Saying “Connecticut is facing a crisis it can fix,” a pro-charter school organization the Coalition for Every Child has launched a digital campaign gathering signatures in an open letter to the General Assembly urging lawmakers to “take bold action” in support of additional funding for public charter schools.
Charters receive public funds but operate independently of traditional school districts. A bill before the General Assembly seeks a moratorium on new charter schools. The Connecticut Education Association as well as other public school advocates claim new charters take funds away from traditional public schools.
Pro-charter groups such as the Coalition for Every Child argue it’s a question of more choices for parents and students attending low-performing schools. The organization led a rally on the New Haven Green last December in support of charter school choices.
Letter to the General Assembly:
Dear Members of Connecticut General Assembly,
As parents of public school students, we know the power that great schools can have on a young person’s life. These schools open doors to opportunity and give our children the skills they need to reach their full potential.
And like you, we want all of our children to have access to a great education.
At this critical moment, we need your help.
Right now, there are 40,000 children in the state of Connecticut who are attending underperforming schools, where barely 40% of the students are reading and doing math at grade level.
This crisis will not only have a negative impact on the lives of each and every child in these schools, it will also affect the future economy of our entire state.
Governor Malloy’s proposed budget is a good start, but we as a state still have a long way to go.
Under his proposal, charter schools students still receive fewer resources than their traditional public school peers, and there is no plan to help the thousands of kids on charter school waitlists.
If this doesn’t change, it means public charter schools students will continue to be treated like second class citizens and that most parents will have no other choice but to send their child to a school they know does not meet their needs.
We cannot allow our great state to continue down this road. We need the Legislature to show courage and take bold action.
We are asking you to stand up and join the chorus of parents who are demanding great schools for every child.
Please join us and come out in favor of additional funding for public charter schools.
The time to act is now.
I have no kids in the school system. I did have two kids in the system when there was not all of this anger exhibited by people who really don’t give a damn about kids, they care about the dollars.
Charter schools do serve a purpose in that kids learn in a quiet atmosphere. The kids in the public schools are burdened with schools that must mainstream all kids just to make the do-gooders feel well. This mainstreaming hurts the other kids as the teachers spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with these mainstreamed kids.
Our kids are getting screwed by all the political interference and bickering.
As far as I am concerned, we can eliminate charter schools, the parent advisory council, the State head of education and do away with the elected members of the BOE because none of them care about the kids. As far as I am concerned, you all suck.
The Education Committee
Legislative Office Building, Room 3100
Hartford, CT
Regarding HB 6003: An Act Concerning a Moratorium on New Charter Schools and a Review of Existing Charter Schools
Co-Chairs Senator Slossberg and Representative Fleischmann, and distinguished members of the Education Committee, including State Representative Andre Baker of Bridgeport and of the Bridgeport Board of Education:
Thank you for your public service to our state and to the hundreds of thousands of children and families who rely on our public education system as an existential on-ramp for their progress and, moreover, for the progress of our municipalities, state, and country through public education.
Since moving to Bridgeport in September 2012 from Fairfield, I’ve become aware of at least four seriously troubling and interrelated matters regarding public education in our state’s most populous city:
1. Bridgeport has failed to meet the state-mandated minimum budget requirement (MBR) by NOT funding at least 20% of its public education budget two years running–with evidently no penalties from the state for doing this. So what happens now?
2. A series of unacceptably bad, widely reported acts by and regarding Families for Urban Schools of Excellence (FUSE), its former CEO, pseudo-“Dr.,” multiple-felon Michael Sharpe, and some in leadership at FUSE’s Jumoke Academy at P.L. Dunbar School (grades K-8) in Bridgeport. How can we allow such betrayal of the public trust and of the economically disadvantaged population that FUSE was contracted by our state to serve? No matter how many Ivy League degrees and good intentions your State Board of Education may have, they have utterly failed to ensure due diligence and adequate oversight of charter schools in Bridgeport and in our state. So what happens now?
