ALEC clears path for for-profit charter companies to cash in after school closures
by Félix Pérez
Memphis, Tenn., is no stranger to school closures. The Shelby County School District closed four schools in 2012 and 2013 each. And the district, despite a wave of parent- and clergy-led protests and a petition that generated 6,000 signatures, voted last month to close nine schoolsand combine two others.
TAKE ACTION ›
Sign the petition to tell ALEC to stop cashing in on kids. CLICK HERE ›
At a recent school board meeting, the Rev. Dwight Ray Montgomery said, “If Dr. King were here today, he’d be standing where I’m standing today, unafraid.”
In Newark, N.J., parents and educators are organized and speaking out against a proposal by the state-appointed superintendent to close or consolidate more than a dozen schools.
Last week, special education teacher Marie Blistan, testifying before the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Schools, called the plan “misguided, top-down and illegal.”
The proposal “poses a threat to the very notion of universal public education designed to serve every school-age child in New Jersey,” said Blistan, vice president of the New Jersey Education Association.
Whether in Memphis, Newark, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, or Chicago, communities hit by school closures bemoan the loss of a longstanding neighborhood asset. Residents say school board members and local elected officials give short shrift to displaced students, many of whom have to walk long distances through dangerous neighborhoods to reach their new schools, some of which have poor records on academics, discipline and safety.
In Chicago, where some 100 schools have been closed since 2001 and 88 percent of the affected students were black, students commute to their new schools through gang areas using “safe passage” routes designated by the police department.
Aside from the less-than-anticipated savings realized by school districts and the likelihood that many students are moved to academically underperforming schools, critics of school closures take issue with the influx of out-of-state for-profit charter school companies that benefit financially from distressed communities and siphon money from underfunded public schools. In many instances, these for-profit schools are not accountable to parents or school boards, have mixed records of academic success, and are exempted from many of the standards and requirements with which public schools must comply.