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.