Dear Mayor Murray, No and Hell No
Update: for one, turns out there's someone from the Gates Foundation on the Committee. I'm sure that's a bit voice for charters. His name is David Wertheimer. What seems to be the explanation for this "mandate" for investment in charter schools is the idea that (1) SPS isn't building new schools (wrong) and (2) that school facilities could be built into housing. On the first issue, we all know SPS is opening up every building they can (and those are some schools that have been closed so long, they might as well be new) and, as well, the district IS opening two new schools at the Wilson-Pacific site. I have no idea why someone would say the District isn't building new schools if they didn't know for sure but you'd have to ask members of the Committee. Now if the City thinks that having charters will serve all these new students, they clearly don't know charters. For one thing, charters are deliberately smaller so any idea that a char...