TWF 346: Public Hearing On Proposed Charter School: Thursday, August 22, 2024, 6:00 PM EST. Plus, my thoughts on the idea.

 

[EDIT:  I received some additional documentation, reported on below]

Hello, friends!

It's certainly been a while.  I was thrilled to get a chance to visit Freeport's second-annual Pride On The Mile event back in June, but I wasn't physically well enough to put an article about it together.  I just wanted to start with that belated shoutout because, well, they deserve it!

On to the star of today's article:  Maven Charter Academy School is interested in opening, well, a Charter School in Freeport, and I want to discuss that a little bit.

Now, before I say anything else:  I am biased on this issue.  I spent eight years working in public education.  Nearly five of them were spent as a Teaching Assistant at Freeport High School.  I am very big into public education, very confident in Freeport's academic strengths, and based on my experience in education, I am very hesitant to think that a charter school is going to do the best job it can with the resources its given.

With that out of the way, I want to encourage you to undertake all the possible research you can if this issue at all attracts your attention, because it is a community-redefining one.

For starters, here's a Freeport Public Schools public hearing flyer for you to peruse.  I'll have more to say after you look at it.

You don't necessarily have to have something to say to go to a public hearing, by the way.  You aren't required to speak.  You can go and listen.  Remember a decade and change ago, when myself and my sometimes co-conspirator Jason Bass would go to the Village of Freeport Board of Trustees meetings and take notes, then report back?

You can do this for yourself, or report it for others through your own publication, Facebook group, whatever.  Freeport School District meetings are (or at least used to be) usually easy to get in and out of, usually have plenty of seating, and are generally polite affairs.

I was also able to get a more detailed briefing for the meeting, along with some initial information on the School District website:

This letter stresses that the State University of New York's Charter Schools Institute, and the State Education Department itself, are deeply involved.  This document goes so far as to imply, if not directly state, that the final decision will be made by the SUNY Board of Trustees, and so how much actual say the Freeport Public Schools has over this issue is...Questionable?

I legitimately don't know.

Now, On To Maven.

One of the first things any parent considering where to send their school - or any citizen trying to evaluate a school - should do is research their website.

Maven does have a website laying out some of their plan, which is nice.  And, I'll be up-front about fairness:  They don't exactly have a school running yet, so I don't expect there to be too much information.  But let's see what they've got.

 - They say they provide Youtube content, but I can't find any that's clearly related to them.

 - Their "About" page is two paragraphs long with an invitation to reach out to find out more.

 - Their "Academics" page is one paragraph long with a few Eduspeak buzz-words and little concrete information.  There is a "Learn More" button on this page that does nothing so far as I can tell.

Of greater interest:  Their "Student Life" page has some actual information, if you know how to translate it out of Eduspeak.  Their thoughts about "Social Emotional Learning" are, though not detailed, at least the boiler-plate for what I'd expect a good school to be.  They talk about restorative justice as a cornerstone of discipline, which is a practice I'm familiar with and happen to think works well about 85% of the time.

Then it starts getting weird.

Maven Might Be Religious.

The commentary about "Emotional, Moral, and Ethical" development raises "spirituality," which I find incredibly dangerous.  Spirituality tied to moral and ethical growth?  Is this a religious school?

Well, I went looking around their site and didn't see much, so I hopped on their Twitter account and found, well...

And it gets...Less pleasant.

When trying to research who exactly was behind this project (because their website lacks details), I discovered this Long Island Herald article.

Maven's ringleader seems to be Craig Mercado, a former principal of - among other things - a religious school, St. Ephrem Catholic Academy.  All the talk about "classical education" I see on their website, plus those references to spirituality, plus those posts about doing information blitzes outside of churches and also the concerns about faith-based charters coming?

Add that to a religious educational background and you get me deeply suspicious that this would be a religious charter school.

