Reply to BASIS: PCSB staff recommends conditional continuance due to SWD

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "BASIS: PCSB staff recommends conditional continuance due to SWD"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]The crux of the problem is that the ed powers in this city want to have it both ways: they want to continue to underfund charters relative to DCPS programs on a per capita basis while requiring the latter to provide DCPS-level support for SN students and English Language Learners. [b]They don't want students with disabilities and poor kids to be excluded from the best public schools, but refuse to provide the GT education that would help the brightest poor kids students enjoy strong representation in the public HS programs offering the most rigor. They want high-performing test-in magnets that compare to the top performers in other US cities, but won't support the requisite K-8 prep and ability grouping to create them.[/b] Something has to give, with the charter board, OSSE and the Mayor's office turning a blind eye because they boxed themselves into a corner long ago. At BASIS, conveniently, it's support for SN and ELL. As long as a couple students a year from BASIS continue to crack MIT and Yale, no politician is going to mess with BASIS DC. It's no secret that the franchise has found far more fertile ground to expand its public school empire in Texas and Louisiana than in DC. The Charter Board is toothless without political backing.[/quote]

Excellent summation.  To that I would add that the failure of DCPS to address the bolded sentence is WHY ---20 years into charter schools---charters went from the original intent of being "niche" educational programs:  dual language, montessori/experiential learning, etc.---into serving 45% of the kids currently using public education in the District.  So now that charters are essentially a parallel school system, the first sentence---creating unreasonable expectations for charters as a result of underfunding---has become the reality.
What I would like to see is a charter that is expressly special-ed---like a charter version of LAB.  And with an admissions system that either lets you lottery for it with an existing IEP, OR allows a charter to charter transfer for kids who are identified as needing greater services than the charter can provide.  That would seem to be much more practical than the current world---which expects all schools to be all things for SPED kids.  I have a SPED kid.  We would never have lotteried DC into a program like BASIS and then demanded that BASIS accommodate DC.    That would have unreasonable for both the schools and DC.[/quote]

No, charters are federally required to serve kids with disabilities, and kids with disabilities are entitled to the least restrictive environment. Other charters figured it out and Basis has to as well. Period. BTW SN charters exist already. [/quote]
BASIS simply can't fulfill its mission as the DC public HS offering the most math and science rigor while serving kids with a wide range of disabilities well without a dramatic increase in funding per capita.  They just can't afford to hire the resource staff they'd need to do this.  If they're forced to water down their curriculum to accommodate students with disabilities at the expense of their math whizzes, what they're going to do is exit the DC stage in search of greener pastures.  No doubt that Texas would be thrilled to gain another BASIS campus, with no quibbles about how well SN and ELL students are accommodated by the franchise in the Lone Star State.   In that case, you might be better off pointing the finger at the DC Council and Mayor for failing to pony up for funding than the BASIS franchise.  
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics