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Why Are Charter Schools Taking Money Intended to Save Small Businesses?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2020 //
50

The charter industry lobbied to make sure that privately-managed charter schools would be eligible to apply for and receive federal coronavirus relief funds that were intended to save small businesses. An unknown number of charter schools have indeed received large federal monies from the stimulus money, despite the fact that no charter school has suffered any loss of funding due to the pandemic.

The charter industry likes to say that charter schools are public schools, and they even call themselves “public charter schools,” which is an oxymoron. Real public schools were not allowed to tap into the coronavirus relief funds for small businesses. But charter schools were eligible, which proves the point that such schools are not public schools. They are operated by private boards under contract.

More importantly, they had no need for the money. Many thousands of private businesses do have a genuine need. At least 100,000 small businesses have closed forever.

The coronavirus pandemic is emerging as an existential threat to the nation’s small businesses — despite Congress approving a historic $700 billion to support them — with the potential to further diminish the place of small companies in the American economy.


The White House and Congress have made saving small businesses a linchpin of the financial rescue, even passing a second stimulus for them late last month. But already, economists project that more than 100,000 small businesses have shut permanently since the pandemic escalated in March, according to a study by researchers at the University of Illinois, Harvard Business School, Harvard University and the University of Chicago. Their latest data suggests at least 2 percent of small businesses are gone, according to a survey conducted May 9 to 11.


The carnage has been even higher in the restaurant industry, where 3 percent of restaurant operators have gone out of business, according to the National Restaurant Association.
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earful, heartfelt announcements about small-business closures are popping up on websites and Facebook pages around the country. Analysts warn this is only the beginning of the worst wave of small-business bankruptcies and closures since the Great Depression. It’s simply not possible for small businesses to survive with no income coming in for weeks followed by reopening at half capacity, many owners say.

The charters still receive public funding. They are not at risk. But an unknown number have sought and received some of the money that was supposed to save mom-and-pop stores that have had no revenues since mid-March.

Perry Stein of the Washington Post tried to find out how many charter schools in DC had taken the money meant for failing businesses, and the charter industry was evasive.

Maybe they are embarrassed. They should be.

Stein writes:

D.C. charter schools received federal aid intended to keep nonprofits and small businesses afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, drawing criticism from public school advocates and others who say the money should be reserved for businesses hit harder by the crisis’s economic toll.


It is unclear exactly how many applied for the money. Officials across the District’s expansive charter sector — 63 operators that educate almost half of the city’s 100,000 public school students — have largely remained quiet about which schools have received help from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.


The D.C. Public Charter School Board, the city board that regulates the schools, said it doesn’t know, and the D.C. Council’s Education Committee chair said the same.


FOCUS, a leading D.C. charter advocacy organization, has been the public contact point for schools interested in applying. But its director, Anne Herr, said she also does not know. Oversight of the relief money “belongs to the federal government,” she said.


Contacted by The Washington Post, most charter operators declined to say. But some acknowledged applying — and defended the decision.
“These kids are wearing the brunt of everything that goes bad in the city,” said Shawn Hardnett, founder and executive director of Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys in Southeast Washington, which received a $300,000 loan. “Everything we can do to protect the most vulnerable children in the city we are doing.”
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Wealthy private schools in the region have gotten pushback for taking the money. Top universities have, too. Some businesses, including Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House, ultimately decided to return the money after public scrutiny.


Charter schools now face similar blowback. That’s because their main revenue source — per-pupil government funding — is so far unaffected by the pandemic. Meanwhile, other companies and organizations across the district have lost nearly all of their revenue, said D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who chairs the Education Committee and has questioned whether charter schools should apply.

“I think it’s really an abuse of funds,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “They are not losing their funding stream.”

So, the charters take the money that was supposed to save America’s small businesses, which are in desperate trouble, because…because…they can.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Annie Abrams: Privatization Vultures Are Circling Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2020 //
15

Writing in the New Republic, New York City public school teacher Annie Abrams warns about the vultures circling public schools during the pandemic, hoping to make remote learning a feature, not a temporary emergency measure.

She cites the recent comments by Governor Cuomo about the seeming obsolescence of “all these buildings, all these physical classrooms; why, with all the technology you have?” And, of course, his invitation to Bill Gates of all people to “reimagine education” in the state. She might have also cited any number of statements by anti-public school individuals like Betsy DeVos and Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform, which supports every kind of school except public schools.

Abrams knows that distance learning cannot replace the person-to-person contact that happens in physical classrooms.

Meaningful education is built on connection, and fostering relationships requires proximity. This is what a classroom does. It’s a space for students to establish relationships while experimenting with being in public. And while we don’t yet know the details of Cuomo’s plan, there’s reason to be suspicious. The Gates Foundation’s top-down approach to education reform, along with Cuomo’s history of supporting charter schools, inconsistency around unions, and exclusion of New York City educators from the project’s council, suggest a deeply undemocratic push to defund and privatize the public school system.

American public schools—“all these buildings, all these physical classrooms”—are cultural spaces as much as they are physical locations. Cuomo’s reimagining threatens to flatten public education into informational transaction, turning teachers into tech support in the process…

It’s clear students, at least, understand much of what our political leaders can’t grasp about public education. My students miss the dynamism and zaniness that define a classroom of adolescents, and they miss momentary escape from their defining roles at home. They know what school is, both what they’re there to do and what I’m there to do with them. When I write college recommendations, I ask students to submit a questionnaire reflecting on our time together. Last year, one said, “Writing became something you encouraged us to do when we felt most confused or frustrated, times when I was most likely to give up on doing something. I began to see writing as a way to convince people about the things that meant a lot to me.” Reading students’ faces, peering over their shoulders, and responding to their frustrations and their breakthroughs is integral to helping them match tools to occasions. This sounds saccharine, but it’s real. Those relationships are harder to cultivate on a screen.

The privatizers are choosing a moment of economic catastrophe to pitch their siren call to make distance learning permanent. It is cheaper, but it is not better. As we have seen from the dismal results of virtual charter schools, online “learning” is horrible.

Abrams argues that remote learning can never replace the learning that occurs in physical classrooms:

The American public school classroom should be an empowering space. A weird, messy, vital place of experimentation and collaboration. Public schools facilitate that opportunity for students, to think both critically and imaginatively and to agree on some kind of common reality. In the best cases, public education helps students situate themselves among broader communities than they may otherwise encounter while building civic trust. It helps them become adults, slowly, clumsily, day by day. There’s no app-based replacement for that.

She knows it. I know it. But do the politicians know it? Their current plans involve slashing the budgets of public schools at a time when the schools need to cut class sizes to protect the health and safety of students and staff.

Think about the massive tax cuts of December 2017 that lowered the taxes of wealthy individuals and big corporations. Think about the corporate handouts tucked into the Coronavirus Relief program. Then ponder why our political leaders are about to cut billions of dollars from our schools and our children.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, Technology

NYC: Carranza Says He Can’t Cut $34 Billion Budget

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
15

Ricard Carranza, NYC Schools Chancellor, says he can’t cut the schools’ $34 billion budget. He says has has cut the budget “to the bone.”

Advocates don’t agree.

“There is no fat to cut, there is no meat to cut — we are at the bone,” Carranza testified Tuesday at a City Council budget hearing.

Education advocates and DOE staffers say his claim belies the bureaucratic bloat and bonanza of pay raises and promotions that have exploded during the tenures of Mayor de Blasio and Carranza.

“It’s just inconceivable there’s not waste in that budget,” said Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters. “Clearly there are more savings that can be made by cutting unnecessary contracts, consultants, and the mid-level bureaucracy, which has more than doubled in spending since de Blasio took office in 2014….”

The city has proposed $827 million in DOE cuts, including slashing school budgets by $285 million. This would reduce arts programs, counselors and social workers in needy districts, and college-prep for high schoolers. The DOE would also put off new classes for 3-year-olds, installation of air conditioners, and rat extermination.

“Students are going to feel bigger class sizes … the reduction in services, the reduction in enrichment activities,” Carranza warned.

Instead of slashing programs that impact students, critics say, the DOE should chop away at the vast array of high-salaried supervisors, consultants and contractors who do not work in schools or directly serve kids.

The DOE employs 1,189 educrats making $125,000 to $262,000 a year. All have desk jobs at Tweed Courthouse or in borough offices, records obtained by The Post show. Of those, 50 execs take home $200,000-plus — more than double the 21 at that salary level in fiscal year 2018.

That does not count Carranza, who collects $363,000.

Despite the army of six-figure supervisors, the DOE still pays high-priced consultants.

The DOE just inked a two-month, $1.2 million contract with Accenture LLP to advise the chancellor on school-reopening options, including a mix of classroom and remote learning.

Accenture staffers bill up to $425 an hour. That’s on top of another three-year Accenture contract costing the DOE $1.7 million a year for management advice.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, New York City

Arthur Goldstein: Will Mitch McConnell Destroy Our Public Services?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2020 //
16

Veteran teacher Arthur Goldstein fears that Republican Senator Mitch McConnell will use his power to destroy public services in New York and other states whose revenues have been devastated by the pandemic.

He writes:

If we want to continue to get care when we’re sick, give our children education, and have police and firefighters to protect us, we’re going to need a federal bailout that devotes real money to real people, as opposed to corporations. It seems like common sense, but common sense seems to be the least common of all the senses.

In NYC, where I work, it took decades to recover from the teacher shortage that followed 1975 layoffs. Students sat in classes of 50 or more. We now know that class size is not merely an educational priority, but also a health priority. Can you imagine trying to social distance 50 students in a classroom?

Not everyone considers that worth worrying about. According to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, we may or may not get federal aid for actual working people in states and communities. Evidently, before we consider such frivolities, we need to protect businesses that compel people to work in an epidemic. Perish forbid, says McConnell, they should be held responsible when their employees get sick or die. This notwithstanding, Americans who worked their whole lives in expectation of a pension are not a priority for McConnell. This is a curious value.

I’m not at all sure why business takes priority over people. We’ve bailed out big airlines and big hotels. Evidently McConnell and his BFFs need to travel and stay somewhere, and roadside inns just won’t do. Even as tens of millions of Americans find themselves newly without jobs or health insurance, we’ve made sure Wall St. didn’t feel too much pain.

McConnell himself need not worry. Aside from whatever money he’s accrued during his Senate career, he’ll be getting a fixed pension of $139,200 a year, courtesy of US taxpayers. .I’ve yet to hear him say that Congressional pensions ought to be cut or rescinded, despite massive red ink in the federal budget. So why, then, is he so hard on states having trouble meeting their obligations?

The answer, of course, is that these states are blue states. The GOP Senate appears to believe states that didn’t vote for them don’t deserve to be helped. Therefore it’s okay for them to go bankrupt. Then they won’t have to bother with unimportant things like paying pensions or providing health service for unimportant people who don’t add value to Wall St. We’re talking about, teachers, cops, firefighters, nurses, among others who seem to matter not at all to McConnell.

But if Congress refuses to help states, it will harm ALL states, not just blue states. It will even hurt Kentucky, McConnell’s home state. Teachers, police, fire fighters, all public sector workers will be harmed.

Keep reading.

Categories Funding, Health, Safety

Corey Robin: Now is the Time to Revive Public Higher Education

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2020 //
15

Corey Robin, a professor of political science at Brooklyn Colege and the CUNY Graduate Center, argues that this is the time to resurrect public colleges and 7ni ersities.

Writing in The New Yorker, Robin points out that most commentary in the media pertains to elite institutions, and public universities are stepchildren or forgotten.

For decades, a handful of boutique colleges and powerhouse universities have served as emblems of our system of higher education. If they are not the focus of discussion, they are the subtext, shaping our assumptions about the typical campus experience. This has remained true during the pandemic. The question of reopening has produced dozens of proposals, but most of them are tenable only for schools like Brown; they don’t obtain in the context of Brooklyn College. The coronavirus has seeded a much-needed conversation about building a more equal society. It’s time for a similar conversation about the academy.

In academia, as in the rest of society, a combination of public and private actors directs wealth to those who need it least. While cuny struggles to survive decades of budget cuts—and faces, in the pandemic, the possibility of even more—donors lavish elite colleges and universities with gifts of millions, even billions, of dollars. Sometimes these donations fund opportunities for low-income students, but mostly they serve as tax-deductible transfers to rich, private institutions, depriving the public of much-needed revenue. What taxes federal and state governments do collect may be returned to those institutions in the form of hefty grants and contracts, which help fund operating budgets that Brooklyn College can only dream of. This is the song of culture in our society. The bass line is wealth and profit; the melody is diversity and opportunity.

