Reprinted below is a letter expressing neighborhood concerns sent last week from a District 20 constituent to a CCSD School Board member:
Many downtown residents, parents of children currently in public schools and many others working for successful school alternatives downtown want to cooperate with Dr. McGinley through her plan. Unless the District 20 Constituent Board is put in a position to screen and select the members of the NPT, the plan will fail. Many of us are willing to try the plan, but we can only trust the constituent board to make sure the people involved represent the community and not just CCSD.Many of us fear that there is no guarantee that principals or other CCSD employees will be motivated to draw any of these people on the 12-14 member NPTs from a broad pool of willing volunteers. Appointees should include those who live and know the community, and have proven themselves to be committed and passionate about raising the standards of every downtown school. In the current plan there is no assurance that the NPTs as proposed will accommodate any volunteers or people who simply express a desire to lend their local NPT some sort of special talent or experience.Based on what we know about how CCSD has handled public participation in the recent past and what we are hearing from other meetings with the Superintendent about this plan, there is a strong belief among us downtown that the NPTs will not be allowed to freely consider all possibilities in spite of what Dr. McGinley has said. By allowing the constituent board to have the final say, it would ensure that the process is public and above board. The process from beginning to end will also be managed by a public body that is closely connected to the downtown community at large. Otherwise any outcome may be seen as rigged in advance. Individual NPTs in some cases will never be encouraged to get off the ground unless some public group like the constituent board is reporting on their progress.If the county board considers approving this plan, please suggest to your fellow board members, at least in the case of District 20 where several very viable and active parent groups now exist, the constituent board should be screening and appointing the members of the NPTs. Who best but our neighbors to stay behind them until they complete their job?
Worse than that, however, is the "bait and switch" plan for restructuring Burke. After originally being included in school choice meetings, members of Burke's School Improvement Committee have been informed that Burke will not have an NPT nor the money that goes with the program ($6000). The latest ploy is that the so-called "AP Academy" will serve as the NPT for Burke.
Does McGinley want her plan to be successful or not?
Does McGinley want her plan to be successful or not?
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3 comments:
Dr. McGinley's Choice plan calls for teams of 13, including the school principal, PTA chair, School Improvement Council Chair, 3 parents of current students, 1 faith based leader, 4 community leaders and 2 business partners.
The first 6 slots make sense; but the remaining 7 should be parents of school-age children, who live in the attendance zone and do not send their children to this school. These are the people whom the school needs to attract for it to improve! The superintendent says as much in the body of her eloquent brief : http://www.ccsdschools.com/news/archive/N20071212SchoolChoice.pdf. To diversify a "high poverty" school, you need to attract the people who are not "high poverty."
The surest way of reaching the target market is to engage its members in the planning process. This is the secret to the popularity of charter schools. They stimulate parental involvement by building parents into the planning team, which is the charter committee. Dr. McGinley's Neighborhood Planning Teams are her answer to charter committees, only charter committees are stacked with parents and her NPT only includes 3 with students in the school. There is no question that those parents should be deeply involved. However, the parents in that neighborhood who send their children elsewhere are the key to attracting new families to these schools. The NPT should make most of its spaces available to these parents because they are key to Real Change.
The other million dollar question is: "who chooses the NPT?" If it's the principal, the superintendent, the school board or any other players in the CCSD system, you can forget about it. Parents in District 20 and elsewhere are convinced that political pressures on the school board influence too many CCSD decisions to entrust the selection of the NPT participants to anything under their influence. Selections of the NPT's should be left to the elected representatives of each district - the constituent school boards. They know the schools and the involved parents in their districts.
I couldn't agree more with the poster above. If I didn't know it, I'd think I wrote that myself.
McGinley's school choice plan centers around Downtown (D20), North Charleston (D4) and St. Johns (D9)...so does anyone find it strange that the first "partial magnet" schools that are actually being proposed are all in St. Andrews (D10)? St. Andrews wasn't included in the original choice plan yet its middle schools appear to be the first ones out of the gate. I'll take wagers that this time next year there will have been little or no action coming from any NPTs in D20, D4 or D9. It's all smoke and mirrors with no real public engagement of any consequence wanted.
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