@jaycee
As for Charter vs Public schools. It’s very complicated mostly because it depends on the individual culture of the school and the community they belong to. One of the things that I always think wen right wing people complain about public education is that the school culture reflects the community from which they pull from, students and staff. Charter schools were created to reflect this. Public schools weren’t meeting the needs of the students in some way and various things were getting in the way.
This was blamed on many things, admin red tape, union teachers, and that they weren’t spending enough money on the kids. Charter have more control over how they spend money, policies, raise funds, and what and how they teach. My brother in law works for a charter as an aide while he is getting his teaching credential. The charter he works for serves a very low income area and is geared towards families that are new immigrants. They understand the families needs, support them with specific programs and are more open towards the cultures they come from. The staff reflect this. Staff meetings are more likely to include pan dulce rather than donuts. Good public schools are like this as well.
However, my wife has worked in other charter schools as a psych. She has struggled with this. charters she has worked are filled with people who don’t understand the culture of the people of communit they work in. I.e. Harvard grad admin having unrealistic expectations of the behavior of students from south central LA. And him trying to be authoritarian with them
. Also because most charges are non-union or hired based on private contracts the incentives are different. My wife has had to stand up to admin and school staff for various things having to do with sped assessment. I because I’m in a union have a much easier time doing this. I can disagree and still keep my job.
often there incentives in charters to both keep students there that they cannot serve, intellectual disability, Or kick students out because they can not deal with them, ADHD or Emotional Disturbance.
my wife has experienced this with the public schools where we live as well. They tried to pull some pandemic shit and reduce my son’s services at the beginning of the year. I politely reminded them that it was not on the IEP And they quickly changed Their tune. their sped program is ripe for lawsuits, but the parents don’t know any difference. They do not serve the English language learners well. There is no mental health supports. And what has me and my wife thinking about enrolling him in the district i work in or maybe a charter school is the lack of diversity. My wife recently had to have a conversation about his insecurities about having “black” hair. He has brown hair, but it was dark enough for another student to disagree with him and made him feel othered. He’s 5. The student has blonde hair and was praised by the teacher because of it, she‘s Chilean.
i wanted my kid to go to a school in the community we lived in, but it doesn’t seem to be n the cards. All of these things motivated me to looks for ways to help the district change. They need some outside pressure to do this, which is part of the reason why I volunteered to work on the NAACP education committee. We will see what happens though, I’m going to have to get a resume together and interview.
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