Hence comes the Charter School.
I am currently working with Advantage Schools of
Boston to bring a new Charter School into the Phillips
and Whittier neighborhood.
My purpose for working on this project is to find ways
to provide as much school choice for parents in these
two neighborhoods as possible. Currently, the
children in Whittier are bused to 59 different schools
in Minneapolis. Our neighborhood school Whittier
Community School for the Arts, serves 552 children in
a neighborhood of 3,300. I know Phillips numbers are
probably higher.
I am the past chair of the Governor's After School
Enrichment program steering committee in Whittier and
Phillips. The program has difficulty engaging
children who are bused long distances from home to
school, because their arrival time back in the
neighborhood is often times too late to get them
hooked into any of the programs. These kids miss out
on a very important community connective piece here.
Whittier has one private school for parents to choose
from. The tuition in that school is very steep,
however, very reasonable compared to other private
schools. While they do offer scholarships, I do not
believe any of them are 100% or even close to that.
There are 5 tuition free alternative schools. These
schools generally have pretty specific focuses beyond
general education.
Some other parents in the neighborhood and myself
wanted to find a way to offer some alternatives to
busing your child around town for an hour or two every
day. An option that would be tuition free!
We approached Advantage Schools of Boston because they
have an incredible reputation and the financial
stability to run successful charter schools. We
visited an Advantage Charter School in Phoenix. We
chose that school because the majority of their
students are new immigrants like Whittier and Phillips
would most likely be. I was overwhelmed at the
atmosphere I saw. They use a specific teaching
curriculum. (Direct Instruction) The test scores for
children in their schools is very high.
We are going through the process right now of
submitting the application and beginning the long
journey through to approval.
Anyway, enough of the sales pitch here. If you don't
like Direct Instruction then find one that suits your
purpose. What I am trying to say is there is an
alternative between giving people vouchers for use in
private school and being forced to send them to public
school. And it is free.
If you read "Come Back Cities" you will see that one
of the ingredients for a successful come back inner
city neighborhood is school choice. It specifically
talks about Charter Schools.
And Russell. I know Longfellow folks would rally
around this idea. Go for it.
AND PLEASE - GO VOTE ON NOVEMBER 7TH!!!!!!!
Barb Lickness
Whittier
Ward 6
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