The Carlo Davis article in this week's HR "Do over? State will review approval of charter school expansion" summarized two starkly divergent sets of facts in a pending legal action between HoLa and the Hoboken BoE. Representing HoLa in the piece was the Dual Language school's spokesperson and Board President, Barbara Martinez.
It was this Martinez quote that made GA say "Whaaaat?"
"If the Hoboken Board of Education wants to see a low-income preference in HoLa's lottery.... all it has to do is drop the lawsuit"Apparently, I'm not the only one who reacted that way. A reader wrote:
Why cant hola use a low income preference until the lawsuit is dropped? and if they could have done this before, why didnt they-why did they wait until a lawsuit occurred to implement a low income preference? and Are they allowed to use low income preference or is she full of ****?Now, GA has not followed this particular issue nor what BoE lawyer Eric Harrison alleges in his brief is HoLa's resistance to incorporating low-income preference into its admissions, but...
If "low-income preference" is a civil rights issue, then why would Martinez hold redress to a socioeconomic inequity hostage to what the Board of Education does or doesn't do?
Unless this is legal advice, it absolutely smells.
True or not, Martinez appears to be dangling the educational options for low-income kids as leverage in HoLa's battle with the Board of Education.
GA would caution Martinez from making reckless statements during litigation which will come back to bite her in the cuelo.
I'd like to know what Jen Sargent thinks of this statement!
ReplyDeleteThis is OUTRAGEOUS!
"low" income status isn't the only factor in comparing the demographics of the schools. Also, there really is no way to have a "low" income preference. You cannot ask people for their income level when they apply for the lottery. If these "charter" schools really cared about being representative of the school population, then there would be NO sibling preference. No guarantee of a space just because you have an older sibling that attends the school. If charters really want to call themselves "public" schools, then the lottery should be completely open to anyone who wants in. Noone gets a preference. Why should anyone get a "preference" in a publically funded school.
ReplyDeleteAlso, what is the immersion model for 7th and 8th grade. Is it a higher amount of Spanish or English Instruction? The expansion is about 7th and 8th. However, no one is asking the question of how they got a 6th grade, just randomly added? The original application was for K-5? How did they get "granted" the 6th grade? Was their an application process for the 6th grade only? Shouldn't there have been two separate applications - one for renewal and one for expansion?
ReplyDeleteYou can't call it a random lottery, once anyone is given a preference.
Is she saying that they were always able to weight the lotteries but chose not to?
ReplyDeleteSome might call it deal making. Others call it a form of extortion.
ReplyDeleteCan she make that kind of deal? How would that work?
DeleteI think it more likely that she is talking out of her arse. Her last Hoboken Reporter statement was that they can't legally use weights; so what changed since then?
I found the most interesting thing in the article to be the disparity in reported reduced lunch #'s for 2013. It seems like one set of numbers shows a reduction from 70% to 49% and another shows a slight increase for the same period.
ReplyDeleteObviously one of these data sets is inaccurate and perhaps even fraudulent unless it was a projection that turned out to be wildly off base. Did they both come from the district filings? Which is right and which is wrong? Or did Carlo somehow misunderstand something?
I found the disparity in reported reduced lunch #'s for 2013 among the two schools to be shocking. 11% vs 49%? The trajectory seems to indicate the disparity will continue to worsen.
Delete"HoLa students eligible for free or reduced price lunch (FRPL),, has fallen from 16 percent in 2010-11 to 11 percent in 2013-14."
Whatever you think of HoLa or Charters generally its hard to understand how anyone could with a straight face claim that a one year 16% drop in the disparity (54% - 38%) is somehow an upward trajectory.
DeleteThe district's 21% one year drop in low income students seems implausible - it smells like either a one year mistake or a cumulative correction of prior years' mistakes. If its really a one year change, then it would certainly be useful to understand the dynamics that led to such a dramatic one year shift.
Maybe someone can shed some light on this since it screams for an explanation.
HoLa has been flawed in many ways since its beginnings, but some of the issues being discussed here are not unique to them and reveal the need for a complete overhaul in the creation and management of charter schools. Their boards aren't elected at large, their budgets aren't transparent even though they're funded with public money, and there is a preference for siblings as well as the ability to admit kids who don't live in Hoboken. Until that changes, what we have are private schools funded with public money. This has to stop.
ReplyDeleteIs this the same lady that said the following: "The private school my daughter attends needs to know in early February whether she will be returning in September 2009 for first grade. What am I supposed to tell them? By the way, they want me to give them $1,000 if I want them to hold her spot. Several weeks after that, I have to commit to a full-year’s tuition. What am I supposed to do? "
ReplyDeleteIf so, she personifies everything wrong w/ that school. All she cares about is "getting what's hers" and now that she has it, she will do whatever it takes to keep it.
Low-income lottery? Everyone knows the lotteries are fixed. Hence the lack of African American children. So now they say they are willing to have a low-income lottery if the suit is dropped. Is it going to be ala applied housing, have only a few low-income, white Hispanics with a token African-American and say you're diversifying?
ReplyDelete