Are School Closings Really Land Grabs? YES!
In some cases, they are, and it’s pretty easy to figure this out.
Our school in SE Washington, DC, for instance, was formerly in a building adjacent to highly coveted real estate: next to a DC Metro stop. As the area was slowly showing signs of gentrification, which haven’t completely materialized, commuter traffic on the subway would be very valuable. If you walk around newly gentrified neighborhoods in DC, you’ll see a common feature: condo buildings, mixed use development, anchored around Metro stops. The buildings will have a grocery store on the first floor, for instance, and apartments on top.
Our old building was slated for renovation. In the meantime, we were relocated to a swing space about a 1/2 mile away, which had us co-locating with a charter school. The original plan was to fix the old building and turn it over to the charter, with us eventually closed.
That didn’t happen. Now the charter is finishing up additions to their other campus. They’ll leave us, apparently, with the swing space because the money for renovations was stripped from the budget. Moreover, the late Mr. Berry did not want the property to stay as a school because it was more valuable as Are School Closings Really Land Grabs? YES! | @ THE CHALKFACE:
Controversy on critique of the “specialists.”
I posted this yesterday, roughly based on my experience with “specialists” in schools. The results have been mixed in terms of opposition to the concept and the contrary, that there is some room for analysis of the work that specialists do. Let me add some details to my perspective here. And if the reader finds complete and total inaccuracy with my claims, then by all means share with me your positive experiences in the comments.
I returned to the classroom a few years ago after eight years in higher education. While in academe, I became a forceful advocate for the preservation of a free and open public system of education. During my first four years as a graduate student, I had no idea what “education reform” actually meant. Then, as an assistant professor, I started to get the idea as I observed its impacts on student teachers. I became an active participant in the conversation surrounding education reform.
Now I’m putting my formerly activist money (or lack thereof) where my mouth is, doing the most difficult work that I’ve ever done. Teaching in a low-income, high-needs, inner-city school, one that co-locates with a charter, has changed me considerably. Even though I oppose nearly every tenet of education reform, I am no longer an unabashed booster for the public system. It deserves some measure of critique. And those like Controversy on critique of the “specialists.”