3. The reported financial relationships between a handful of ministers in the African American community in Bridgeport and the charter school enterprise, including pro-charter school groups. One example: ConnCan’s leaders and a veritable who’s-who of pro-charter school lobbyists in the Northeast just last month financially supported a highly controversial minister in Bridgeport running for state senate. This same minister is a member of the Bridgeport Board of Education, while serving on the board of an incoming charter school led by the highly controversial and appallingly inappropriate Steve Perry. His family’s daycare business in Bridgeport was found through a recent state audit to have overbilled the state more than $75,000. My wife and I have witnessed this minister at Bridgeport Board of Education meetings stating for the record that he tells his church members to “run from the public schools” and to “run to the charters.” He reportedly said at another public Board of Education meeting that he does not send his own children to the Bridgeport Public Schools, which by the way employ his wife, because to do so would constitute “child abuse.” This is just one example of the destructive, self-serving forces that the charter school enterprise has enlisted, to the detriment of an efficient, fair, and evidence-based use of our precious public dollars to provide sound public education for the least advantaged of our state’s children. Calling this a disgrace is putting it nicely. No wonder the FBI is reportedly investigating FUSE and Jumoke and perhaps others in the charter school enterprise here. So what happens now?
4. Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s open and unquestioning support of the charter school enterprise in Bridgeport, including his letter of support to the State Department of Education on behalf of Steve Perry for Perry’s application to open a charter school in Bridgeport. At the same time, Finch is the person most responsible for the underfunding of our public schools. Despite the Bridgeport Board of Education’s recommendation to the Malloy administration against approving Perry’s charter school application, Malloy’s previous Commissioner of Education and the State Board of Education last spring approved Perry’s plan to open a privately owned, publicly funded charter school in Bridgeport. So what happens now?
Not a parent, but an unrelenting believer in the necessity and power of public education, I have volunteered in the after-school Lighthouse Program at Luis Muñoz Marin elementary–a Bridgeport public school managed since 2014 by the state-run Commissioner’s Network. The Lighthouse Program serves both children attending Marin and children attending nearby charter schools. I’m glad it does. Like most people, I see all children as equally deserving of academic, psychosocial, and medical support. However, I have noticed that the charter-school kids purposely sit apart from their non-charter school peers to the point of ignoring them. Furthermore, my wife and I have witnessed at Bridgeport Board of Education meetings groups of charter school children in the audience purposely not applaud their non-charter childhood peers being recognized by the Board of Education for an academic or extracurricular achievement. And the charter school activists would like to claim that they are seeking to work together with the public school community, really?
I think the words of the writer and educator Sarah Darer Littman sum it up very well–from her editorial of January 9, 2015 “Where’s the Accountability? Anyone?” on CTNewsJunkie.com:
Listening to these same enablers say that “it’s for the kids” while they fleece the public purse is infuriating. But what really enrages me is knowing that there are so many fine educators in classrooms across this state trying to teach and help children day in and day out while being deprived of basic resources, while politicians are allowing our taxpayer dollars to be siphoned off by crooks.
Please vote to place a moratorium on additional state funding on dubious charter schools. Ideally, you’d also ensure a thorough outside audit of all existing state-funded charter schools and the rigorous implementation of an ongoing systematic review, outside the deleterious influence of the well-endowed charter school enterprise. Finally, please hold Bridgeport city government accountable for failing to meet the MBR two years running. What happens now is up to you. If you do nothing, you risk furthering these shameful and preventable problems.
Thank you for your time and considerations to this important legislation.
Peter D. Spain, MPH
280 Grovers Ave
Bridgeport, CT
06605
Pete Spain, excellent, but Pete you are doing an injustice to the voters of Bridgeport, by that I mean you must get involved in running for public office. Your knowledge and understanding of the issues concerning Bridgeport you are right on top of but you have a way of explaining the direction we need to go in that is hard to disagree with. Pete you must do this, yes we all have family needs to address but you have so much to offer.
Pete, this written testimony is so brilliant and on point, there is nothing left to be said. Bravo!