Saturday, December 10, 2011

Why Are There Different Rules For Charter Schools?























The DOE has decided to close an additional 25 schools over the next couple of years for so-called poor performance. However, they gave a reprieve to a terribly performing Charter school that should have been the first in line to close. This Charter school has a myriad of problems including major violations of Charter Policy and State Law. This school has already seen the Principal replaced in May and the Operations Director this school year. The Charter school is called the New York French American Charter School and is located in Morningside Heights. The DOE, despite finding many different violations, a few of them major, has decided to put the Charter school on probation. Gotham Schools has a more detailed analysis of the DOE report Here.

Major Violations identified in the probation letter are as follows:

  • An astounding 60% of the teaching staff are not certified!
  • Giving a parent keys to the school despite never being fingerprinted.
  • The same parent was found sleeping in the school overnight.
  • Missing or inaccurate student attendance records.
  • Financial irregularities.
  • Operational disarray.
  • Lack of books and other classroom materials.
  • Poor student discipline procedures.

The school suffers from an inexperienced staff with the majority having no certification and have classroom management issues as a commenter reported on Insideschools.

You would think that with the litany of violations, the DOE would be closing this school. However, because it is a Charter school they fall under different rules and are given many more chances then the public school has.In other words "different strokes for different folks".

5 comments:

NYC Educator said...

You would think they'd at least make some pretense or something, rather than displaying such blatant favoritism, but with the sleepy media failing to point out the inequity of such things, the public at large is barely aware.

Anonymous said...

..."the rich are different from you and me"... F. Scott Fitzgerald

Anonymous said...

The media is owned by the 1% who want to create a city of dummies..

veteran teacher said...

Well, be prepared to get your lawsuits ready. This was on gothamschools.org. The UFT told me they were sure the DOE would not send us to different schools week to week(that happened), now let's see their lackadaisical response to this crap:

Three months into the start of the school year, the Department of Education is just figuring out how to rate more than a thousand itinerant teachers.

Under the current teacher evaluation system in place in nearly all schools, principals rate teachers once a year as either “satisfactory,” or “unsatisfactory.” They are also supposed to offer advice to help teachers improve.

But when the city and UFT struck a deal this summer to avert layoffs, they agreed to move members of the Absent Teacher Reserve, the pool of teachers who do not have permanent positions, to a different school—with a different principal—each week. The agreement left open the question of who would observe and rate those teachers.

In a year when the city and union are fighting fiercely over the particulars of new teacher evaluations, officials from the United Federation of Teachers told me they have left the decision of how ATRs will be rated up to the DOE.

Now the city has decided that ATRs will receiving ratings from their district superintendent, officials said, with input from the principals of schools where they were sent to work over the course of the year. The city is also testing out other options.

Anonymous said...

Over 60% of the teachers aren't certified and some of us are roaming the schools weekly!!!! Sickening.