I know Maven goes to great length to try to claim they don't take money from public schools, but that's obtuse at best.  "Charter school students are removed from public school enrollment, and the per-pupil funding for those students is then directed to the charter school. The community is paying the same cost for the child's education, and the local public school continues to be funded for every child it educates."

Not only is that still tax dollars going to what I can only assume, at this point, is a religious institution, but the idea that the Charter School is somehow going to pay for its own building and infrastructure, it's own material resources, and its own teachers - all without any taxpayer dollars - and turn around to make a profit based solely on average per-student expenditure?

Well, here's one way that Maven's other mastermind, Dr. Patrick Fogarty talks about achieving this pipe dream in his Long Island Herald article:  Using non-union labor.

In other words:  The plan is to provide teachers less job protection - and probably lower wages, since unions typically raise wages.  This means that the students get inferior teachers who are constantly fearful that their job could screw them over at any moment.  After all, that's what "lower overhead as far as teachers we hire" must mean, because how could you spend more money on a teacher that's got lower overhead?

The Bottom Line - It's A Bad Idea.

The goal of a charter school isn't student outcomes.  It's to turn a profit.

Supporters might argue, "If the school doesn't produce good outcomes, enrollment will fall off and it will fail!"  And, yes, it might.  But school results aren't super hard to fake, especially at the lower grade levels that Maven seems to be targeting.  There are some state-wide tests, of course, but a lot of that could be resolved simply by teaching students how to take the test, and not actually teaching them what they should be learning at those grade levels.

I know I'm not an elementary specialist, but I've worked in elementary classrooms.  It's not easy.  It's definitely not something you're going to want to do without a union to protect you if you rub your principal the wrong way.  You're not gonna wanna put as much effort in when you find out that you don't have the same kinds of retirement, health care, and compensation packages that your union teacher at the public school has.  I know because I've talked to Charter school teachers who have felt this way.

Never mind that this school seems awfully shady when it comes to whether or not its a religious institution, talking about "spirituality" and the unleashing of faith-based charter schools, but not clearly delineating a particular faith, and also not clearly delineating that it is non-faith-based.

The truth is, there's not enough information available about what these guys want to do:  And if you're heading into public comment to try to get public school money to pay for your private profits?  And you don't have enough information for curious readers to decide?  When you aren't clear if you'd just be accepting Freeport students, or if you'd also accept from nearby communities?  When you don't even seem to have a shortlist of locations to actually build your school in a Village that doesn't exactly have the most prime real estate available?

I would be strongly against this.

-----ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CAME IN-----

I managed to get hold of a bunch of documentation regarding this school.  I found this page particularly disturbing.

"While not explicitly stated," they are aligning with Catholic school values.

This is a Catholic school in disguise.

Jesse Pohlman is a recovering teacher, sci-fi/fantasy author, and the publisher of The Weekly Freeporter, which is no longer Weekly nor a Freeporter's perspective, but rather an occasional former Freeporter's take on topics that generally go broader than just the Village.

TWF 341 - Some Randall Park & Lifeguarding Stories

 Hello, friends,

It’s summer-time, and the other day, as I sometimes do I, was driving around south Freeport where I spent thirty years of my life.  My plan was simple:  To swing by Randall Park and say hello to any of my old lifeguard friends who might be working there.  For those who are new to The (once-)Weekly Freeporter, I was a lifeguard for the Village for, give or take, twenty years.

It was, surprisingly for 3:30, closed, with what looked like maintenance work in-progress.

That’s got me feeling like telling some of my stories today.  Nothing too crazy, just some of the experiences I had.

To begin with:  I grew up two blocks away from Randall.  I didn’t go there too often as a child (I did a lot of swimming at the Rec on swim teams), but I started lifeguarding primarily at Randall when I was 16 years old.  It is, by and large, a wonderful thing for the community to have a local pool.  Freeport has two such facilities besides the Rec Center:  Randall at the mouth of the Nautical Mile, and Martin Luther King Jr. Park up on Stevens Street.  I’ve worked at both, and both are fantastic resources that by-and-large have nice people that visit.

