Politics

Top 14 Reasons To Vote No On Question 2 Because Charter Schools Are A Scam

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Hillary Clinton is going to win all the electoral votes in Massachusetts, so it’s kind of pointless for us to crusade for either candidate in the upcoming election. But there are several other things on the ballot that will be contested, which is why we’re putting together another Turtleboy Ticket for November. We’ve endorsed Kate Campanale for State Rep out of Leicester/Worcester. And today we’re gonna talk about the issue that seems to be getting the most time on the airwaves – Question 2. This would lift the current cap on the number of charter schools that can exist in this state. Charter Schools call themselves public schools because they’re financed by the taxpayers. But they operate very differently, and at the end of the day they are a scam. Here’s the Top 12 reasons you should vote No on Question 2 and keep the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts….

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14. You can get a great education at any public school.

This Turtleboy went to South High School. Many would label this a “failing school” because of its relatively low test scores. You would think that it’s impossible to learn there if you didn’t go there. But it’s not. Classes in public schools still use tracking, so if your kid is an honors student they will not be in class with all the yo-yo’s. Schools like South, North, Southbridge, Lawrence, and other places dealing with high amounts of at-risk students have a plethora of teachers anxious to teach kids. The problem is that many of their students simply don’t care, and their parents don’t value education. But if you are willing to learn, and your parents do care, you can get a great education at a public school. Every year Doherty, Burncoat, North, and South send kids to Ivy League schools. They just aren’t making headlines because the Turtlegram can’t get any clicks off of that.

 

 

13. We’re closing schools left and right, so why are we opening new ones?

In the last 10-15 years Worcester has lost many neighborhood elementary schools including New Ludlow, Harlow Street, Mill Swan, and Dartmouth Street. Spencer recently closed Maple Street Elementary. That’s because it’s too expensive to operate all these buildings. So how does it make any sense to keep opening up new buildings and pay for maintenance staff, teachers, administrators, supplies, and the insane heating bills that come from New England winters?

 

12. Charter Schools can become SJW training academies that fill kid’s brains with propaganda.

Charter Schools can and have become places where agenda driven adults use kids as props for political stunts. Let’s look at what happened at Seven Hills Charter School in WorcesterThey forced their students to hold signs listing “microaggressions” that people have said to them. A microaggression is when someone asks you a question and freak out about it and call them racist. For instance, here’s one of the girls that Seven Hills Principal Krista Piazza made hold a sign listing a microaggression allegedly said to her:

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If that sign looks familiar then it’s probably because you read this 2013 Buzzfeed article in which adults held signs about microaggressions people said to them. Krista Piazza and the staff at Seven Hills forced kids to copy these signs and pose with them so they could play social justice warriors for the day:

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They did it a bunch too:

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Social justice warriors are bad enough to begin with. But this is just plain lazy to top it off. They plagiarized a Buzzfeed article because they couldn’t come up with their own imaginary tales of oppression. The taxpayers paid for this to happen.

Krista Piazza also drafted this petition to the President, asking him to “change the ELL label to “Multilingual Students” because “The term English Language Learner carries negative connotations and does not value the other languages and cultures that students come from.” The best part is she pretended that a group of sixth graders got together and drafted this petition. As if 11 year olds give a shit about PC semantics. In reality she was once again using her charter school kids as a pawn in her never ending quest for political correctness.

Then there was that charter school in New Bedford during the Ferguson protests that forced second grade students to stand in the cold holding black lives matter propaganda outside of their school.

Their “executive director” is a Teach For America lackey who was using 7 year olds, who should be playing games and enjoying life, as pawns in his PC game of world domination.

2nd graders protest ferugson new bedford

Schools are supposed to be places where kids go to learn. We don’t need ideologues on either side using them as a way to brainwash kids. But if the cap is lifted then any person with strong political opinions and enough financial backing can create a SJW training camp. This is now why schools exist.

 

11. Charter Schools cost the taxpayers more money and increases the size and power of the government.

When a new charter school opens up, they receive the money allocated for each student that would have gone to the public school. So right there your net gain and loss is zero. However, in the first year the state also reimburses each kid’s sending district (the public school they would normally go to) 100%. So if Jimmy wants to go to a charter school, and his sending district spends $12,000 per year for every student, then the charter school gets $12K AND his sending district gets $12K. For the next five years his sending district gets 25% ($3,000) per year from the taxpayers for a kid the don’t have:

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This not only hurts taxpayers whose kids go to public schools (because they’re slowly losing money) it also hurts the rest of the taxpayers because we’re paying for this experiment. Conservatives are allegedly in favor of less government spending. All this does is increase government spending while slowly siphoning money away from needy public schools.