Yet, for all the talk of the poor and students of color at the Ivy League, the real institutions of mobility in the United States are underfunded public universities. Paxson [the president of Brown University] may believe that “a university campus is a microcosm of any major city in the U.S.,” as she told NPR, but CUNY is no microcosm. With nearly two hundred and seventy-five thousand students and forty-five thousand staff—a population larger than that of many American cities—it is what the Latin root of the word “university” tells us higher education should be: the entire, the whole. More than seventy-five per cent of our undergraduate students are nonwhite. Sixty-one per cent receive Pell Grants, and the same percentage have parents who did not graduate from college. At City College and Baruch College, seventy-six and seventy-nine per cent of students, respectively, start out in the bottom quintile of the income distribution and wind up in one of the top three quintiles. For hundreds of thousands of working-class students, in other words, a cash-starved public university is their gateway to the middle or upper-middle class.

Beyond opportunity, institutions like CUNY offer a vision of education that is less about credentials than about the deep contact—and conflict—between reading and experience that is the essence of culture. On most élite campuses, undergraduates are eighteen to twenty-two years old. At cuny, more than twenty-five per cent of undergraduates are twenty-five or older. Our campuses are not cloisters; they’re classrooms out of the pages of Plato and Huey Newton, where philosophy is set in motion in and by the street. Like other public colleges and universities, cuny is a mustard seed of intellectual life, a source of reinvention and renewal. If we are to endure this crisis—and, later, to learn from it—some of our most original thinkers and leaders will come from schools like City College…

During the Depression, the New York municipal-college system opened two flagship campuses: Brooklyn College and Queens College. These schools built the middle class, took in refugees from Nazi Germany, remade higher education, and transformed American arts and letters. In 1942, Brooklyn College gave Hannah Arendt her first teaching job in the United States; an adjunct, she lectured on the Dreyfus affair, which would figure prominently in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” In the decades that followed, cuny built more campuses. Until 1976, it was free to all students; the government footed the bill.

What prompted this public investment in higher education was neither sentimentality about the poor nor a noblesse oblige of good works. It was a vision of culture and social wealth, derived from the activism of the working classes and defended by a member of Britain’s House of Lords. “Why should we not set aside,” John Maynard Keynes wondered in 1942, “fifty million pounds a year for the next twenty years to add in every substantial city of the realm the dignity of an ancient university.” Against those who disavowed such ambitions on the grounds of expense, Keynes said, “Anything we can actually do we can afford.” And “once done, it is there.”

Public spending, for public universities, is a bequest of permanence from one generation to the next. It is a promise to the future that it will enjoy the learning of the present and the literature of the past. It is what we need, more than ever, today. Sending students, professors, and workers back to campus, amid a pandemic, simply because colleges and universities need the cash, is a statement of bankruptcy more profound than any balance sheet could ever tally.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Higher Education

Leonie Haimson: Yes, NYC Can Pay for Smaller Classes: Here Is How

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2020 //
11

Leonie Haimson is a tireless advocate for small class size. At the drop of a hat, she will recite the research showing the value of small classes, especially for the neediest children.

She just published an article showing how New York City can afford to reduce class sizes.

She identifies the specific ways that the city can shift funds to reduce class sizes.

She begins:

The New York City Department of Education has lost 74 employees to the novel coronavirus, including 30 teachers and 28 paraprofessionals who have died as of May 8. Evidence has also emerged that children can develop serious illnesses after being infected with the virus, and even those who are asymptomatic are often effective transmitters.

Now that both Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo have wisely decided that our public schools will be closed through the end of June, it is time to start thinking about how they will be reopened in the fall to maximize the health and safety of students and staff, and strengthen the academic and emotional support that our students will need to make up for the myriad losses they have suffered this year.

As Mayor de Blasio has said, “Next school year will have to be the greatest academic school year New York City will ever have because everyone is going to be playing catch up.” And yet he has also proposed over $800 million in reductions to the Department of Education, including staffing freezes and at least $140 million taken directly out of school budgets, which would likely cause class sizes to grow even larger, the loss of school counselors and more.

