Billy Townsend is an acerbic critic of Florida charter scandals and the state commissioner Richard Corcoran, whose wife runs a charter school. He never runs out of material.
In this post, he tells the story of a politician, Manny Diaz, who works for a charter chain, blaming a struggling community for the failure of his employer’s charter school, which was launched with much razzle-dazzle.
The Jefferson County Public Schools were forced into becoming an all charter district when the school district could not pay its bills. Most white people in Jefferson County have sent their children to neighboring school districts or private school under Florida’s
choice law. The remaining poor Black students are the “leftovers,” those no school chooses to take. Jefferson County should be a poster child announcing that so called choice does not work for all students. Instead, failing to find another charter chain to take over the small district, they are intending to return the schools to the community. Without the ability to cherry pick students, most charters tend to do worse than neighborhood public schools. If any district needed authentic community schools without a profit motive, it is Jefferson County.
By the way it is rumored that Manny Diaz may replace Corcoran who is stepping down. Why do these profiteers continue to fall upward?https://news.wfsu.org/wfsu-local-news/2022-01-18/jefferson-gets-its-schools-back-following-bid-shenanigans-and-efforts-to-keep-it-with-a-charter-operator
“And it has created a new narrative: that the corrupt people who forced a distant charter school company on a local community now blame that community itself for the charter school taking the community backward while pocketing big bucks in tax money.”
Who will see this narrative? Not those who watch Faux News. Not those who consume only talk radio. Not those whose news is local (local TV and local newspapers are all about the latest robbery or homicide). Townsend is correct in that we need a new narrative, but there is no place for this narrative in the lives of those who need to be torn away from the stories they read and exposed to the ones that explain the feeling they have that someone is taking advantage of them.