Randall Park, photo by the Village.  I know it's not the pool area, but it's a big Randall Park sign!

Swim Lessons At The Rec

Some of the best were my times as a Water Safety Instructor (WSI) for the Rec.  I had a practice mostly oriented towards adults.  I taught a few years worth of the Wednesday night Adult Swim classes, but I also did private lessons where I primarily taught adults - many of whom were terrified of the water.

You see, here’s the thing:  When my mom was a kid, she was pushed into water over her head and nearly drowned.  For the rest of her life, she never went into water above her knees.  She never learned to swim, even when I became a swimmer.

Her story was not unique.  I came across many adults who were afraid of various swimming components.  Some were comfortable going into water they could stand in, but couldn’t put their faces in the water.  Others were trickier, being afraid to get in the pool altogether.

It takes a lot of time to get people to trust the water.  My usual method was to let the student hold on to my arm when putting their face in the water.  Oftentimes, this resulted in them clamping down on my arm.  This, in turn, meant that there were definitely days at which I went home to my wife with fingernail wounds.

That was always fun.

I also have to give a shout-out to my time not so much with the Village, but with the Freeport Schools (who I TA’d for) as the assistant boys swim team coach.  I got to watch a whole generation of Freeport lifeguards start as swim-team kids, some of whom were hardly able to swim, and help them elevate their skills so that they could not just compete, but make a bit of cash as lifeguards.  I’m still in contact with a lot of swim team folks.

As a side-note:  I believe that between her work as the head for aquatics at the Rec Center and her role as the head swim team coach for many years, the Rec Center pool should be named in honor of Carole Murphy.  She was an amazing boss, an excellent coach, and an all-around cool person to know.

The Scariest Day Of My Career

I won’t go into too much detail about this, but even though about 90% of lifeguarding is just sitting back in a shade-umbrella and watching a pool, maybe while twirling a whistle, there are emergencies.  They can be all sorts of unnerving - sometimes bloody, sometimes heat-related, sometimes fall-related.

The scariest day of my career, one of the scariest in my life, happened when I was at Randall.  I was patrolling the deck when I observed a woman floating face-down, someone who hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago.  I blew three whistles - our code, at the time at least, for “I need a backboard” - and leaped into action.  I rolled her over with training long-ingrained in my muscle memory, and I threw up a prayer (a successful one, I suppose) that I could observe her breathing.

I will never forget her eyes - she was unconscious, but her eyes were open, staring at the sky, absent.

We put her on the backboard while EMS was on its way.  She regained consciousness as we lifted her out of the water and was clearly terrified. I can’t honestly say I know what happened to her because information doesn’t usually flow back down to us, and what we get are often just rumors.  But we know she survived.  We know that on that day, everyone worked to keep her alive, and we succeeded.

So the next time you see a lifeguard just chilling in a chair ‘doing nothing,’ just remember that somewhere else there’s a lifeguard saving a life.

Filter Follies And Rain Days

Of course, a pool is only as safe as the water is clean.  By and large, Randall (and MLK) are clean pools, but filters are hard to operate.  I received a decent amount of training on how they work.  I know how the water traveled through the pipes, I know how to clean and maintain the waffles in the vat, and I know how to shovel chlorine tablets into a chlorinator, usually without accidental inhalation of anything unpleasant.

With that said, as far back as when I was a kid, there were days when the filters simply would not work.  These situations often led to relatively easy days where one or both pools were closed and our job was to stand by in case of some kind of medical emergency in the park - or, at the very least, there was a lessened demand on our attention with one pool closed, and we got a little extra time away from the sun.

Of course, sometimes this led to patrons getting agitated - and I can't blame them! As much 'fun' as it might have been to be on standby, many of us like our days to be 'the usual day' for better or worse, and unusual days can be good or bad. We get it, we're lifeguards because so many of us grew up in the water and we like to swim, so we sympathize. We just can't help that sometimes old filters don't hold up.

