In one vote after another, Massachusetts Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler turned thumbs down on recommendations from the state’s acting education commissioner to allow expansion of five Massachusetts charter schools and to modify the area served by a sixth one.
Charter schools
Posted inOpinion
State ed board should reject Lynn charter school expansion plan
The acting education commissioner’s recommendation to allow KIPP Lynn to add 450 seats represents selective enforcement of the long-standing and clear regulations governing charter school expansion in the Commonwealth.
Posted inEducation
Reading the tea leaves on new education secretary’s charter vote
IN THE ENDLESS debate over charter schools, there is often a stark line dividing people into the pro-charter or anti-charter camp. Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler insists he occupies different ground. “I’m in the kid camp,” he said on Tuesday, and who could argue with him as he folded his 6-foot-5-inch frame onto the floor to […]
Posted inEducation
State board approves controversial Worcester charter school proposal
A SPLIT Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved a controversial new charter school in Worcester on Tuesday – the first new charter given the go-ahead during Commissioner of Education Jeff Riley’s five-year tenure. After a stormy public process in which Worcester education officials and the city’s entire state legislative delegation opposed the Worcester […]
Posted inEducation
Charter school proposal roils South Coast
IT’S BEEN MORE than five years since the debate over charter schools in Massachusetts came front and center in the form of a high-profile ballot question that would have raised the state cap on the independently run, but publicly funded, schools. But the decisive rejection of the measure by voters in 2016 has hardly settled […]
Posted inEducation
As students leave district schools, charters and vocational schools see growth
MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC SCHOOLS have seen a large decline in enrollment this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But the drop is not spread evenly across the public school system. Both charter schools and vocational technical schools have actually seen population increases, even as attendance at traditional district public schools dropped precipitously. The shift cannot be attributed solely to the pandemic, […]
Posted inEducation
Private schools, charters moved forward with remote curriculum
WHEN THIRD-GRADER Alisa Paley’s public elementary school in Canton closed for COVID-19, the school gave students laptops and her teacher held optional daily 40-minute Zoom meetings. A month in, the school began emailing homework. Alisa was home with her grandfather during the day, since her single mother, Abbie Paley, works in a hospital. Paley, dissatisfied […]
Posted inEducation
Parents take stock of the school year that was (or wasn’t)
SCHOOL’S OUT FOR the summer. Is school out forever? Parents hope not, describing very mixed experiences with the remote learning experience that began in March. The MassINC Polling Group recently surveyed 1,502 parents statewide and found there was no single story that describes what parents went through from mid-March to June, but rather thousands of […]
Posted inOpinion
Where do charters fit in ed funding debate?
AT THE STATE LEGISLATURE’S early-spring Joint Committee on Education hearing on various proposed K-12 funding bills, the stories from scores of school districts were depressingly familiar. New Bedford is facing layoffs of teachers, custodians, nurses, and counselors. Lowell is looking at increased class sizes, lost programs and paraprofessionals, and deferred building maintenance and technology upgrades. […]
Posted inOpinion
New Bedford charter deal is immoral
STATE REPS. Antonio Cabral, Christopher Hendricks, and William Straus have boldly asserted their opposition to the unprecedented charter school model proposed for the city of New Bedford. They have demonstrated leadership both in terms of understanding the broader implications of this plan as well as protecting the interests of New Bedford families. The New Bedford […]