Baker says the bill will focus the new growth in the lowest performing districts.
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Leaders of a teachers union are demanding charter schools reject a provision allowing charter employees to bypass the admissions lottery process.
At Baker’s event, Rodolfo Aguilar, the parent of two Brooke Charter School students, cried as he thanked Baker for supporting charter schools.
“I think you (have to) fix the system”, said Paul Dakin, superintendent emeritus of Revere Public Schools, on Herald Radio’s “NewsFeed” program.
If Baker files his bill Thursday as expected it should be on the agenda for Tuesday’s Education Committee hearing, according to Rep. Alice Peisch, the House chairwoman of the committee.
“It is so troubling that a democratically elected governor is looking to undermine public education, which is foundational to democracy”, Madeloni said. “I don’t know the answer to that, but we have 37,000 families who simply want for their kids what everybody else wants and for the most part gets here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for theirs – which is a shot at a great education and an opportunity on which to build a great future”, Baker said. These independent public schools are limited, and they have become so popular, there are now 37,000 students on a wait list to get into one. “This enables them to make inflated claims of success without acknowledging they serve a different population, and abandons the students who are pushed out of charter schools”. It would also give school districts the authority to unify enrollment systems to include both charter and district schools, under a plan similar to the one unveiled last month by Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh.
Baker’s bill would allow charters to partner with the lowest-performing school districts, those ranked level four or five, if the district agrees. “Unless the cap is lifted, our kids will have to go to another school”.
The first charter schools opened in Massachusetts in 1995, two years after the 1993 law that allowed their creation.
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Critics latched on to the dual systems of schools charters are creating, with little headway made on parental input and disciplinary standards that have been the source of scorn among the opposition.