But I’ll never forget the rainy days, the days where we knew there’d be a few hours where we were going to be closed while thunderstorms filled the sky.  We hung out in the office.  Back in the day - in the early 2000’s - we had someone bring in a portable TV to watch. This was a time before cell phones had touch-screens.  Other times, we played board games (Risk and Monopoly were favorites), and we imagined what it would be like if we suddenly had to face a zombie invasion.

Zombies were popular at the time, you see.

All This To Say

Lifeguarding is a great ‘starter job’ for young people to learn responsibility.  You can start saving lives as early as 16.  But it’s a hard job, too.  Sitting outside in hundred-degree heat is draining even if you’re in the shade.  Training and staying in shape for the job is difficult (I resigned in large part because my neck issues became overwhelming).  The easy times seem easy, but the hard times require quick decision making to save a life.

That's training that can last - and start! - a lifetime.

I picked up the Long Island Herald at my dad’s house and I saw that Freeport was talking about how it’s police department had expanded and promoted officers.  I recognized a name on the list of promoted officers and I smiled to myself because I knew that man when he was a youngster.  He wasn’t always the best behaved of the bunch, either, being a little sneaky-sneak with his cell phone once upon a time!  But he turned out to be a good dude, and last I saw him we had a nice chat.

And he’s not the only one I’ve known who has gone into either policing, fire-departmenting, or EMS work.  Many lifeguards use lifeguarding as a starter job for a career in public service, either as first-responders or in some other capacity.  Many others, like myself, become teachers and lifeguard as a summer job while educating during the rest of the year.  It’s like public service was a calling to most of us.

But at the end of the day, the vast majority of lifeguards at the Rec are young folks who are charged with no less a task than saving lives in an emergency.  Whether they’ve been there two decades like I was, or a few weeks like the young man who was second in the water on the day that woman I talked about nearly died, they deserve to get paid well, to be taken care of, and to get respect.

I hope that happens. With that said:

It’s my understanding that contract negotiations are rapidly approaching, and I hope the Village will consider that those young people who are just getting their start in civil service could use a fair paycheck for a fair day’s work. I won't lie - it was widely known that our salary was some of the lowest in the county.

The world is only getting hotter - Last week it hit new record highs - and Freeport is not immune from the weather. Yes, we're on an island where there's some breeze and air exchange, but it still gets hot.  Freeport needs as many lifeguards as it can get, and higher salaries will make sure that when the mercury is high, the pools are open and ready to cool residents and outsiders alike down.

Thanks for reading The Weekly Freeporter.  Jesse Pohlman is a sci-fi/fantasy author from Freeport.  You can check his novels out at his website.

TWF 331: On The Incredible News Of A Shooting In Freeport

 Hello, Freeporters,

I wish I could be joining you with better news on this day, but unfortunately I cannot.  Yesterday, as I first learned from the news agency Daily Voice Nassau, and later saw repeated on sites like NBC 4 New York, a drive-by shooting took place at a house party located on Babylon Turnpike.

Four children were shot.

I want to start by offering my best wishes to these wounded children, along with my wishes for anyone who was present at the tragedy.  I don't know their physical condition, as the NBC 4 article notes that their condition wasn't known at the time of publication, states that they were expected to survive.  That is good news.

I hope these are relatively minor injuries, and that they can and will make a full recovery.  As bad as that still is, things are not going to be so easy as simply healing from wounds. I know they - and all those who were present - are suffering psychological trauma.  There's no escaping that, but it's still horrific to consider.

The Positive Response

Overall, the community response has been one of horror and support.  I've seen many a Facebook post about how tragic this is, and how they wish for the victims to recover.  That lightens my heart.  Moreover, after reading what someone related to a victim said (I'm only mentioning this because it's a public forum), that one victim is doing okay.  Just knowing that is a huge relief, and we again wish him a full and speedy recovery.

