Anaheim School Board Calls for Statewide Moratorium on Charter Schools
Saying no to privatization, profiteering and operating secretly.
Editor's note: Across the country, a coalition of billionaires and entrepreneurs has been promoting and imposing charter schools on the traditional public school system. These schools are funded by taxpayers but are run like private corporations--for profit, in secrecy, with little transparency and public accountability. They typically over-emphasize tests, oppose teachers' unions and have been given authority by states and counties to ignore locally elected school boards. In December, the elected high school district board in the southern California city of Anaheim published the following op-ed calling on the state to suspend sanctioning new charter schools.
In 1813, towards the end of their extraordinary lives, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams exchanged a series of remarkable letters reflecting on the meaning of the American Revolution, and as Jefferson said, it all came down to, “Whether the power of the people or that of the aristocracy should prevail.”
Today, over 200 years later, billionaires are asserting their will over our public schools, institutions that Jefferson believed were necessary to uphold the foundation of democracy. And today, wealthy and disconnected elites -- the “1 percent” -- have successfully lobbied elected officials to pass overly permissive laws allowing “charter” schools, many of which operate on a business model whose main goal is to make money.
Although there is nothing wrong with making money, when it comes to public education, our children should be our first priority. Yet while charter school proponents may say they care about kids, many operate in the shadows with no transparency, no accountability, and no public review.
So we respectfully ask the public to consider: if kids really come first, why are charter schools continuing to hide their funding, ownership and financial relationships? Why not agree to the same accountability policies as public schools – policies that would build public trust?
Yet time after time, charter schools have refused.
For example: they won’t allow open access to financials, including budgets and Anaheim School Board Calls for Statewide Moratorium on Charter Schools | Alternet:
