Total Pageviews

Search This Blog

Saturday, February 23, 2013

SB 744, A Charter School bill even I can get behind

Its been no secret that the Florida Legislature has been full speed ahead with their privatization agenda the last few years and their main mechanism has been the charter school. They have not so subtlety stacked the deck in their favor and this despite inferior quality, dubious results, and scandal and charter school closing after scandal and charter school closing. It’s shameful.

However this year maybe there is a bit of a push back going on and a few legislators have introduced a bill to hold them accountable or what I like to call, the bill least likely to pass the Florida legislature.

 SB 744, by Sens. David Simmons, R-Maitland, and Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, would require an applicant wanting to establish a charter school to submit information on annual employee compensation and to demonstrate financial capability to open, operate and maintain a high-quality charter school.

You would think above would just be common sense but sadly here in Florida when it comes to education common sense is extremely rare. It is way past time Florida if it insists on going down the charter school route makes sure they are putting in place financially accountable high quality schools or what I like to call the opposite of what we have been doing up till now.

Good luck Simmons and Montford, you are going to need it. 

2 comments:

  1. Seems fair, thanks to Sens. Simmons and Montford.

    Let's see how they vote on the Parent Tricker Bill.

    -----

    Dear Senator Simmons,

    We understand that Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, filed SB 862 last week and that it is similar to the final version of last year's failed SB 1718.

    We have heard you speak and profess to be in support of public schools and public school communities. If this is the case, you must be aware that parents don't want this, teachers don't want this, students don't want this, and even independent charter school operators don't want this. As far as we can tell, only certain legislators and corporate charter school entities want this.

    As public school educators and as your constituents, we'd like to apprise you that we don't want this. Our schools are not for sale!

    We expect you to protect them from hostile takeovers. We implore you to oppose SB 862 and/or any form of a Parent Tricker bill this session.

    Which side are you on, Sir?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for keeping us updated!

    ReplyDelete