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<\/p>\nDid you pull your kids out of the public school system and put ’em in a charter program? \u00a0Like I did?<\/p>\n
Start looking for a new school. \u00a0If Mark Dayton gets elected and pushes his “budget plan” through, you’ll need to start looking for a new program for your kids.<\/p>\n
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That’s right – Dayton plans to kill off charter schools.<\/p>\n
Oh, he can plausibly claim he’s not “killing” them; merely cutting a piece of their funding that the Star Tribune <\/em>says is “prone to abuse”.<\/p>\n No, seriously; item 16 in the Dayton Budget proposal<\/a> says “Reform Charter School Lease Aid Program to eliminate Star Tribune documented abuses. Est. Savings $20 million (out of biennial cost of $85 million).”<\/p>\n Of course, we talked about the validity of the Star Tribune’s <\/em>“investigation” – Part 1 <\/a>and Part 2 <\/a>– and let’s just say it’s thin gruel on which to base policy.<\/p>\n Still, it’s a tiny amount of money in the great scheme of things – but it will <\/em>pay off a big chit to the Teachers Union.<\/p>\n I wonder if Dayton’s focus-group testing bothered to ask all the African-American, Native American, Somali and Hispanic parents \u00a0– who’ve pulled their kids out of their failed public schools to give them a shred of hope, and are charter schools’ biggest proponents – what they think about this? \u00a0Not to mention parents like me…<\/p>\n Oh yeah – cuts in lease aid will affect the charters serving poor kids, with not-that-well-to-do parents, the most. \u00a0Charters in Stillwater and Eden Prairie with backers with more financial clout will figure out a way – bake sales or construction bonds or something. \u00a0But all you Afro-American parents who pulled your kids out of Central High to go to Skills for Tomorrow?<\/p>\n Get back in line and speak only when spoken to!<\/p>\n And I do most sincerely hope the Emmer Campaign is going to do a get-together with charter parents in the inner city before the election. \u00a0Have you looked at the percent of students at inner-city charters that are kids of color who are fleeing our wretched failure of a city public school system?<\/p>\n Without lease aid, charter schools will not be able to generate the revenue they need to survive.<\/p>\n