The Resistance grows!
Press Advisory: Thirty Regional School Superintendents To Come Together to Defend Public Education, Joining Public District Leaders from Across the State to Urge Reform of Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law
When: Monday, January 27, 2020 10 a.m.
Where: Whitehall Elementary, 399 North Whitehall Road Norristown, PA 19403
Leaders Form Coalition and Support a Moratorium on New Charter Enrollment Until Laws Can be Reformed
Leaders from public school districts in the five-county Greater Philadelphia region are joining with others from across the state in calling for meaningful, substantive reform of Pennsylvania’s charter school laws. They also support a moratorium on new charter school applications and a freeze on additional seats for students at existing charters until reform is enacted. Public school superintendents and other top school administrators recently formed LEARN, Leaders for Educational Accountability and Reform Network, as a way to coalesce around urgent issues impacting public schools, such as charter reform. They are calling for reform to the way charters are funded, as well as an improvement in accountability and oversight. Citing an extremely inequitable funding system, LEARN says charter schools, which are often among the worst performing schools in the state, are straining public systems. Extreme increases in charter costs are sending an increasingly greater amount of public tax dollars to charters, over which locally elected school boards have little-to-no authority or oversight. LEARN wants to bring charter tuition payments in line with actual school district costs and provide more accountability.
Contact: Dr. Frank Gallagher, Superintendent in the Souderton Area School District
“School choice advocates argue that every child learns differently, and parents have a right to choose the kind of school best suited to their child’s needs. But the public education system was designed as a public benefit, with a different purpose in mind: to provide education to every person, despite their special or specific needs and limitations. Those advocates aren’t wrong in demanding better options for public education and its current failures. We all should be demanding that. Schools supported by all should work for all. Parents can make a different choice, but shouldn’t rely on the rest of us to pay for it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Advocates for public school students! What a novel concept. Don’t they know the only permissible advocacy is for charter and voucher students?
The great undifferentiated mass of “district” or “government” school students must remain silent. They are, after all, “the status quo” and not worthy of support.
Pennsylvania superintendents have seen their budgets dwindle, and their buildings crumble due to ever expanding privatization. It is about time superintendents support the resistance started by the teachers. Many school district leaders have tried to remain neutral, and some have been tools of corporate disruption. Public schools cannot effectively operate in a chronic state of austerity budgets. School leadership must join teachers and parents and demand change.
tools: oh, yes, I’ve known a few who were very exactly that
Hopefully the beginning of a nationwide trend
I wonder if William Hite-(Eli Broad Superintendent Academy alumni) is part of this group.
HALLELUJAH! Public school administrators finally sounding the alarm on this travesty!
If the AFT, NEA and their state affiliates had better leadership, they would organize their retired members to advocate for public schools.
If public teachers formed a collective they could force their state pension leaders to inform members of the threat posed by fewer enrollees in the system.
A win for Main Street would be more likely, if the 40% of white Catholics who didn’t vote for Trump organized to protect the communities’ assets from the USCCB and state Catholic Conferences. The sites of the Tennessee and Oklahoma Catholic Conferences provide example of the threat from the oligarchy/theocracy. The site’s quote from the propaganda of the American Federation of Children doesn’t reflect as negatively on the church as the priest abuse and coverup but, the harm of privatization reaches more communities.
From the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference site, “Victory for school choice advocates!”
Sixty-six per cent of Americans want separation of church and state.
It’s a start.
But if they really wanted to make an impact they’d declare that their districts will not be participating in the standards and testing malpractice regime.