Last night, the San Francisco Board of Education voted unanimously to reject an “Innovate” charter school. The Walton Family Foundation has poured many millions into the Innovate chain in a sustained effort to disrupt public schools and replace them with non-union, privately managed charters.
Innovate will appeal the rejection to the County board. If they lose there, they will appeal to the state board.
The great change in last night’s hearing is that the board was not fooled. They know that the charter is there to take money away from the schools that are open to all students.
The NAACP was very effective in saying so.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A few details. San Francisco may be unique in being a contiguous city and county, and the San Francisco Board of Education serves as the county Board of Education as well — there isn’t a separate one. So a would-be charter rejected by the SFUSD BOE has simultaneously been rejected by the county BOE and next appeals directly to the pro-charter state BOE. Not every prospective charter does that, despite the fact that the SBOE is almost guaranteed to approve the application. I’m not sure if it’s known yet whether this one will drop the plan or appeal to the SBOE.
The murky, sneaky Walton-funded Innovate doesn’t appear to actually intend to operate charters itself — it’s sort of a booster organization with a PR operation and some heavy-duty Astroturfing (fake grassroots) going on. The array of such operations is pretty astounding. California already has the California Charter Schools Association serving this purpose, and other outfits like Parent Revolution and more whose names I’d have to dredge up, all serving murky purposes. I think their main occupation is probably struggling to do something high-profile that justifies them to their funders to keep the money flowing. I think it’s safe to say this doesn’t serve the needs of improve the well-being of students and communities, not that they are really interested in doing that.
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This is an ed reform piece about “personalized learning”
if you read it carefully, you will discover that “personalized learning” often means dramatically increasing class sizes.
I would just really urge parents to use caution and get some information that does not come out of ed reform-funded think tanks.
You could end up with classes of 60 students and a screen. Don’t let the touchy feely language and marketing hype fool you. If they’re increasing class size and adding screens this is about saving money- it isn’t about students. Don’t accept cheaper education dressed up as better education.
http://educationnext.org/missing-key-ingredient-widespread-personalization-innovative-school-staffing/
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Good lord I don’t think I’ve ever read so much forked-tongue jargon shoe-horned into so few column inches. Talk about dazzling w/BS! Glorifying progression from teachers-in-training > support staff > collaborating teachers > teacher-leaders as a “career path” is especially cute.
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This is the pitch used in many charter schools in my little corner of the Bay Area. Unfortunately, many low income parents who cannot afford technology for their kids hear that their kids will be working on computers and “acquiring the skills necessary for the 21st Century economy” and its game over. Rocketship charters are notorious for this approach.
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Diane: Excellent news. However, and as you know, they’re in for the long haul.
For instance, besides appeals, and if they haven’t already, they’ll start on efforts to replace board members with sycophants and paid puppets, while bad-mouthing “local school boards” just like they did public schools and teachers in the first place. Over time, they’ll try to wear down the vibrancy of the whole democratic system itself with their quasi-Orwellian methods.
In our present situation, if corporations are not anti-democratic, they are still not themselves built around a democratic model; and many still resist that, in fact, they ARE an integral part of community. Rather than act like they ARE, they act like cancers that are in a metastatic mode sucking the life out of the communities they belong to. FI: think Waltons. CBK
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Correct.
Oligarchs never admit defeat
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Walmart … so WHO PROFITS?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/inside-casa-padre-the-converted-walmart-where-the-us-is-holding-nearly-1500-immigrant-children/2018/06/14/0cd65ce4-6eba-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html?utm_term=.0870a19cdc44&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
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I understand that San Francisco is the only situation in California where the city and the county encompass the same boundaries. Therefore the ‘county board of supervisors’ actually serves as the SF city council. The same for SF Unified School District, I understand. So the next point of appeal might actually be directly to the state.
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