Marin County in California is the wealthiest in the state. The seemingly idyllic Ross Vallley is now torn between two factions of parents: one supporting the traditional public schools (organized as STAND with Ross Valley schools), the other determined to break away and have their own charter school, RVC, or Ross Valley charter school.
Bill Raden, writing at Capitol & Main, writes:
“California’s 1992 charter school law waived much of the state’s education code for charters, under the theory that they would be dynamic classroom laboratories capable of closing the state’s education gap for children traumatized by the poverty and social stressors of their neighborhoods. What the law doesn’t do is limit charter schools to low-performing communities, and for small, highly rated districts like Ross Valley, charter schools carry substantial costs that STAND parents maintain have already negatively impacted classrooms.
“What concerns me is that [Ross Valley Charter] is going to eventually take over one of our neighborhood public schools,” said Eileen Brown, who is a STAND member but also a former parent of RVC’s predecessor, a district-run Alternative Schools program called MAP. “They will grow and they will get enough parents to buy in, so that one of our neighborhood public schools that serves all the children is not going to have enough numbers to justify staying open.”
“Besides being California’s wealthiest county, Marin is one of its best educated. The high value its residents place on a quality education has given Marin County some of California’s highest-performing and most competitive schools — including the four top-rated elementary schools and one middle school that serve the RVSD towns of Fairfax and San Anselmo.
“It has also given Ross Valley a blistering charter fight, in a Bay Area community long renowned for its laidback lifestyle and 1960s counterculture past.
“What has turned parent against parent, neighbor against neighbor, and even split up children’s friendships is MAP (Multi-Age Program), which was installed at Fairfax’s sole neighborhood school, Manor Elementary, in 1996. In August, the program will reopen its doors as the Ross Valley Charter School to 130 students, or six percent of RVSD’s 2,300 enrollment — becoming only the fourth charter in Marin county — in a co-location at White Hill, the district’s lone middle school.
“But many Fairfax parents already had their fill of MAP when the program was allowed to operate for 18 years under its own board as, essentially, an elite private academy within the district — much like a charter school. But because MAP was co-located at Manor Elementary, which includes the bulk of the district’s English Language Learners (ELL) and Free and Reduced Price Lunch populations, it was Fairfax’s traditional K-5 students who paid a disproportionate price in resources, enrollment and especially, said the Manor parents, the program’s rigid culture of keeping the two programs socially segregated.”
When parents complained about discrimination, MAP parents decided to take advantage of California’s lac charter law and break away as a charter, free of any obligations to the district.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? It is an invitation to affluent parents to break away and self-segregate, avoiding contact with “those children.” Better yet, they get to have a socially and racially segregated school at public expense. Deja vu?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cry! Just plain sad. Don’t the parents who limit by sending them to charter schools understand that they really are harming their children in the end?
Rick Bagley, the superintendent, wrote a powerful statement about how the state of California has enabled a complete dismantling of public school financing through its charter law. The complete statement is in the comments section of the article, and it is well worth reading.
‘But since when do our state-elected and appointed officials, who constantly spout the merits of local control, data-driven decision-making and accountability, allow the wholesale carving-up of a “totally fabulous school district” in favor of creating a placebo-program based on how some people “feel?” Since when does a state that, for decades has claimed we should be consolidating the obvious redundancies and scale of a thousand different school districts, justify doubling this redundancy by allowing the creation of as many charters? Since when does a state, whose per-pupil spending on public education is among the very lowest in our nation, rationalize dividing that meager revenue pie even further as a “legitimate reason for why charter schools get started?”‘
I am not in California, but the movement of charters into suburban distrricts and those with relatively few students or none who are eligible for a free or reduced price lunch, and few if any English language learners, and few if any students eligible for special education will continue under Devos/Trump, and state policy makers who favor giving tax subsidies to families who do not need them but will take them. The 50CAN promoters of charters as an options for “choice” is working in tandem with StudentsFirst in the belief that scaling up the charter industry–growing its market share–requires that kind of expansion.
Charter schools are becoming a headache for the well-heeled, well-connected and well-educated. This is great news! Charter schools are no longer solely involved in the strangulation of poor, urban community public school districts. They have graduated to the playing fields of the affluent, who have easy access to legal representation and well-oiled political networks. The free and reduced lunch population, the English language learners, the children with special needs will be liberated from their isolation in the abandoned neighborhoods of a racist, segregated society. I could not be more encouraged.
Does this remind anyone of Martin Niemöller’s words?
