Charter demand high but schools still under attack

NY Daily News reported on the Harlem Success lottery.  Hard to read this without supporting charters:

Ebony Griffin, 26, whose daughter Yolanda, 4, got a seat, said her prayers were answered.

“I was sitting there like, ‘Please, please,’ and then her name came up. Now it feels like I just graduated from college.”

Too bad they headlined the piece a ‘windfall’ when it was simply a partial restoration of a budget cut to schools that already operate on less than local public schools. 

San Jose Mercury News ran an opinion piece by two county board members that say they support charters but want to hit the breaks instead of hitting the gas:

We believe in competition, innovation and continuous improvement for all our public schools. While we support charter schools in concept, we want to be cautious and responsible. There is a delicate balance between forging competition and meeting student needs via the charter school system and the insidious effect of taking a few thousand students at a time away from the fragile public school system. Have we reached a tipping point?

They want to wait for “local districts should be given the opportunity to meet requested parent and student needs.”  Guess what, it won’t happen.  At a tipping point, you tip the system—that’s the point. 

Here’s how the Tulsa district responded to charters—they tried to get them ruled unconstitutional.  KSWO reported that a county judge threw out their challenge.