My name is Louis St. John and I am the President of the New Bedford Educators Association. I have two children and both of my kids attend New Bedford High School. My daughter is a senior and my son is a freshman.
City on a Hill leaders tout the success of their school in Roxbury as the justification for creating another school here in New Bedford. I’m here to tell you that their success is based on smoke and mirrors, and the evidence can be found right on the DESE Web Site.
John Schneider, the director for Gateway Strategic Initiatives for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, has stated that, “Opponents to the expansion plans — mainly the local teachers’ union — have been using an assortment of false rumors and misleading information to stop its approval.”
He claims that City on a Hill is not “weeding out hard-to-educate kids”.
He claims that the student dropout rate is “a by-product of City on a Hill's answer to an endemic problem in public education.”
Does that mean if a student is unsuccessful in a particular grade, they’re out of the school?
It seems that Mr. Schneider is rationalizing an outrageous dropout rate that would not be tolerated in any school, other than a Charter School.
He goes on to say that “Charter Schools are public schools.”
Public Schools educate all children. They don’t discriminate against any child. They don’t toss out children, especially those that are the most challenging to educate.
Where does the City on a Hill Charter School send the students that are unsuccessful at their school? You guessed it; they go back to the real public schools.
Now, let’s talk about the “false rumors and misleading information” that Mr. Schneider claims the teachers’ union disseminated.
This information was taken directly from the DESE website…so if it’s false and misleading, Mr. Schneider should take that up with Governor Patrick, Secretary Revel, and Commissioner Chester.
If the information on the DESE website is correct, then Mr. Schneider is the one who is attempting to mislead the public.
I would like call your attention to the enrollment / drop out data for City on a Hill.
Let’s look at the charts I gave you.
From the 2008-2009 school year to the 2011-2012 school they went from 99 students to 38. That is a loss of 61 students over 4 years.
Please look at the second page.
Let’s focus on the number highlighted in green, 1,484.
From 1995 – 2012, There have been 1,484 children enrolled in the 9th grade. Since then 682 of them have dropped out by the 12 grade.
Now I’d like to call your attention to the 3rdpage. Please notice the 2011 – 2012 “out of school suspension rate”. They have a 43.6% “out of school suspension rate” … the state average is 5.4% and New Bedford’s average is 9.7%.
So to summarize the success of the City on the Hill Charter School:
They have lost an average of 46% of their students and they have an “over the moon” out of school suspension rate. If this is the kind of success they want to bring to New Bedford, we’d like to decline their offer.
We as a community need to be working to improve our schools as a whole. We don’t need another school that will only serve to drain the New Bedford School system of its financial resources.
As a parent, a teacher, a union leader, and a member of the community, I ask that you not allow for the creation of this Charter School in New Bedford.
Thank you
1 comment:
Excellent job Lou. A good majority of the people in attendance at the public meeting on Thursday evening WERE NOT, I repeat NOT from New Bedford. It was nothing but a information commercial promoting the COAH school which has much to be desired.
After 10 minutes of listening to statements from two out-of-towners, I left.
Just to let you know, I did speak to someone from the Mass. DESE in the hallway outside of the presentation, who could not answer one of my questions. In my opinion that person was not prepared and should be FIRED.
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