Proposed new charter school

[klauspood.livejournal.com]

There is a proposal for a new charter school in Somerville. The state (DESE) will be reviewing the application for the next few weeks and will possibly grant the charter on February 28th. If granted this charter school will undermine the existing Somerville Public Schools by reducing school funding by nearly $5 million a year, which is almost 10% of the current school budget. This cut in funding will lead to devastating cuts in public school programs, loss of 60 -75 teachers, and potentially closure of an entire school. This would represent a huge set back for public education in Somerville, setting back much of the progress that has been made in our schools in the last 25 years.

There will be a public hearing by the DESE on this on December 14 2011 at Somerville High School. More info can be found at:

https://sites.google.com/site/progresstogetherforsomerville

http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/21168

http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=6532

Comments

[zubatac.livejournal.com]

Sure. But if you take X% of the students out of a school, the school does not become X% cheaper to operate; there are fixed costs and economies of scale.

If a charter (any charter) takes 400+ students out of the Somerville district (which is their eventual goal), the best-case scenario is that either a school closes and some students have to go further to get to school, or our property tax rates go up. It's not without costs.

Don't close the schools, OPEN THEM UP!

[turil.livejournal.com]

If there are fewer students in each school, you can open those extra classrooms up to other educational programs, open to all community members, including kids. Rather than having just one option in each school, encourage a whole variety if community-focused programs to share the school space, so that kids have more diversity of options for learning. For example, the excellent King Open School of Cambridge got it's start as one room in the regular King School. Somerville could do the same kind of thing, sharing the public buildings with the public for MORE diversity of education. This way kids still get to walk to their local schools, and still be able to get the kind of education that works best for them, and they even could have the option to go to different programs each day, truly giving them the best education possible.

Re: Don't close the schools, OPEN THEM UP!

[zubatac.livejournal.com]

Where do you think we can find funding for this? =( I don't think significant tax increases are politically feasible; I hope I'm proven wrong about this.

Also, particularly for students in the lower grades, switching to a new teacher on a daily basis is IMO not the best option. Or yearly. =) And how could we possibly schedule it in a sane way?