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By Ruth Rodriguez-Fey.

Governor Charlie Baker has intensified his campaign to lift the cap on Charter Schools with the help of his wealthy investors from New York, I am re posting this letter to remind our Governor that his job is to ensure quality public schools for all the children of the Commonwealth, not just the lottery winners. We need to remind him that his job is not to help his wealthy friends get richer at the expense of our children’s future:

Governor Charlie Baker

Massachusetts State House

Office of the Governor

Room 280

Boston, MA 02133

Dear Governor:

The people of the Commonwealth wait for your leadership to protect our most sacred institution, our public schools. We look for your assurance to families that you will use the power to make every public school the quality every child deserves. We have followed your campaign promoting charter schools, while portraying the public schools as failing. The “failing” based solely on a test designed with a 60% failing rate. You have shown disrespect to the thousands of teachers, families and students that have been at the helm of a system that prior to the privatization reforms, enjoyed the admiration of the nation and the world.

Yes, there were challenges educators and students faced; challenges such as, large class size, lack of resources to enhance classroom instruction environment, increased number of children living in poverty, and an array of other social ills. There was also former Governor Mitt Romney unfortunate Unz Initiative that ended Bilingual Education. Most of those charter schools you praised, do not accept English language learners, or students with Special Needs, while the public schools that the Charters take money away from, have to teach every student with less resources. When families and educators begged our legislators to address our concerns, we expected collaboration between the government and the school community to find just and equitable solutions. Instead, we got a lobbying group composed of Billionaires, Foundations, moguls and investors with no pedagogically experience, no expertise in child development, nor any understanding of the increased cultural diversity the state witnessed over the last three decades; positioning themselves as the saviors. They forced their business model, test-prep factory-style school environment, a school environment that you would never subject your own children. However, Governor, our children are not commodities for moguls looking to increase the profit for their investors. Our children deserve the same respect enjoyed by the children of those who are forcing their corporate-style education on the children of the poor the working class and the politically disenfranchised, nothing less.

I sat behind you, the day you testified at the State House in Boston. I listened to your songs of praises for Charter schools, while disrespecting the neighborhood schools, addressing them as “Failing”. If I were in your place, I would feel ashamed telling families that, “I am not able to fix the neighborhood school your child attends. But, I can offer you a chance at a lottery that you may or may not win, and even after you win the lottery, if your child has certain special needs, or is limited English speaker, they may be “counseled out”, and sent back to the school that is “failing”. It is disingenuous for anyone to claim that Charter schools offer families a choice, when they have regulations that make a disclaimer to that Choice’s offering. In fact, it has been a practice for some of the for-profit charter schools to return students back to their neighborhood school; this happens if they do not have faith that the student will pass the test. Another claim is the high number of families on waiting list. The fact is, the waiting list you and the rest of the charter school choir claims, can be eliminated by filling the empty seats with the students of the high attrition rate that have become the norm of most charter schools. Each year prior to the MCAS, many high schools in Boston receive students from area charter schools, and public schools do not have the same luxury as charters to counsel-out the students who they may fear will not pass the test. In addition, even thought these students spent most of the school year in the charter school, if the students failed the MCAS, it goes against the receiving public school, the same school whose money the charter school took away.

Governor Baker, here is the question families have, hoping for an answer; Can you find the will to make sure that every school is of the quality school that every child deserves? There are people who never understood the rationale of taking away resources from “failing” schools to give to an experiment proven ineffective in solving the challenging conditions that existed in our public schools. In fact, after three decades allowing the charter school experiment, the achievement gap between Whites/Blacks and Latinos has widened, giving our state the distinction of having the highest achievement gap in the nation. Three decades have gone by since the claim by the charter schools advocates that somehow their competitive innovation will help to improve the entire public school system. This promise has failed the test of time, instead creating a duel system more segregated than before the 1974 Desegregation Plan.

There are unconfirmed reports that the people behind Question 2 are some of the same who contributed to your candidacy for Governor; and they expect something in return. It is no secret that investors have found quite profitable the Charter School Enterprise. Why, we even have foreign companies investing in charter schools. Perhaps you might want to encourage them to find a more just and equitable way to help the children of the Commonwealth. Rather than profiting from public money, you might want to suggest to Wal-Mart, one of the largest investor in the profit-making education reform, to consider an alternative way of helping the children of the public school. This would mean that Wal-Mart would treat their workers with justice, paying them livable salaries, and provide 100% health insurance. This will ensure that their children will be able to attend school well fed and healthy.

Finally, I humbly suggest that you listen to the advice of Juvenile Court Judges that since the implementation of the MCAS as a high school graduation requirement, and the zero-tolerance policies of the Charter Schools, have witnessed a rise in their courts of majority Black and Latino youths, and over 90% failed the test. This is a classic example of what we have come to see as the School-to-Prison Pipeline.

Again, consider making every school the quality school that every child deserves, not just the lottery lucky ones,

Thank you,

Ruth Rodriguez-Fay

Worcester, MA

Author

Anthony Cody

Anthony Cody worked in the high poverty schools of Oakland, California, for 24 years, 18 of them as a middle school science teacher. He was one of the organizers of the Save Our Schools March in Washington, DC in 2011 and he is a founding member of The Network for Public Education. A graduate of UC Berkeley and San Jose State University, he now lives in Mendocino County, California.

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