How could next year be the best year ever, given such drastic reductions? In fact, our schools will need increased investments to provide the enhanced feedback and engagement that students will so desperately need after months of isolation and inadequate remote learning.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Education Reform, Funding

David Dayen: Why A Federal Bail Out for Lobbyists?

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2020 //
20

David Dayen writes regular reports on the politics of the pandemic for The American Prospect.

He posted this today.


First Response

I read this interview between Ezra Klein and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Pramila Jayapal, and I have to say I’m tiring of what amounts to a bunch of excuses for how progressives have been functionally locked out of policymaking during this crisis. Jayapal sniffs that “it’s a lot easier to be on the outside and to be pure and never having to make compromises,” and says that there aren’t enough progressives willing to use their power to stop legislation outright. She essentially says that, as long as there’s a bone in there, members can be easily picked off.

But the problem isn’t about compromise, it’s about invisibility. Nancy Pelosi has run the House of Representatives by fiat for close to two months, and there hasn’t been a single word of protest as she locks every other member of the Democratic caucus out of policymaking and hands them take-it-or-leave-it legislation to rubber stamp. If Jayapal has ever objected to that you sure wouldn’t know.

As Ezra points out, instead of organizing around one thing, progressives supply 100-item wish lists that everyone knows won’t be fulfilled. This has two consequences: the wish lists show progressives are not completely serious about governing, and the leadership can always pick like 2 of the 100 out of the list and give members something to justify voting for a bad bill.

Read all of our Unsanitized reports

Meanwhile, Pelosi has been talking about what she’ll add to the next bill, and it’s relatively unconstrained by wish lists. One of the elements is changing the eligibility standards for PPP small business loans to include 501(c)(4) and (c)(6) nonprofit organizations. You might know (c)(6) organizations by another name: lobbyists. Unbelievably, K Street has asked for a bailout and is on the road to getting it. I mean lobbyists are good at lobbying, I guess.

As far as I can tell, lobbyists have not stopped lobbying amid the crisis. There’s been a “frenzy” of lobbying around Mitch McConnell’s desire for a corporate liability shield from coronavirus-related lawsuits, for example. Why do high-powered lobby shops need a free $10 million per firm, exactly? Also, PPP will be out of money by the time any bill passes. Does tweaking eligibility signal giving more to this program, in part to just shovel money at lobbying firms?

Meanwhile, Jayapal’s bill to guarantee payroll support from the government for the duration of the crisis was “very worthy of consideration,” said Pelosi. That’s code for “nice work but it’s not getting in the bill.”

The House Democratic slogan is “for the people.” And that’s selectively true. Pelosi listens to some people, powerful people. And she pays lip service to others. She does this because she knows she can get away with it. There’s been essentially no dissent from those on the losing end of that equation. The House still doesn’t even have remote voting in place, and caucuses are doing Zoom calls rather than official hearings. Hundreds of members of Congress representing hundreds of millions of people have been disenfranchised. If there’s state and local government aid in a future bill (if it ever happens), progressives are going to shrug and support something with a lobbyist bailout in it. You can see it now.

If you funnel all lawmaking through one person, you’re going to get things laundered through a certain perspective that has a likelihood of occasionally being myopic. The K Street bailout is the dumbest political maneuver you could possibly make right now. Businesses already have access to insanely generous support at the federal level; the Federal Reserve has propped up their equity and credit markets. Who do you think pays lobbyists? The PPP is an underweighted program that isn’t going to save most small businesses, it’s not even designed to do that. All you’re doing by adding lobbyists to it is stoking public anger. And the anger is well-placed; lobbyists really don’t deserve free money right now.

But when there’s no pressure whatsoever on the one-woman Congress, you stumble into mistakes like this. Surely progressive lawmakers don’t like being alienated from their professional duties in this fashion. Maybe they should say something.

Jared’s Boys

To facilitate sleeping at night, I try really hard to avoid the unavoidable reality that Jared Kushner, someone with about as much policy talent as the agave plant in my front yard, is managing huge sections of the government. But the description of Kushner’s operation to secure medical equipment reflects the farce that our policymaking apparatus has been turned into, a combination of kleptocracy and total ignorance that is hard to even really analyze outside of saying “this is bad.”

