CPS is opening 13 new charters this year, while simultaneously closing 54 neighborhood schools for under-utilization. Originally charters were thought of as a lab for school research and innovation, but they are not primarily used in that way any longer. There is no transparency in charter contract spending. There is no transparency in CPS renting traditional neighborhood schools to charters for $1. And there is no ‘miracle’ of charter performance.

There is a ton of innovation going on in the traditional neighborhood CPS schools that work. If charters are so great, what is it that they do? What are the educational innovations besides a longer day? Why aren’t we talking about this across the system?

This is about equitable funding for charters and choice, Charter Parents Union (CPU) insists.

But charters already benefit from private funding. UNO managed to get themselves $99 mln by going completely around the school district. Charters can attract funding from major corporations and the school facilities are donated by the city.

Regarding funding, the biggest difference seems to be that there is next-to-no physical plant money given by CPS to charters. But when CPS puts a charter near a traditional neighborhood public school, will it draw resources away from the public school? The relationship between the two systems is not benign, there is almost a predatory effect, causing a further deterioration of the traditional CPS schools.

Why is CPS pushing charters when there are barriers to admission, like disciplinary fines.
Why does the district get to push charters and create a separate system?

Parents want choice.

School Closings.
Under-utilization formula that CPS uses takes into account a class sizes of 36 children. It ignores the lower class sizes required for special ed children. We are going to have mass overcrowding and crazy safety issues. Wendy doesn’t understand how some of these consolidations are being proposed, if anyone has a foot on the ground of reality.

Everyone was surprised to see CPS needed to borrow $329 mln for 30 years — with debt service of $25 mln a year or $750 mlm — in order to close 54 schools.

Over the 30-year life of the bond, it will cost more than $1 billion to close 54 schools this year.

And Charter Parents Union — with advice and organizational help from an issues management firm started by President Obama’s advisor David Axelrod — wants more funding.