Again, on the whole, most people have condemned the violence, cheered on the victims' recovery, offered updates about those they are close to, and called out for what little excuse there is standing in for justice in such a horrible crime.  True justice would be that this never happened, but that's impossible, so all we have left is pain and preventing this from happening again.

But not everyone has handled this gracefully, and I feel there's no getting around the need to point out that some people are saying insensitive (at best) 

The Less-Than-Positive

I can always rely on the majority of Freeport and its neighboring communities to get things right in times of crisis, and I take heart from that.

However, not everyone has handled this situation appropriately.

I will be pointing out two comments, both of which were unacceptable, and both of which shall remain nameless because their authors do not deserve credit, and because I am not interested in creating internet brigades.  One is, in my opinion, suggestive of racism.  One is suggestive of attempting to make an unacceptable political point in an election season off of of dishonestly representing the law.

It's also my understanding that both of these commenters are either from outside of the Freeport community (with no clear evidence they've ever spent time, here), or are no longer even so much as in geographical proximity of the community.  In other words, it's easy for them to talk when it's not at all related to them.

The first was as follows:

I'm just gonna be honest:  Best case is that this is a projection of insensitivity, or maybe some kind of crude attempt to be an edge-lord.  Worst case (which is where my mind happens to go, these days) is that this is deliberately racist.  There's no expression of contrition, there's no giving a damn about how the kids are.  "No crime in the Hood" right?  To my mind:  I'm sure that thought might be followed by, "And we all know who lives in the Hood."  Also implied is, "We don't care about the Hood, or the kids that were shot."

We should rise above this pettiness.

We must.

Another post I saw that was distressing was a deliberate attempt at politicizing these childrens' suffering by ranting about New York State's bail reform law under false pretenses.

This is a lie.

According to the Brennan Center, a non-partisan law and policy institute, they write:

Very clearly, at least according to this analysis done by legal-world professionals, violent felonies are still bail-worthy offenses.  Now, the fact is that if this person has the money and/or means to get it from a bondsman, they can just pay bail and get out just like it was before bail reform was initiated.  But a judge can absolutely order them detained on bail.

Hell, for four counts of attempted murder, I would not be surprised if they were remanded without bail as an option.

I also noticed that, since the man brought up politics, he didn't talk about New York's actual, real laudable attempts to take illegal guns off the streets.  Because New York has been trying to keep gun violence low, and overall has a fairly low incidence of gun violence to begin with compared to other states.  Now, I might imagine some other things this person might believe about firearms, but I won't get into those.

So In Conclusion...

If you're one of the two people I mentioned, or if you're just someone who liked one of their posts:  Be better than this, especially if you left the town a long time ago and never looked back, or if you never lived here to begin with.

The rest of Freeport is carrying on with solidarity and love for those who were hurt, and with an eye intent on preventing another tragedy like this from ever happening.

May such lofty hopes come true.

Thank you for reading.  Jesse Pohlman is the editor-in-chief of The Weekly Freeporter, and spent his first thirty years living in Freeport. He still visits the community regularly (imminently after publishing this, in fact), with the intent to live there once again when all affairs are settled.

TWF 330 - Research Reveals Abortion Restrictions In Freeport & Other Municipalities

 Hello, friends,

We're going to start this off by saying all people have the right to control their own bodies at all times, and we'll be taking a strident Pro-Choice position.  If that's a Rubicon for you, now's a good time to close this article.

New York State Senator Anna Kaplan (NYS Senate District 7) and Assemblywoman Gina L. Sillitti (NYS Assembly District 16) recently took part in a review of Long Island's various municipal legal codes.  They were searching for abortion prohibitions, and they discovered five local governments which banned abortion under varying conditions.  Freeport turned out to be one such community.

It was a surprise to me to learn Freeport had such a restriction.  It turns out it was a surprise to others, as well.  This could constitute a ban on things like mail-ordered Mifepristone & Misoprostol being taken at home to induce abortion.  While current New York State law would appear to make these laws toothless, there is no guarantee that the next Governor (there's an election coming up in November...) is going to be a Pro-Choice Governor.  There's no guarantee of a Pro-Choice Assembly and Senate, either.  The rules-as-written can be changed.