“First they came for… and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Sooner or later the crimes against neighborhood schools were going to hit the affluent. About a year ago there was a chain of comments on this website about a charter opening in Mt Diablo district, which is across the bay from Marin, and encompasses the well-to-do city of Walnut Creek. The new charter school is part of a network called Caliber, which previously existed only in two poorer communities, Richmond and Vallejo. The wealthier residents of Mt Diablo did not rise up in defiance, because most have the schools they want in their separate neighborhoods.
It was just a matter of time for the people who believed they were protected to see what’s really happening. No one is “safe”. The privatization movement affects everyone, because the exodus of small numbers of students, under the veil of choice, makes it hard for real public schools to have strong and varied academic programs, arts, and extra-curricular activities. The people in rural and small towns of America see to understand what’s happening, because their traditions are very much rooted in their schools. We have to wonder if there’s time left to save public education in cities and suburbs.
I don’t like to question anyone’s motives. I’ll assume that more affluent Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike, who have supported charter schools for “other children” have good intentions. But did they ever stop to think about the end-game? Instead of making sure that all schools are adequately-funded, accountable to the public, and locally run, they now face the prospect, when the charters come to their neighborhoods, there is no one left to speak for them.
I would definitely question the intentions of well meaning Democrat and Republican charter schools supporters. I have the privilege of a front row seat at the debacle.
The only certainty with charter proliferation is they will always look for new markets and revenue streams. The middle class should prepare to defend their neighborhood schools.
Wealthy people are just as entitled to school choice, as people further down on the economic scale.
I live in a CA well heeled community according to Gov. Jerry Brown and he has decided as of 2013 to create the Local Control Funding Formula where he gets to chose who gets our tax dollars. Why is this as issue?
Because in Centinela Valley School District a poor community, where the FBI is investigating why their Board gave the Superintendent $900,000 to buy a house, this District will get the most funds per student under Brown’s new law.
While our District scrambles to stay afloat with donations.
I wouldn’t mind so much if corrupt LAUSD used my tax dollars for good- but they don’t and the way our system is set up Charters will flourish using my tax dollars under Brown’s budget.
The system is corrupt from Gov. Brown to local boards.
And will not be fixed until Brown is out of office in 1 year.
Then the UC System fiasco of recent weeks where Janet Napolitano’s budget shows millions spent on parties, etc will show the waste, fraud and abuse.
As will the local school districts.
Remember the 1 Billion LAUSD spent on iPADS? HA!
CA used to have the Golden Standards and good schools. Then bureaucrats ran for office, won and we have a huge number of parents running to home schooling to survive.
CA is drowning and no life preservers are being sent for survival. Everyone for themselves is the way things are going.
Marin County, where I grew up, has had various interesting charter situations and brouhahas.
The county seat, San Rafael, recently fought off a pseudo-enlightened charter proposal, but it took a major battle; the resources and empowerment that are far more available to privileged people; and unusually sharp and aggressive local press coverage.
Marin County’s charming bayfront tourist town of Sausalito has a more egregious situation. Most of Sausalito, formerly artsy/bohemian, is staggeringly wealthy. One corner of town, Marin City, consists of public housing, some dating back to WWII. It’s been a traditionally African-American community since it housed workers in the now-long-gone WWII shipyards. Two schools serve Sausalito — Willow Creek Charter, which siphons off basically all families with social capital (and attracts families from out of district as well) — and Bayside-Martin Luther King, which is known as the “project school” (meaning the kids in the projects go there) and serves the most disadvantaged, those with the least stable homes and the least social capital.
Willow Creek Charter defenders point out that the charter school is diverse, which is true except for the divide between those with social capital and those who are social-capital-deprived. Willow Creek requires some 50 hours a year of parent “volunteer” work, something the school touts proudly until it’s pointed out that that’s illegal, at which point the backpedaling is furious. Sausalito also recently had a superintendent with a background in shady Southern California charters who resigned when he was indicted over previous charter hustles. The K-8 Sausalito-Marin City district — whose school board is known for heaping Willow Creek Charter with privileges — may actually be the perfect microcosm in which to observe the charters-vs.-public-schools divide.
(Disclosure that I grew up in Mill Valley, adjacent to Sausalito, but have lived in the city of San Francisco for more than 30 years, raised my kids in the city and sent both kids to San Francisco public schools K-12, where my husband is also a veteran substitute teacher.)
Willow Creek Charter defenders point out that the charter school is diverse, which is true except for the divide between those with social capital and those who are social-capital-deprived.
Look at the parent education level between those two schools. Willow Creek skews toward families with bachelor’s and graduate level education. Bayside-MLK has students whose parents have less than a 4-year degree. Smells like social segregation to me.