But I will highlight the provenance of many of the people working on the Kushner project: his buddies in the private equity industry. Was the whole idea to, I don’t know, knuckle under suppliers and take out management fees and rip off hospitals and states? Then why would PE guys be involved? They “were expected to apply their deal-making experience to quickly weed out good leads from the mountain of bad ones,” according to administration officials. That’s not what PE, especially the inexperienced PE volunteers assigned to this project, do. There are no distressed assets among medical suppliers in high demand. There’s nobody to screw over when the goal is to get masks and gowns quickly to doctors and nurses. And PE paper-pushers probably don’t understand the particular challenges of this task, namely supply chain management.

This Pro Publica story about one fly-by-night contractors private jet trip to find N95 masks is typical of the dysfunction involved here. And here’s a supply company set up by Republican operatives that’s now under criminal investigation. And here are more allegations that the administration prioritized friends of Kushner for contracts. This entire thing was an enormous grift at the expense of national preparedness.

Categories Accountability, Funding

Education Law Center: States Should Reject DeVos’ Proposal to Fund Elite Private Schools

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2020 //
8

NEW JERSEY MUST REJECT EDUCATION SECRETARY DEVOS’ ADVICE TO GIVE EMERGENCY COVID-19 FUNDS EVEN TO WEALTHY PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Education Law Center is urging New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy to firmly reject a non-binding directive from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to set aside federal emergency relief funds under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act for all private school students, even the most wealthy.

In a May 11 letter to Governor Murphy, ELC explains that Secretary DeVos’ guidance to New Jersey and other states to allocate CARES Act funds to all private school students, without regard for income level, is based on a patent misreading of the express terms of the CARES Act and the federal Title I statute, which governs the distribution of CARES Act funding to local school districts. ELC further explains that Secretary DeVos’ flawed legal interpretation would also significantly diminish the resources available to New Jersey school districts to provide effective and equitable remote learning opportunities while students are sheltering at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“This erroneous guidance lays bare Secretary DeVos’ personal agenda for reducing federal emergency CARES Act funds to public schools and redirecting as much of that funding as possible to private schools,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director. “By advising that even the wealthiest students in the most expensive private schools should receive services paid for with CARES Act funds, the guidance would lead New Jersey and other states to divert millions of dollars critically needed by public school students, including access to continuing instruction while their schools are closed.”

Estimates based on 2017 census data show that New Jersey’s high poverty districts will be most impacted by following Secretary DeVos’ directive given the differences between the poverty rates of the district as a whole and those of private school students.

For example, in Jersey City, 12% of the district school-aged population attend private schools, while only 14% of those students are poor. Following DeVos’ directive would mean diverting nearly $1 million more of the CARES Act funds from Jersey City public school students, 30% of whom are poor.

Similarly, in Passaic City, an estimated 16% of students attend private schools, but only 10% of those students are poor. In Passaic public schools, 51% of students are poor. Using Secretary DeVos’ preferred approach would increase the amount of federal CARES Act funds reserved for private school students from $300,000 to $1.4 million.

ELC also underscores that rejecting Secretary DeVos’ directive is compelled by New Jersey’s constitutional obligation to “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools” for all students. As the New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed in the landmark Abbott v. Burke rulings, public school students have a fundamental right to an education that prepares them to be informed citizens and productive members of society and that right “must remain prominent, paramount and fully protected.”

Beyond New Jersey, ELC is calling on governors and education officials to decline Secretary DeVos’ legally improper directives and ensure maximum CARES Act funds to enable school districts across the country to bring an end to the digital divide.

Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
Education Law Center
60 Park Place, Suite 300
Newark, NJ 07102
973-624-1815, ext. 24
skrengel@edlawcenter.org

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

New York Post: Secret Deal Between NYC Mayor De Blasio and Orthodox Jewish Leaders to Stall Report about Investigation of Yeshivas

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2020 //
3

Susan Edelman, investigative reporter on education issues, reports on emails showing that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made a deal with Orthodox Jewish leaders—a powerful voting bloc in the city and state politics—to stall an investigation of shoddy yeshivas in exchange for their support in the state legislature renewing mayoral control of the New York City public schools.

Edelman writes:

Mayor Bill de Blasio was personally involved in a deal with Orthodox Jewish leaders to delay a long-awaited report on shoddy yeshivas in exchange for an extension of mayoral control of city schools, emails obtained by The Post show.

