Update 2: So I have seen a message from President Liza Rankin on why she, Director Evan Briggs, and Director Michelle Sarju backed out of this meeting. In a nutshell: - She says there was no organization to the meeting which is just not true. They had a moderator lined up and naturally the board members could have set parameters for what to discuss, length of meeting, etc. All that was fleshed out. - She also claimed that if the meeting was PTA sponsored, they needed to have liability insurance to use the school space. Hello? PTAs use school space all the time and know they have to have this insurance. - She seems to be worried about the Open Public Meetings law. Look, if she has a meeting in a school building on a non-personnel topic, it should be an open meeting. It appears that Rankin is trying, over and over, to narrow the window of access that parents have to Board members. She even says in her message - "...with decisions made in public." Hmmm - She also says that th
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Check out Florida .. and Jeb Bush.
It appears that significant gains are being eroded by ... online schools.
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Jeb Bush, with cash and clout, pushes contentious school reforms
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THE FLORIDA FORMULA
Bush, who declined to comment for this story, says often that he has one abiding goal: to give all students the chance to reach their "God-given potential."
His "Florida formula" rests on the principles of increasing accountability and expanding parental choice. Among its tenets:
* Grade schools on an A-to-F scale, based mostly on student scores and growth on standardized tests. Give students in poorly ranked schools vouchers to attend private and religious schools.
* Hold back 8-year-olds who can't pass a state reading test rather than promote them to fourth grade.
* Expand access to online classes and charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, sometimes for profit.
"As many as one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of poor academic performance, according to a group representing states, districts and universities that grant them permission to operate.
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers said 900 to 1,300 of the privately run, publicly financed schools should close because they are in the bottom 15 percent of public schools in their states."
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019784379_charterschools29.html
--FedMomof2
Yeah, it worth it.