Bad news:
The first inroad in Montana: Montana’s School Choice program can grant scholarships to students who attend faith-based schools, a state judge has ruled.
http://missoulian.com/news/government-and-politics/judge-school-choice-money-can-help-private-school-students/article_7e997c9c-6412-54de-9197-0e679b679604.html#tncms-source=infinity-scroll-summary-siderail-latest
Why is this bad news?
There was a great, albeit lengthy comment from Rick Bagley, that I’m re-posting here;
RICK BAGLEY
This article’s headline might leave readers with the mistaken impression this is a “first world problem,” isolated to a tiny high-performing school district in an affluent Northern California county, known more for its mountain biking than being in the midst of a national issue many believe to be an effort aimed at destroying public education.
Make no mistake, the story told here is not about petty grievances between neighbors, giving each other the stink eye as they navigate their shopping carts down the cereal aisle at the local Safeway. Neither is this a story about “Go Public, Not Charter” schwag or the hundreds-strong and highly organized local advocacy group known as “STAND.” Frankly, I don’t even see this as an article about charter schools themselves or the Trump/DeVoss faux-erudite campaign to superimpose onto public education, the same miserable failure that has befallen the privatization of our prison system.
In my view, this article is wholly summed-up by the quote from Ms. Trish Williams, member of the California State Board of Education, who stated, “Even within a totally fabulous school district there can be a case where parents feel like they want a different kind of instructional methodology and environment for their children. … And that is also a legitimate reason for why charter schools get started.”
With the mountain of empirical research on what works in the classroom, as well as our collective practical experience and real-world wisdom about impactful teaching and learning, how did we arrive a place where elected and appointed state officials from the Governor on down, wholly undermine and abandon our truly public schools in favor of creating “different environments” based on what some people “feel?”
And that, for me at least, is the crux of this issue and the real point of this article. Our state-elected and appointed officials are more than willing to discuss legislating children’s access to sugary soft drinks, yet they recklessly approve 3 out of 4 charter petitions that were previously denied for legitimately sound reasons at both the local and county levels … all because someone “feels” this is the best course for public education.
I’ve got no particular beef with the concept of charter schools and though I agree with many others that the phrase “school of choice” is a modern age synonym for “segregation,” parents have the right to “feel” they need to pursue a particular educational option they “feel” is best for their children. As parents, I’m sure some of us “feel” our kids shouldn’t be immunized or forced to wear restrictive helmets when they ride their bikes. I’m also sure some of us “feel” our kids learn best when they decide what they should be taught or that multi-age classroom structures have far more positive effect than the virtually zero impact found in the research. In short, we parents “feel” a lot of things.
But since when do our state-elected and appointed officials, who constantly spout the merits of local control, data-driven decision-making and accountability, allow the wholesale carving-up of a “totally fabulous school district” in favor of creating a placebo-program based on how some people “feel?” Since when does a state that, for decades has claimed we should be consolidating the obvious redundancies and scale of a thousand different school districts, justify doubling this redundancy by allowing the creation of as many charters? Since when does a state, whose per-pupil spending on public education is among the very lowest in our nation, rationalize dividing that meager revenue pie even further as a “legitimate reason for why charter schools get started?”
From the looks of it, and the data seems to clearly bear this out, our elected and appointed state officials are systematically dismantling California’s public education system. Our State Board of Education have more than proven themselves to be worthy to the task, as evidenced by their track record for basing critical educational decisions on peoples’ “feelings” rather than following the charter approval process they themselves helped create. The state-sponsored deconstruction of a “totally fabulous school district” makes no sense in Marin County or any county. It makes even less sense to, 75% of the time, over-rule the state’s own process-driven local and county decision making, in order to placate either our Governor’s viewpoint or a group of parents’ “feelings” about wanting taxpayers to fund their “different kind of instructional methodology and environment.”
Perhaps it’s time we all crack open our favorite sugary soft drink and have a toast to the memory of the totally fabulous and truly public school districts for which our great state was once known.
I’m glad this example is shining a light on the suburban charter school phenomenon, which is nothing new. Charters in suburban areas like the West side of Los Angeles, have, for a long time, marketed themselves to affluent or middle class families quite differently than charters that set up in urban areas. Some of them even say they are offering private school educations in a public setting–for free. Smaller class sizes, freedom from the bureaucracy, and a “like minded community”.
In fact, there was a study that showed the proliferation of charters throughout Los Angeles. The researchers seemed surprised or confused about the pockets of charters in middle class areas, while those of us on the ground have known about it for years. Anyone recall that study?
Thanks for sharing the article and for all the great comments. Stand is organizing around local, state and federal issues. Sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date on what we are working on and follow us on facebook and twitter. Check out our latest blog which connects billionaires to our local fight. https://standwithrossvalleyschools.com/blog/2017/5/22/who-is-really-backing-ross-valley-charter