Internal emails among de Blasio and his top aides at City Hall and the Department of Education reveal that the mayor made key phone calls to the powerful religious leaders to clinch the support of two state lawmakers voting on his power to run the nation’s largest school system.

“These internal communications reveal what we suspected all along: Mayor de Blasio abused his power by interfering with the yeshiva investigation,” said Nafuli Moster, founder and executive director of Young Advocates for Fair Education (YAFFED). The group filed complaints against 39 Brooklyn yeshivas in July 2015 for allegedly shortchanging children on secular subjects such as math, English, science and history.

The DOE launched an investigation of the yeshivas, but as it dragged on, critics charged City Hall was delaying the probe to curry favor with the Orthodox Jewish voting bloc.

Even an investigation of the mayor’s suspected interference was stalled, whistle-blowers told The Post. In response to that complaint, the Department of Investigation and the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools finally issued a report last December confirming “political horsetrading” on the mayoral control issue.

YAFFED—an organization of former yeshiva students—has lodged complaints against many yeshivas for failing to prepare students to live in modern society while collecting millions of dollars in city and state funding.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Funding, New York City, Religion

Michigan: District Votes to Turn Alternative School into Virtual School

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2020 //
23

Maybe this won’t seem like a big deal to you, but it’s a portent of the future. It’s not a lot of students or teachers, but it signifies what’s coming down the pike.

A small alternative school in Avondale, Michigan, is going to be converted to a full-time virtual school.

All seven teachers will be replaced.

The district pretends that the decision was for the sake of the students, but in reality, it’s to save money. The district and the state of Michigan just could not afford to educate these students anymore so they settled on a cheap strategy. The kids will get an inferior digital education with no personal interaction with real teachers, but, hey, the state can’t afford to give them a real education.

This week is National Teacher Appreciation Week – but, for the seven teachers at Avondale Academy, they just found out they’re being laid off.

On Monday, the Avondale Board of Education voted to close Avondale Academy and to restructure it as the Avondale Diploma and Careers Institute Virtual School – a fully online alternative high school.

Social studies teacher Paul Sandy said he is horrified by the board’s decision. He created the petition “Save Avondale Academy” and, as of Tuesday evening, it has more than 500 online signatures.

“It’s a central truth that all children deserve real teachers – not virtual teachers who can’t see them, talk to them, hand them fruit snacks out of their big Trader Joe’s bag, buy them art supplies or talk to them out in the hallway between classes,” said Sandy. “All students deserve an education that is hands-on and involves physical activity, social interaction and authentic, real learning…”

As part of the decision, the Diploma and Careers Institute will provide all Avondale Academy students with their own Chromebook, and a resource center would be open Monday through Thursday, staffed with an adult mentor, for students who need in-person support. There would continue to be opportunities for breakfast and lunch, transportation and counseling for the students.

According to Frank Lams, assistant superintendent for Financial Services, this decision will save the district a substantial amount of money.

“The district would pick up 20 percent of the enrollment (from per-pupil state funding) and the net revenue. DCI would pick up the cost for the counselors and mentors, as well as all the hardware and software necessary for the program. So, there’s a shift of about $180,000 positive. This is based on 115 pupil enrollment for the Academy,” said Lams.

The online board meeting attracted nearly 150 attendees – a record number for the board. Teachers, parents, students and experts from Michigan universities and organizations all joined together to argue for the future of the 115 students at Avondale Academy.

Paul Sandy, the social studies teacher at Avondale Academy, wrote this about the school in his petition to save the school:

Avondale Academy is an alternative public high school in the Avondale School District that serves approximately 113 students from Pontiac, Auburn Hills, and Rochester Hills, Michigan. It is intended for students who have either struggled to succeed in a mainstream high school or for students who want a smaller school setting with more social-emotional support and a community style education approach.

Avondale Academy currently provides students with a positive educational experience through social-emotional supports to students, mentor groups that reinforce community norms, creativity through art and music endeavors, a mental health peer-to-peer group, project-based learning, and reading and math intervention. All of those things are made possible with teachers.

The board decided: These kids are expendable.

Categories Accountability, Funding, Michigan, Online Education, Students, Teachers, Technology
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