 

10. Charter schools can be selective. 

Charter schools claim they’ll take anyone, but many of them have entrance exams. Regardless, the mere fact that parents sign their kids up for charter school lotteries shows that they are more invested in their children’s education than some deadbeat who hasn’t seen their kid’s report cards since 9/11. Charter schools are nothing less than publicly funded private schools. Charter schools enroll between 0-7% of students with disabilities (mostly mild), while public schools in those districts enroll over 13%. Charter schools have disproportionate amounts of special education and ELL students as well. You cannot consider yourself a public school if your student population doesn’t reflect the public it serves. That’s because charters are publicly financed private schools. If there were no lotteries and charter schools randomly selected students from public schools, then we’d support them. But instead they get the pick of the litter and leave the public schools with whatever is left over.

 

9. Charter schools can kick kids out. 

If a kid acts like a constant dooshnozzle, or is failing all his classes, or is chronically absent, a charter school has the ability to dump that kid and bring in a new kid who actually wants to be there. This is a good thing, but then where do they go? Public schools don’t have that option and are left with whatever is left over. Charter schools claim that they are public schools, but if they’re not playing by the same rules then this is simply a lie.

Charter Schools

 

8. Charter schools are for profit

Charter schools choose their own management structure: 67% of all charter schools are independently run non-profit, single site schools; 20 percent are run by non-profit organizations that run more than one charter school; and just under 13 percent are run by for-profit companies. As we’ve learned from Mosaic, there is nothing non-profit about non-profits.

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Our kids are not capital for investors to profit off of.

 

7. Charter schools don’t get results. 

Because of the obvious advantages charter schools have with more parental involvement as well as parental and student contracts, charter schools should be destroying public schools on performance on standardized tests. But they’re not. On average nationwide charter schools perform about the same as public schools do. In some regions public schools perform better, and in others charter schools perform better. It’s embarrassing and humiliating that charter schools are not destroying public schools in test scores, considering all of the advantages they have.

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6. Charter school teachers are Teach for America scabs who can’t get real teaching jobs. 

One of the driving forces behind charter schools is to destroy teacher’s unions. Teachers bargain their contracts and expect districts to follow the contract. Charter school teachers are grossly underpaid and non-unionized, so charters have the ability to arbitrarily extend the school day, increase health insurance contributions, and even decrease salary, without any input from the teachers. As a result, no one with a brain or any self respect teaches in a charter school for too long. If they were qualified, they would work in a public school where salary is more appropriate for a professional with a Master’s Degree, and contracts are collectively bargained. Turnover is extremely high, and thus charter schools are reliant on young, fresh out college, inexperienced, Teach for America novices to educate their kids. Having such high turnover rates for teachers is not good for a child’s education, and if it doesn’t help kids then we shouldn’t be doing it.

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5. Charter school boards are not elected and thus are not accountable to the people. 

We elect a School Committee in Worcester and they ultimately set policy in the public schools. Charter school boards are appointed and accountable only to those who have invested in the school. As a matter of fact here is a link for you if you wanna open up your own charter school. Ya got that? You can just go online, start a school, and take money away from public schools if you wanna make a quick buck. This will happen all the time if the cap on charter schools is lifted.

 

4. Charter schools are not subject to laws that limit the amount of suspensions they can dish out like charter schools. 

Public schools are handcuffed by state laws that limit the amount of suspensions they can give. Charter schools suspend students at a significantly higher rate than public schools, and push them out if the suspensions continue. Although we have no problem with schools suspending kids, if charter schools are public schools then they should be playing by the same rules as public schools. When you get rid of all your problem students, you are no longer a public school because public schools are forced to take all students. Charter schools are nothing but private schools financed by the taxpayers.

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3. If every publicly funded school became a charter school, then there would be no more public schools. 

One of the reasons politicians are so obsessed with charter schools is that they believe the free market model of competition will breed success. This works in business, but it doesn’t work with schools. If it all went as planned charter schools would perform better than public schools and public schools would be shut down after chronic underperformance. Eventually there would be no public schools and every school would be a charter. What would happen then? Where would all the bad kids go? Wouldn’t that just make charter schools the new public schools? Wouldn’t they then be forced to follow the current guidelines that public schools are forced to adhere to? Popsicle headache.

 

2. Charter schools take money away from public schools. 

Public schools are underfunded enough as it is, but on average a public school loses close to $10,000 worth of funding for every student who leaves that school and enrolls in a charter because the money follows the student. Don’t like the fact that your kids are going home begging for supplies for their classroom? Don’t support charter schools.

