Wednesday, June 10, 2009

My take on the (Menino, Yoon, Flaherty) Charter School Movement

All three of my opponents have now jumped on the Charter School movement. Charter schools are doing some fantastic work around the country and in this City. A kid who was on my baseball team who lives on Geneva Ave. in Dorchester just got accepted to a Charter School and his family tells me that they know that is the only way he will get a good education.

But that is the problem, even when we lift the cap on charters we are tacitly admitting that there are other schools which are failing. Why is that none of the candidates say that they will not tolerate bad schools anywhere in the City? Why have all three of these candidates tolerated these bad schools for all the 40 years or so combined that they have been in office?

The two elephants in the room are busing and failing schools. Raising the cap on charters only slightly addresses getting more kids out of the regular schools and into better charter schools. In addition, there is no guarantee that the kids who need it most will get into those charter schools, instead it could be that many of these favored seats will go to favored people.

President Obama has been impressive in his desire to tackle the big problems. I think we here in Boston can tackle big problems, which is why I want to put good schools in every neighborhood, and then eliminate the busing system which currently wastes about 10% of our resources that could otherwise go towards better schools, supplies and teacher salaries.

1 comment:

Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky said...

B"H
Dear Kevin!
It's important for the country to have good public schools. Creating charter schools generates more competition which is bound to improve public schools.
There is another fundamental issue that hasn't been addressed by you and other candidates.
How long will the government of our city and state continue to discriminate against people of faith by refusing to fund religious schools it certifies?
In your quest to have a better government why don't you advocate school vouchers and the repeal of the Blaine Amendment a law born in sin of anti-Catholic bigotry that has evolved to subtle financial persecution of all people of faith:
http://blaineamendments.org