The Moment Education In Delaware Started Sliding Backwards

Enumerate Please!

1)  Charter Schools have been set up by this law to compete for funding by the acquisition of students, and can control the parameters upon which students get to go.

2) This bill removes many important services from needy students in Delaware’s Public Schools.

3)  All students deserve a quality education, without competing for seats where funding may at whim, be arbitrarily moved around by the Department of Education.

4)  The use of public money for more funding for charters with capital needs, stands in direct opposition to those public schools in deeper need of those funds.

5)  10 years is too long of a term to keep charters renewed.

6)  Funding cut during the depression for the necessary running of public schools, is not being reinstated; but now, is being given over to charter schools instead.

7) This bill promises funding without accountability.  Where is the standard “lien clause” if the charter goes belly up?   What’s this, another Fisker? “Here, have some money…  ”

8) Zero accountability for diversity.

9) Zero accountability for local control.

10) Zero accountability for impact.

11) Zero accountability for transparency.

12) The Performance Framework is a very weak, spindly frame to hang capital funding upon. Your grandkids could figure how to wiggle through it.  So can lawyers.

13) The law was crafted by a secret cult that a) took no notes, b) posted no meetings, c) had only one parent and one teacher and dissed both of them,

14) Provides a performance fund for 8% of Delaware’s students (those in Charters) and does absolutely nothing, creates no perfomance fund for the other 92% of Delawares public school students….  “They don’t matter”

15)  This bill allows Delaware’s Department of Education to move citizen’s levied public tax money over to any charter it desires,  based on need.  If a charter fails to perform or financially fails as did Pencader, the DOE can rob any treasury it wants of public funds it does not own, to pay that charter with your money!

16)  The accountability piece with new charters is completely unproven, untested, and undesirable.  It would take a whole bureaucracy just to hold Charters already accountable to the exact same standards they currently undergo today, without this bill.,

17)  The DOE has, with even far simpler standards then exist in this bill, failed to keep charter schools accountable in the past. If it is hard for one to do something dirt simple, how will one do something that is far more complicated?   Pencader had to close because the DOE was not involved up until more money had to be invested after they closed. Yet the DOE is responsible over the course of the life of that school for following up.

18)  We often talk of charters versus public. We’ve never even once talked about new charter schools wiping out existing charter schools.   To give the big megalithic charter a free building, free start up costs all out of taxpayers dollars when there are banks lined up to loan them money,… is simply unfair to all those pre-existing charters who still have to make loan payments, and invest in their schools too….

19)  No school boards were consulted on this bill.  It is full of problems.  The 3 members of the school boards peripherally involved with the task force, all privately said… ” no one listened to us; they did what they wanted….”

20)  The chief of the superintendents, came out against this bill.   All superintendents are privately opposed to HB 165, even those on the working committee….

21)  Delaware’s Attorney General’s office said the working group creating this bill, broke Delaware’s law.

22)  Parents of hungry children, can’t afford to send their hungry children to charter schools. The charter school associations lawyer himself, said this bill does not force charters to give Federally mandated meals to children needing them.

23) This bill takes away opportunities for Blacks and Hispanics, especially  by siphoning money out of public schools.  If this bill passes they will be forced into substandard schools within the city, either Charter or Public, and the schools in the affluent neighborhoods, will become even better.   Education again will be separate, and not equal.

24) This bill is too heavily lobbied.  DSEA has 6 lobbyiests assigned to this bill.  Rodel has 2 lobbyists assigned to this bill. Rhett Ruggerio Government Relations LLC has 6 lobbyists registered to this bill.  They public has zero lobbyists against this bill, and when a representative tried to intervene on the publics behalf, she was barred from the room. This bill is one sided. The other side deserves being heard because it is the majority stakeholder in the educational question:  parents.

25)  This bill does exactly what Chicago and Philly did to their schools 8 years ago. Today they are facing mass closings.

26) This bill penalizes religious and non profit charters.  It helps spawn 27 new charters now approved to be opened by 2014, all of which will then be competing against religious and non profits who unlike the new charters, won’t have the option of having their capital funding paid.

27) When comparing affluent Charter Schools to Affluent Public schools, the Affluent Public schools are better. When comparing poor charter schools to poor neighborhood public schools, the poorer Public Schools are better.  In all cases, when Charters are compared to public schools of the same type, they fall short.  Only 17% of Charter schools are better than the average public school.  Which means that 83% of charters are equal or below the average public school student. . .  One always rewards those who are leading the way, doing the best work.  This Bill, HB 165, does just the opposite.  It provides a welfare payment unearned to those who simply ask for it…

This bill cannot be amended sufficiently, just like one can’t put their car back together with string.  Please do not support Jacques’ and Sokola’s horrible bill that makes educating the rest of the 92% of our children  much harder, not easier…   This bill, had it been created in an open session would now be a completely different bill.   It needs to die.  There is nothing here that can’t wait 6 months for all of you to pick it up again, this time when all of you are smarter about the ramifications it creates…  After all, six months is only 26 weeks away….