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1. Charter schools pay their directors ridiculous salaries.

Check out some of these job listings for charter school executives on Indeed. Charter schools have CEO’s because they are businesses and our children are their product. If a product isn’t selling then they get rid of that product. They pay themselves whatever the unelected board wants to pay them, and since they are funded by not only taxpayer dollars but also money from wealthy philanthropists, these salaries can get pretty high. Washington D.C. spends over $600 million a year on charter schools, and the charter school CEOs get paid in upwards of $350,000 a year. There is also no way of tracking how charter schools are spending taxpayer money and the frequently do not respond to Freedom of Information Act requests. They are paid by the taxpayers but are not accountable to them in any way. Eva Moskowitz, the chief executive of the nonprofit Success Academy network in Newark, made $578,420 last year. Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the nonprofit Harlem Children’s Zone, made $553,000 last year.

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The bottom line is that Turtleboy would support charter schools if they did the following:

  • Chose their students completely at random without any entrance exams or lotteries that require parents to sign up.
  • Charter schools have a proportional population to the public schools in terms of SPED and ELL students.
  • Charter schools have to find a way to deal with problematic students the same way public schools do.
  • Charter school boards are elected by the public.
  • Charter school expenditures are publicly viewable.
  • Charter schools are not to use students for political causes.
  • Salaries for charter school CEO’s fall in line with public school principal salaries.
  • Charter school teachers are held to the same standards that public school teachers are in terms of licensure.
  • Charter schools cannot accept money from philanthropists who seek to have influence on the way the school is run.

The only thing I don’t like about voting No on question 2 are the people I’m associated with as a result. The SJW brigade has taken up the cause of No on 2, so it’s understandable if you are inclined to vote Yes to spite them. Don’t get me wrong – I hate that we’re with the people we normally crap on for this one. But this is a question that liberals and conservatives should agree on because it increases the role of the government while also taking money from needy public schools.

 

 

 

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42 Comment(s)
  • March 3, 2017 at 2:54 am

    This is not a good idea for those schools to behave like this.

  • Froggy
    November 10, 2016 at 9:55 pm

    My kids go to a charter school. I like that I can get a hold of the teachers through an app. Also, the hours are perfect for working parents. I work 8 am – 5 pm. the neighborhood school goes from 8 am – 2 pm and don’t offer any type of after school programs. It has been this way long before charter school entered the picture. Parents with no jobs are offered transportation to after school programs but working parents are stuck.

  • Mediocrity
    September 23, 2016 at 1:50 pm

    GET RID OF UNIONS AND TENURE.
    Weed out the useless teachers (by town voting).
    No more nepotism.
    No more unscrupulous tactics.

    • Red Tide
      September 24, 2016 at 12:26 pm

      Tenure was eliminated in Ed Reform in 1990.

  • anonon
    September 22, 2016 at 9:54 pm

    “Schools are supposed to be places where kids go to learn. We don’t need ideologues on either side using them as a way to brainwash kids. But if the cap is lifted then any person with strong political opinions and enough financial backing can create a SJW training camp. This is now why schools exist.”

    Shouldn’t happen in charter schools, but shouldn’t happen in ANY school, and it DOES happen in public schools.
    (Need proof? Visit the MA Dept Elem and Secondary Schools Web site and look over curriculum frameworks).

  • SMH
    September 22, 2016 at 8:44 pm

    Take the charter school money and create ” schools” for the shitheads that are causing all the problems in public schools. Then you are left with one nice school system for the kids who want an education and one for the jack asses that ruin it for everyone else. Charter school not necessary.

    • anonon
      September 22, 2016 at 10:06 pm

      Worcester has a variety of alternative schools. Definitely needed, but not a cure-all.

    • Red Tide
      September 24, 2016 at 12:22 pm

      You are 1000% correct, but the PC whimp pols would never do this. It takes a biblical effort to move a problem child to an alternative school. You HAVE the correct answer – alternative schools for those who cant /wont get along with others in public schools. Anyone ever notice how many Public School teachers send thier own kids to Catholic school? THAT says it all right there!! They know.

  • Finnish Goalie
    September 22, 2016 at 6:06 pm
  • Finnish Goalie
    September 22, 2016 at 6:05 pm

    No on 2.

  • John Cena
    September 22, 2016 at 5:23 pm

    Spencer closed Maple St AND Lake St schools within the last 3 years.

  • SaveWorcester
    September 22, 2016 at 5:16 pm

    If John Oliver and most liberals are against them, then I am for them.

