[Today’s run: 5 miles, schaffers chapel]
We’ve been reading in the newspaper about a recent law passed in Mississippi which allows charter schools. Districts which get a ‘D’ or ‘F’ rating can have a charter school without the permission of the local school board. If the district is getting ‘C’ or above, then a charter school must have the permission of the local school board.
I’m new to Mississippi and I don’t have any school-aged children anymore. I understand the argument against charter schools: that they will take resources from the regular school system and further degrade the ‘default’ schools.
But, I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to move me very much. If a school district has a ‘D’ or ‘F’ rating and there are parents or other parties who want to do something about it, seems like there should be a way to let them try.
The school district to the immediate west of us just had their whole system taken over by the state because they were so bad. If someone else wants to do it, I’m for letting them try.
Schools in Mississippi are strange anyway. There are public schools, and there are lots of private schools. A lot of the private schools are connected to a church or religious group but not all. Some of them probably are integration-flight schools, or started out that way. But now they will most likely have a racial mix of people in middle to upper class who can afford to send their kids somewhere other than the public school. What was a racial segregation has shifted toward a class segregation. (This is my impression.)
Anyway, can you imagine being the superintendent of a school district which is getting a ‘D’ or an ‘F’? That would be really embarrassing. Unfortunately it seems like the people in that kind of position will hunker down and blame the funding or the facilities or the kids and hide out until someone, either the state or a charter school organization, comes and roots them out.
I’m not any kind of an expert, as I’m sure you’ve gathered. I just think the whole system is very strange and the people worst served are the kids, of course.