It's my understanding that the Village is going to be reconsidering these rules; rules which were, according to Kaplan's press release, issued in the 1970's; rules which were lost in time, but unearthed through diligent research.  And, good!  Change for the better is progress, and such shifts get made by people who pursue it.

Thank you for reading.  Jesse Pohlman is a Science Fiction/Fantasy author born and raised in Freeport, New York.  The Weekly Freeporter is over ten years old, now, so you probably know what it's about!

TWF 329 - New York State Sues Freeport Over Cleveland Avenue Environmental Disclosures

Hello, friends!

I hope this post finds you all well.  Before we get into the news, I just want to note that the subject of our previous article, Hitler-cheerleading Carl Paladino, appears to have lost his primary.  I figured I'd start with that good news.

New York Attorney General Sues Freeport.

Well, we can start with a link to the court document (hat tip to Dawn de le Llera for posting the link on FB) which appears to have been filed yesterday by NYS Attorney General Letitia James.  I invite you to read it for yourself, but being as neither of us are lawyers (except those of us who might be reading this who might be lawyers?  In which case, hi!  Feel free to gently correct me where I'm wrong), I think both of us are going to labor in analyzing it.

Here's what I gathered from it:

Paragraph 22 sets out that the Village Board approved a "negative declaration," basically saying that there would be no negative environmental impact to what's apparently a 15-acre industrial development over previously green space.

According to Paragraph 24, the Village did not perform a required type of environmental impact study on their proposed sale of the park to developer PDC .  In fact, if I'm reading it right, Paragraph 24 lays out that Freeport did nothing whatsoever - no study, no research, nothing - to support its negative declaration.

First and foremost is that the sale simply doesn't pass the environmental sniff test.  Paragraphs 29-31 certainly lay this issue bare, but it also hits on another issue:  That the sale would have a negative impact primarily on lower-income residents of color.

Diving Into The Lawsuit Against Freeport

New York's lawsuit seems to have two main thrusts, then.  The first is about the environment, the second is social equity.  In many ways, these two are connected:  "What will the impacts be, and who will bear the brunt of them?"

One thing I found impressive about this briefing was found in Paragraphs 19-20, in that it has a familiarity with both Freeport's history (the Moxey Rigby's experience during Hurricane Sandy) as well as it's accurateness with regards to the hydrological cycle.

NY AG James seems to be asking Freeport, "Hey, have you studied how paving over a bunch of open space is going to impact the immediate neighborhood during a flood like, say, Hurricane Sandy's future reincarnation?"  And while Freeport's official answer is yet to be published (to my knowledge), the fact remains that so far, their answer appears to be "no."

I remember one of the earliest issues The Weekly Freeporter covered was Mayor Hardwick's proposal to build an incinerator in Freeport.  In the linked article, I paraphrased Trustee Robert Kennedy from a community meeting citizens had organized in neighboring Merrick.

At the time, Robert Kennedy understood that it was incumbent on a business making a developmental proposal to evaluate the environmental impacts the building would have.  NOT taxpayers.  In this case, it should fall upon PDC to perform a legitimate environmental impact study using independent experts and labor.

But, really...

All in all, this is an issue that should not exist.  Robert Kennedy from a decade ago recognized that this needed to be done.  Did Robert Kennedy of today forget?  Did the Board?  If so - how?!

Seems like this is just another fight that didn't need to happen, and you'd better believe that reading that brief has further moved me in the "no, I'd prefer we keep the open space" camp.  I've vacillated, mainly because the alleged tax savings would be a huge benefit to many families in Freeport (I'm certainly happy to pay less in taxes), but I also strongly doubt that apartments Village-wide are about to drop their rent by a commensurate percentage, and it's clear which parts of the community are going to make sacrifices and which other parts will be reaping the rewards.

It just seems rushed, and I don't like being rushed into deals.