PCSB June 2 meeting thread

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SEED notice of concern is maintained. Concerning stuff for sure. Roll call vote.

Now on to Paul-- this may take a while.

What was said about SEED?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SEED notice of concern is maintained. Concerning stuff for sure. Roll call vote.

Now on to Paul-- this may take a while.

What was said about SEED?

Same stuff that was in the document for the meeting. You can listen to the meeting on YouTube if you want.

Cap City was continued with conditions, the leadership did a good job with the presentation. So I think that's a total of 11 school currently under conditions. Possibly more if I dig through past meetings, but it's hard to know when conditions are lifted. Upcoming reviews include Girls Global and Bethune which have low scores.

[Anonymous]

It seems like PCSB has swing wildly in the past couple of years from approving/re-approving charters that meet bare minimum standards to reauthorizing most schools but imposing somewhat extreme conditions (looking at Appletree and Cap City, for example). It would be great if there was room for something in between.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems like PCSB has swing wildly in the past couple of years from approving/re-approving charters that meet bare minimum standards to reauthorizing most schools but imposing somewhat extreme conditions (looking at Appletree and Cap City, for example). It would be great if there was room for something in between.

Having so many schools on conditions is kicking the can down the road and avoiding the hard part of the job. Of course, the PCSB also feels free to ignore their own rules, make excuses, give extensions, call it "substantially met", basically do what they wanna do. So we have a lot of crappy schools. Yaaaaaay "flexibility" yaaaaay "innovation" yaaaay "reform".

[Anonymous]

So basically between Eagle, Hope, and I DREAM, about 700 kids lost their school (1.5% of total charter enrollment).

Now, seems to be 11 schools that have or recently had a condition. A total of 5420 kids (OSSE enrollment data) attend those schools, over 11 percent of the total. Maybe higher with Girls Global and Bethune. Of course they won't all close, I'm not saying that, just that a significant proportion of the sector is showing red flags.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like PCSB has swing wildly in the past couple of years from approving/re-approving charters that meet bare minimum standards to reauthorizing most schools but imposing somewhat extreme conditions (looking at Appletree and Cap City, for example). It would be great if there was room for something in between.

Having so many schools on conditions is kicking the can down the road and avoiding the hard part of the job. Of course, the PCSB also feels free to ignore their own rules, make excuses, give extensions, call it "substantially met", basically do what they wanna do. So we have a lot of crappy schools. Yaaaaaay "flexibility" yaaaaay "innovation" yaaaay "reform".

Crappy schools or crappy authorizer? It's a bit chicken and egg. If the authorizer was better, would the schools be better? I actually believe that most charters are fine but the really crappy ones are being left to continue limping along until they just implode on their own.

The 700 kids that lost their school didn't lose their school because the PCSB closed them -- despite knowing the crap-level financial and academic issues. Nor did they close in time for parents to get those kids their best shot by getting into the lottery. That's pretty crap-tastic authorizing and oversight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like PCSB has swing wildly in the past couple of years from approving/re-approving charters that meet bare minimum standards to reauthorizing most schools but imposing somewhat extreme conditions (looking at Appletree and Cap City, for example). It would be great if there was room for something in between.

Having so many schools on conditions is kicking the can down the road and avoiding the hard part of the job. Of course, the PCSB also feels free to ignore their own rules, make excuses, give extensions, call it "substantially met", basically do what they wanna do. So we have a lot of crappy schools. Yaaaaaay "flexibility" yaaaaay "innovation" yaaaay "reform".

Crappy schools or crappy authorizer? It's a bit chicken and egg. If the authorizer was better, would the schools be better? I actually believe that most charters are fine but the really crappy ones are being left to continue limping along until they just implode on their own.

The 700 kids that lost their school didn't lose their school because the PCSB closed them -- despite knowing the crap-level financial and academic issues. Nor did they close in time for parents to get those kids their best shot by getting into the lottery. That's pretty crap-tastic authorizing and oversight.

Oh it's definitely a chicken and egg. But I think if the PCSB applied its own standards consistently, rather than passing the low performers along with extensions and discretion, the whole system would function better.

[Anonymous]

I wish there was a way for families at those 11 schools to be better informed. Someone make sure they know thr school is under review or whatever so that next year families could choose to lottery out before schools close at thr last minute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like PCSB has swing wildly in the past couple of years from approving/re-approving charters that meet bare minimum standards to reauthorizing most schools but imposing somewhat extreme conditions (looking at Appletree and Cap City, for example). It would be great if there was room for something in between.

Having so many schools on conditions is kicking the can down the road and avoiding the hard part of the job. Of course, the PCSB also feels free to ignore their own rules, make excuses, give extensions, call it "substantially met", basically do what they wanna do. So we have a lot of crappy schools. Yaaaaaay "flexibility" yaaaaay "innovation" yaaaay "reform".

Crappy schools or crappy authorizer? It's a bit chicken and egg. If the authorizer was better, would the schools be better? I actually believe that most charters are fine but the really crappy ones are being left to continue limping along until they just implode on their own.

The 700 kids that lost their school didn't lose their school because the PCSB closed them -- despite knowing the crap-level financial and academic issues. Nor did they close in time for parents to get those kids their best shot by getting into the lottery. That's pretty crap-tastic authorizing and oversight.

Oh it's definitely a chicken and egg. But I think if the PCSB applied its own standards consistently, rather than passing the low performers along with extensions and discretion, the whole system would function better.

I think you don't understand what the words you use mean. If the rules allow for discretion and/or substantially met is part of the rubric then they don't violate their rules by using discretion and grading substantially met.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like PCSB has swing wildly in the past couple of years from approving/re-approving charters that meet bare minimum standards to reauthorizing most schools but imposing somewhat extreme conditions (looking at Appletree and Cap City, for example). It would be great if there was room for something in between.

Having so many schools on conditions is kicking the can down the road and avoiding the hard part of the job. Of course, the PCSB also feels free to ignore their own rules, make excuses, give extensions, call it "substantially met", basically do what they wanna do. So we have a lot of crappy schools. Yaaaaaay "flexibility" yaaaaay "innovation" yaaaay "reform".

Crappy schools or crappy authorizer? It's a bit chicken and egg. If the authorizer was better, would the schools be better? I actually believe that most charters are fine but the really crappy ones are being left to continue limping along until they just implode on their own.

The 700 kids that lost their school didn't lose their school because the PCSB closed them -- despite knowing the crap-level financial and academic issues. Nor did they close in time for parents to get those kids their best shot by getting into the lottery. That's pretty crap-tastic authorizing and oversight.

Oh it's definitely a chicken and egg. But I think if the PCSB applied its own standards consistently, rather than passing the low performers along with extensions and discretion, the whole system would function better.

I think you don't understand what the words you use mean. If the rules allow for discretion and/or substantially met is part of the rubric then they don't violate their rules by using discretion and grading substantially met.

I know it's within the rules technically. But I didn't say "rules", I said "standards". When schools go on for 10 or more years without a solid pass, I think that's beyond the spirit and intention of the rules and misuse of discretion.