Why is incumbent Richard Sloan promoting charter schools?

Thanks to a recent huge tax break for Wall Street speculators hoping to get a cut of public education known as the New Markets Tax Credit, charter schools with big money financiers have been on the rise. Charter schools have been finally getting some press for their scandalous operations that drain money from under-funded public schools while skimming off the best students to rig their test results. Since many are outside of local school district oversight and management and have banned teachers unions, in effect, they get public money without any of the public accountability.

The same threat is starting to rear its ugly head here in the Valley.

Last year, long-time incumbent Richard Sloan advised parents in the Waldorf Inspired program (which my daughter attends) by email that we should threaten to split off into a charter school if the District cuts went through. This email got out a few days later and led the teachers union to call for his resignation. At about the same time he was advising the West Marin Alternatives in Education group on how to carve out their own charter school in West Marin.

Although Sloan professes to support "cooperation" and "collaboration" between parents from all the programs and the administration and faculty his words do not seem to match his actions. The parents in one of the programs realized this and has banned him from parent meetings. While he did tremendous work helping to set up the Open Classroom program in the 1970s, has made invaluable contributions to our District, and professes to support our innovative parent choice model, his push for charter schools is actually undermining our public schools.

Now that he's up for re-election he needs to speak frankly about whether he supports backdoor privatization of our public school district through charters.

Why does incumbent Denise Santa Cruz Bohman oppose the right of parents, teachers and staff to speak?

The answer, according to the question and answer session in which we appeared before the District's faculty and staff unions this past Wednesday, is not Denise Santa Cruz Bohman.

At that meeting I recalled that nearly the entire board had their eyes and ears closed to dozens of parents from all 3 elementary programs who packed every Board meeting last Winter and Spring to protest cuts being promoted by the board that would have killed the Waldorf Inspired program (which my daughter attends).

Taking time off from her knitting long enough to participate, incumbent Denise Santa Cruz Bohman chided parents who packed the board meetings and suggested we stop and try to handle these things one on one behind closed doors. Afterall, Denise assured us that she does all her advocacy quietly, one on one with important people.

One wonders how someone with so little faith in the democratic process would bother running for an elected position at all. Why not just get yourself appointed by one's friends with a handshake in a private meeting?

Another loan from Wall Street but still no pay increases for our teachers?

At the Tuesday, September 20th board meeting the District proposed no pay increases for our teachers for the fourth straight year and ratified a controversial new contract with the staff. However, the administration budget documents show a reserve fund of $920,131 or 29.05% when the state mandated reserve is only 5%. Clearly, the money is there to at least reward our hard working teachers and staff especially when their salaries are being eaten away by inflation and class sizes and workloads are rising. Apparently, the board doesn't think so.

In fact, the early signs were present this evening that the board is giving the administration the go ahead to begin the process of preparing for another huge estimated $4-6 million bond measure for expected upgrades and repairs of the campuses. The problem is that bonds are never as they appear. By the end of the 20 or 30 year life of the bond the borrower ends up paying twice as much due to accumulated interest. Bonds lock in the borrower to paying the creditor first before all other necessities—even our children. It would be much cheaper to raise the taxes paid by the super-rich on their property in the Valley to pay for these upgrades in real dollars without having to further indebting the District to Wall Street.

Surprisingly, the administration noted that the District is still repaying the bond measure that passed in 1995 but didn't know either the correct year, the original debt or how much the District has repaid and still needs to pay. One would think they would know this information considering the administration is making the push for further debt.

It leaves me wondering who really runs this District, the board of trustees or the administration. When the administration raised the issue of the bond measure at the August meeting the board said they would take it up later. However, at the Sept. 20th meeting the administration announced that they had already begun meeting with consultants and contractors. Rather than admonish them for going off on their own without prior approval from the board two of the trustees praised them for pursuing it now because they claimed construction costs are down. 

And it was only a few short months ago that the administration told us we were in a dire crisis. Until the parent uprising that forced them to back off, they claimed we needed to lay off two teachers, kill one of the elementary school programs, eliminate the crossing guard, and cut the bus service, special education, instructional assistants, custodial and maintenance staff, and the school lunch program.

“The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman” reminds me why we need to defend our public small school choice model

The new documentary “The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman” documents the backdoor privatization of NYC's public schools under the guise of "accountability" and advocates for many of the very principles of parent involvement, equitable public funding, small class size, experienced dynamic and unionized teachers that we take pride in at Lagunitas.

I fear for how the last year of a manufactured crisis, pink slips, proposals to cut services, backlash against environmental education, push to make our school more "efficient," calls for spinning off our Waldorf program into a charter school, and the quiet return of high stakes standardized testing into our curriculum are putting us right on course for the same dismantling of our school as is happening across the country.

To order a copy of the film go to http://www.waitingforsupermantruth.org/ and keep an eye out for the screening I am planning soon.