were a few on the special appointed committee to look at the school closings who verbally disagreed and made a case {only to be ignored as well}.)
And, I just love how they think that they are giving a good reason to do so–talking about overuse of the excuse “failing schools.” They know we’ve got the goods on them–we know schools labelled as “failing” are those schools which don’t make AYP do so on the basis of faulty, flawed and irrelevant “standardized” tests (NOT “standardized”–neither valid nor reliable), and these tests are good for NOTHING.
So, they come up with the label “struggling schools” (exactly, Joanna, what’s “struggling?!”) or–better still!–“underenrolled” or “underutilized” (prevalent reason for closing the 50 schools in CPS).
Anyway, cheers for the positive news, which proves that WE must keep up the pushback. Yes, WE can…and we WILL.
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