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Wednesday, October 26, 2016

King of the Castle – EduShyster

King of the Castle – EduShyster:

King of the Castle

What kind of school demands $6,000 in *liquidated damages* from a teacher who changed jobs? This kind of school…
Image result for mystic valley regional charter schoolWhen I heard the story of a teacher at Massachusetts’ largest charter school who received a $6,087 *bill* from said school after he let them know that he wouldn’t be returning to teach there this fall, I had to know more. Surely there had to be some kind of mistake or miscommunication, and by *we’re claiming liquidated damages,* the school really meant *thanks for your years of service and good luck at your new job.* So I did what anyone playing the part of a journalist on the Internet can do. I contacted the teacher and asked him if he would consent to a tell-all on my blog. To which his lawyer said *please don’t.* But I was still left with another unanswered query—call it Question 2—what kind of a school goes after a teacher like this anyway? It’s field trip time, reader, and we’re off to a mystical land known as the Mystic Valley.
The other kind of charters
In our endless, frenzied debate over whether or not to expand charter schools in Massachusetts, there is one varietal that you haven’t heard much about. While scriveners near and far scriven away about our inCREDOble urban charter success stories, the suburban stars have been given short shrift. Those
would be the subset of schools begun by middle-class parents to provide a private-school type education to their own kids at public school prices. Often offering the kinds of specialized programming that middle class parents crave—
international baccalaureate! STEM! Chinese immersion!—these schools are known for looking, well, 
King of the Castle – EduShyster: