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 345: Nassau County Bans Masks In The Name Of Safety, Makes County Less Safe

 Hello, friends,

As per the NY Civil Liberties Union, as well as many other sources, Nassau County has passed a ban on wearing any form of face covering.  There are supposedly medical and/or religious exemptions to this, but those are reportedly unclear and vague.

Friends, let me tell you:  For the chronically ill, for those who are headed to or from a doctors' office, for those who will be in a confined space with strangers?  Masks are a lifeline that allows them to participate in public life with less fear of getting sick and dying.

Now, those people may be subject to fines and possibly - I am not kidding - a fucking YEAR of imprisonment.

Just a month ago, our usually-inept governor issued a warning that CoVID infections were once again on the rise.  Thus, our county's ban flies in the face of basic public health.

The rationale I keep hearing is "public safety."  The idea that everyone on the street must be identifiable so that crooks can't hide who they are.

I may not love our governor, but she's right to warn us that CoVID is still a serious threat.  I may not choose to mask under most circumstances, but I damn sure don't believe in taking that right away from others. Should our police really be playing "Check people wearing a mask for a doctors' note"?  Is that what you want our tax money spent on?

I promise you this much:  At least once, while a cop is harassing someone over their mask, a real crime will be committed that they could have stopped.  And that'll be on the cop for enforcing the stupid law, the legislature for passing the stupid law, and county executive Bruce Blakeman for signing the stupid law.

Because it seems like our county doesn't give a damn if innocent immunocompromised people die.  They just want to watch those peoples' face as they choke down their last agonizing breath.

This ban needs to be overturned, and people need to speak out about it.