Beauchman’s agenda: Usurpation
I’ve written before about SCCBOE’s October 2013 Charter Schools Study Workshop. I don’t remember seeing a meeting agenda. The discussion focused mostly on each of the SCCBOE members’ personal view of the role of SCCOE/SCCBOE vis-a-vis charters.
It’s not news to a frequent reader that I believe charter schools have always been intended as special remedies for traditional public schools or districts that suffer from intractable shortcomings and deprive students of a quality education.
The stated legislative objectives of the CA Charter Schools Act of 1992 never included establishment of a parallel system of quasi-private voucher schools operated under the aegis of ‘public education.’ It didn’t intend for charters to attack, undermine or replace California’s traditional school districts, yet sitting members of SCCBOE clearly feel it’s their duty to impose an aggressive pro-charter political agenda on our local districts.
When I listened to this audio recording from the meeting I was surprised by some of what I heard from each member. Here’s SCCBOE President Leon Beauchman’s quote regarding new charter petitions from the Oct. 2013 Charter Schools Study Workshop:
“Just to provide a little bit of context from what has been happening as far as our, particularly in the view of petitions that come to us from the districts, its… I think people should keep in mind where we started. We had several districts, several instances, where petitioners would take a petition to the district and the district would not even give it the kind of consideration that you would expect a district would if it was trying to be impartial when it was looking at that petition. As an example, we had one district that basically gave the petitioners their staff report the day before—or the day of—the hearing to approve or decline the petition. And so, itBeauchman’s agenda: Usurpation | BCS in Context: