AUGUSTA, Maine — The commission that will approve Maine’s new public charter schools wants to hear what the public has to say in northern and eastern regions.
The Maine State Charter School Commission plans to travel to Aroostook and Washington counties in early April to hear about regional educational needs that could be addressed by charter schools.
The public sessions will be April 5 at Northern Maine Community College in Presque isle and April 9 at the University of Maine at Machias.
The charter school commission held sessions earlier this month in Augusta, Bangor and Portland.
State law authorizes up to 10 public charter schools statewide during the law’s first 10 years.
Charter schools are nothing but a private for profit enterprise that government officials (Guess which ones?) have come up with as a solution to a public problem. The problem being poor educational achievement of today’s children. What’s Mr. LePage’s answer? Take money out of public school systems and give it to private for profit enterprises (Now there’s a surprise, right?) who have repeatedly failed or done no better in their efforts than public schools. Dumb, dumb, dumb. No, they are not “Magnet” schools for the gifted nor in general do children attend one of these experiments by choice, who their parents may be, or who their parents think they are. Attendance to charters are usually done by lottery. Learn about them before ripping your public schools to shreds.
Sadly politicians and school administrators don’t keep their jobs by telling people the truth. To justify their positions they always have to provide “solutions” to our problems. The problem with their solutions is that they are usually very convoluted, expensive, and rarely successfully implemented or connected to anything close to a positive result. Don’t be fooled by hucksters who don’t give a hoot about your kids. All they want to do is spread your money for themselves or among their friends/political supporters.
There’s only one real solution to our educational woes, PARENTS who truly care about their children’s education. Get involved in your kids lives and school studies. Pride, hard work, self-worth, and aspirations all “begin” in the home not in schools, on the streets, or through osmotic proximity with a TV, computer, smart phone, or video game. Check their homework, talk to their teachers, and hold them accountable for learning. Otherwise any school they go to will be nothing more than a babysitting service where your kids go to socialize and we keep getting the same poor educational results.
Bingo! You hit the nail on the head!!!
Charter schools are like people that move to another state to escape their problems only to find out when they arrive that —“they” —are still there.