  • 1776
    September 22, 2016 at 3:48 pm

    Public schools S*CK!!!! I am appalled at the incredibly biased cookie-cutter liberal pussified CRAP they teach in public schools.
    And the teachers Union is nothing more than a money funnel to the Dems – pays off favors. Have you seen some of the salaries of the labor union officials?? F*CK the Unions. Unions just create miserable, nasty teachers after 15 years.

    This is ALL ABOUT MONEY (how much administrators and teachers can get). It is NOT about kids/students. One size does not fit all. Do something about the trouble making kids (the bullies, truancy problems, and not wanting to learn) . Do MORE for the smart kids by challenging them and not holding them back.

    • The Philistine
      September 22, 2016 at 8:25 pm

      Where did they touch you?

  • me1333
    September 22, 2016 at 1:42 pm

    I don’t agree. My own kids did fantastic at the charter schools they attended. They had not been flourishing previously in the typical public schools. The children with adjustment issues too severe should not be in classes disrupting other children. They need a much more structured environment and would be best assisted in separate classrooms or schools. Then there are the mentally absent and neglectful parents whose children won’t succeed because they do not have healthy living situations where education is valued. The public schools supposedly lose funds but have less children to teach. They would not have those same funds if the children were home schooled, moved, went to private school or didn’t even exist. Stop perpetrating the lie created by unions. Many sped children need special schools. Vouchers are what we really should make accessible.

  • John Oliver
    September 22, 2016 at 1:40 pm

    John Oliver did a great segment on Charter schools coming to many of the same conclusions…and this is nationally. Check out the sheer amount of Ca$h involved in these ventures…the number of failures and restructures..and the tax money is gone. Vapor…And there is no way to get it back. I guess if you set up a charter school with your own funds for 5 years to prove you’re able to do it and then you can apply for reimbursement you might be getting somewhere towards beneficial legitimacy but until then let’s keep the cash in the regular public schools.

  • ADdm
    September 22, 2016 at 1:35 pm

    Last I checked, didn’t SJW’s also infiltrated Public Schools and well as Colleges and Universities? They’ve already reached their tentacles all over many of our educational institutions, so pointing the finger at Charter Schools flaws in general feels like a misguided effort. We should be standing up against these regressive and chase them out of these institutions.

    And I still find it ironic that you’re praising Public schools when you did a slew of articles about the chaos that’s going on in some of the city’s biggest public schools: North High and Worcester Voke.

  • Dom
    September 22, 2016 at 12:49 pm

    Its also fair to point out that the tax payer $$ that follows the student to the charter school would benefit more in a public school simply because of bulk purchasing.

    For example – Text books. Anyone who has been to college knows what a scam the textbook publishing industry is but they do offer bulk discounts, like most other companies.

    A parent that home schools and buys a textbook may pay $125 for it. Charter schools that need 50 copies may only spend $100 per unit and a public high school purchases 250 copies for $75 / unit. In the end the “$10,000 tax payer dollars per student” is stretched further for things like computer labs / libraries, sports, arts, teachers with actual licenses, educational field trips etc.

    • John Cena
      September 22, 2016 at 5:31 pm

      You def don’t understand how any of this works. Try researching State Purchasing Contracts to get your widdle toes wet.

  • Ghdh
    September 22, 2016 at 11:44 am

    On the other hand, public schools are trash. You put your kids in with a bunch of losers and future ratchets, they get the creativity and individuality beaten out of them and all the learning is based around bubble tests about nothing.

  • True Reality Speaks
    Married to a WPS Teacher
    September 22, 2016 at 11:32 am

    Hard to tolerate all the misinformation, omitted facts, outright lies etc that are a hallmark of liberal Turtleboy’s blogs. Are you sure this particular writer isn’t Old Balls?

    Balance is good – pure liberal propaganda is not.

    • Realist
      October 26, 2016 at 1:25 pm

      Liberal propaganda? Looks like you don’t belong anywhere there is a dissenting opinion from your own. Head over to Breitbart !

  • Rational person
    September 22, 2016 at 11:24 am

    You are so right about Teach for America. My niece graduated with BA in communications from U of Miami and got a job as a special ed teacher at a charter school for poor, mostly black kids in New Orleans. She had absolutely no training, education or experience other than being a substitute teacher a few times in Milford.

    She was constantly posting on Facebook about how much she loved teaching, her students, etc. and I thought maybe she was really serious about this teaching thing. Her mother and grandmother were teachers.

    After about a year, maybe 2, she sets up a Go Fund Me (!) to raise money to get certified as a yoga instructor because she had read how beneficial yoga can be for students to help them academically, behaviorally, etc. She promised to set up a blog about the project and was so excited to get that training so she could really help her students!

