Charters vs. District: The Battle for San Francisco Public Schools
Charter boosters cite results. Critics say they drain funds, manufacture support and cherry-pick students.
When students at Malcolm X Academy returned to their elementary school in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco last month to begin a new year, they came back to a changed environment. Over the summer, part of their school building had been taken over by KIPP Bayview Elementary, a charter school operated by Knowledge is Power Program, the largest charter network in the country and in San Francisco.
For Malcolm X students and staff, the KIPP school was hardly welcome. The San Francisco School Board voted unanimously last year to reject KIPP’s application to open a new school, its third in the neighborhood and fourth in the city. Teachers and students at Malcolm X were also opposed, and marched around the neighborhood in May in protest.
But local preferences didn’t matter. The State Board of Educationoverruled the city’s school board and approved KIPP’s application. The conflict between the two schools — and activists on both sides of the issue — reflects a growing battle playing out in San Francisco and across the state.
Critics say charter and traditional public schools aren’t operating on equal footing — that charters take less than their fair share of the most challenging students, including homeless children and those with learning disabilities, and that they suspend and expel students at higher rates. That selectivity may boost charter test scores, but it erodes hard-won progress in public classrooms and siphons resources from public schools, these critics contend. They argue that the increasingly aggressive, privately funded push for charters amounts to a massive effort to privatize public education by turning public dollars over to private, self-governing entities.
This conflict may have a profound effect on the future of the city’s Continue Reading: Charters vs. District: The Battle for San Francisco Public Schools | San Francisco Public Press
