Flushing a generation of education

From today's Oregonian comes a story that the Portland School Board rejected proposals for four new charter schools Monday night.

Two of the charter schools were rejected unanimously (including one developed by families from the recently closed Smith Elementary School), while two others failed because the votes were 3-3 with one member missing. This strikes me as an unconscionable action. The tie-breaking vote was missing, so it fails? Why not take the vote at another meeting? Could the board have known the vote would fail for the lack of a seventh member?

And even more unconscionable was the explanation for the rejections:

. . . board members voting against the proposals expressed two concerns: the impact on the district’s efforts to improve its existing schools if the charters siphon children away from them; and the potentially destabilizing effect on school enrollment if the district opens charters in areas where it just closed schools last year due to declining student populations.
. . .
“There are virtues to choice in our society,” [Board Chairman David] Wynde said. “But I believe we have an obligation” to see the larger impact on the district.

So let me get this straight. The public schools are failing, and parents are looking for other options. The school board refuses to approve them, in essence saying, "We refuse to let you do what's best for your children, because your flight from public schools might make us look bad."

Chairman Wynde, your obligation is not to your ego or your district's PR department. Your obligation is to the kids, and to the adults who pay the education bills for those kids.

Your schools are failing in a multitude of ways, and you cannot blame it solely on budgetary issues. The more you try to squeeze parents out of alternatives to the education-union-approved machinery, the more you'll find them taking their kids to other districts, other schools, other alternatives. The only kids you'll be educating are the ones whose parents can't afford those alternatives, the ones who come from homes where the parents don't give a rat's patootie about education, the ones whose test scores result in year after year of school probation. And then, those kids with parents who do care will be able to pursue other options because it will be clear their school is failing.

You can do what's right for the kids now. Or you can flush a generation of education down the toilet, until finally the kids' environment is so putrid that it allows the families to do what you should have done years ago.