    Her goal was $3500. I think she raised about $2900. I sent her $100.

    Well, fast-forward a year and she has suddenly been promoted to an administrative position, which she held for about 6 months until she quit to become a full-time yoga instructor.

    Am I pissed? Yeah, a little bit.

    End of rant.

    • True Reality Speaks
      Married to a WPS Teacher
      September 22, 2016 at 11:46 am

      You could substitute your niece for any new college grad working in a public school, except that the taxpayers would be footing the bill for the yoga classes, and the union wouldn’t allow her to teach it without getting a raise.

      The majority of “bad” issues with charter schools exist in similar forms in public schools, except that they are orders of magnitude worse in the regular public schools because of politics and the unions.

      Why is it that the vast majority of charter schools exist for teaching inner city minorities? Why are there typically huge waiting lists of minorities to get into these schools?

      • True Reality Speaks
        Married to a WPS Teacher
        September 22, 2016 at 11:52 am

        Because liberals and Democrats are the real racists.

      • Rational person
        September 22, 2016 at 12:33 pm

        Maybe because of the pressure on them to join gangs? I’ve heard that the only way for young black men to avoid recruitment into gangs in Worcester high schools is to play basketball. I don’t know if that is true or not but if it is, I’d sure as hell get my kid on a charter school waiting list.

        • Rational Person
          September 22, 2016 at 8:48 pm

          Ok, to the person who down-voted me, can you explain why? Do you that this is not true? I’d really like to know because when I read this (maybe in a Dianne Williamson column) my heart just broke for these young men.

          • pbh
            September 22, 2016 at 10:02 pm

            Gang members don’t play basketball?

          • Rational Person
            September 22, 2016 at 10:38 pm

            pbh, I don’t know if gang members do or don’t play basketball. The question posited was why are there so many minority kids on charter school waiting lists? I offered one possible explanation but also admitted that I could be wrong. I would like to hear from people in the know whether or not that is one possible explanation. I’m not trying to be provocative, I am genuinely trying to get some answers.

        • Red Tide
          September 24, 2016 at 12:15 pm

          What you’ve heard is WRONG. A active, present TWO PARENT intact family is what’s needed to avoid gangs. Sports is no impediment to gang activity.

          • Rational person
            October 26, 2016 at 2:44 pm

            Red Tide, the article I read stated that the gang members who are pressuring young black kids to join a gang will back off if the kid is a “baller.” Again, I don’t know if that is true. And I agree with you that intact families are the most important factor in keeping kids on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, that is not reality.

  • Aradm
    September 22, 2016 at 10:45 am

    Spin it all you want, the EAW has FAILED Worcester and its kids.

    • Chris
      September 22, 2016 at 12:27 pm

      Just get rid of the teachers’ unions and the public schools will be ok. Charters were started because many union teachers were (and some cases still) in it for the paycheck and not the kids.

      • GFY
        September 22, 2016 at 1:03 pm

        And when you don’t pay teachers, they are just in it for the resume builder, and will bail after 2 years max. That’s a good thing for kids right? A constant turnover of teachers who don’t give a shit cuz they’ll be gone next year anyway. Idk why everyone is for unions, but when it comes to teachers, the union is evil?

        No one who teaches is “in it for the money” except for charter school CEOs. If you had a PhD, would you be working for 60k?

        • CH
          November 9, 2016 at 12:27 pm

          If i got half the year off, yes.

      • Reddog
        September 22, 2016 at 2:49 pm

        Isn’t the reason you go to work every day for a paycheck?

      • bird
        September 22, 2016 at 8:19 pm

        Yes, I am a teacher and yes I do go to WORK for a paycheck. Chris, if you do work, I suppose that you do it for free. You sound like an ignorant moron.

        • Rational Person
          September 22, 2016 at 8:32 pm

          I think Chris is implying that people who choose the teaching profession do so not just for the money but for the love of their students and their desire to educate them.

      • Elizabeth
        November 7, 2016 at 11:16 pm

        Chris…. Your a complete moron… #1 reason for teacher unions is to protect the kids…. If we didn’t have teacher unions, believe me we would have 35 kiddos in a class grades K-6….. I will not even go into the research about class size.

    • Red Tide
      September 24, 2016 at 12:08 pm

      I see your points and at least the Worcester charters schools are open jokes, but I be hard pressed to support ANYTHING that Jim Oday and Mary Keefe both support.

      • Realist
        October 26, 2016 at 1:22 pm

        You are what’s wrong with society today! Simply stating you can not support something because “they” do is why this country is in crisis.

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