A reader named Lisa sent this comment, who is upset that Mayor Marty Walsh intends to close 1/4 of all public schools in Boston and replace them with charters. I said in an earlier post that he pulled the wool over voters’ eyes by pretending to be a supporter of public schools, unlike his pro-charter opponent. Will the birthplace of public education join the rush to privatize its schools?

Lisa writes:

Walsh didn’t pull the wool, he outright lied. He told me, to my face, that Boston was not going to be another Chicago or Philadelphia. He bald face lied.

Charles P. Pierce is spot-on whenever he writes about the covert effort by billionaires, hedge funders, and rightwing ideologues to privatize the nation’ s public schools, starting in big cities, where they claim to be “saving poor children from bad public schools.”

Today he nails the secret, dirty deal that Mayor Marty Walsh has forged with the billionaires, turning over one-quarter of Boston’s public schools to privatization. Having campaigned against a for-charter candidate in the election in 2013, Walsh is now performing what Pierce aptly describes as a “Full Scott Walker,” that is, pulling a fast one once you’re elected that you never made a part of your campaign.

As Pierce writes, explaining the “Full Scott Walker”:

It’s not breaking a campaign promise. It’s breaking a campaign presumption, which is supposed to make a difference. Anyway, Walsh beat John Connolly at least partly by accusing Connolly, who is an open ally of the education “reform” grifters, of trying to destroy the public school system in the city where public schools were invented in this county. Now, it appears that Mayor Walsh has broken up with Candidate Walsh. He’s cut a deal with some of the most odious practitioners of the school “reform” grift, including the Walton Family of Wingnuts, and he did so under the radar. His goal, a “facilities plan,” is to close 36 public schools in order to make way for charters—and, it seems, for the city’s parochial schools.

People of Boston, wake up! The future of public education was the big issue in the campaign of 2013. You rejected John Connolly because he wanted more charters. And Marty Walsh is carrying out Connolly’s campaign pledge. Only you can stop him from privatizing public education in the place where it was born.

*Thanks to reader Chiara for referring to this great post.

Politicians and charter lobbyists recite the claim that thousands of students are wait-listed for charter schools. They say we must open more charters at once to satisfy the demand for charter seats. The seats, we are told, are “high performing” seats, as if a seat had some magic to transfer to whoever might sit in it.

A blogger called Public School Mama describes her experience with the charter school “wait list” in Boston.

She really needed to put her son into kindergarten. She applied to a local charter school. She applied to the neighborhood public school. The charter school never called. The neighborhood public school told her that her son was accepted. She was happy with the public school. She liked the teachers. No complaints.

Years later, she got a call from the charter school informing her that her child had been accepted. She realized that all those years, his name had never been removed from the wait list. And she understood that the “wait list” was a political chimera.