- 14 public education activists file Amicus brief for inequitable charter funding [FOCUS quoted, Washington Latin PCS and Eagle Academy PCS mentioned]
- D.C. Student's Family Sues for $3 Million After Alleged Sex With Teacher [Options PCS mentioned]
14 public education activists file Amicus brief for inequitable charter funding [FOCUS quoted, Washington Latin PCS and Eagle Academy PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
October 29, 2014
Fourteen public school activists, including Victor Reinoso, the former Deputy Mayor for Education under Adrian Fenty, and two organizations, Mary Filardo's 21st Century School Fund and the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators (S.H.A.P.P.E.), a group supporting neighborhood schools founded by Matthew Frumin, have filed an Amicus, or friend of the court, brief supporting D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan's motion to dismiss the charter school inequity funding lawsuit filed by the D.C. Association of Public Chartered Schools, Washington Latin PCS and Eagle Academy PCS. The argument mirrors the contention by Mr. Nathan that the elected representatives of the District of Columbia can make their own decisions regarding managing public education, power they claim was delegated by Congress to the Mayor and the Council through the Home Rule Act of 1973. In a press release announcing the move Mr. Reinoso comments:
“I am a strong proponent of charter schools, but the idea that a federal judge could bar District residents from having a role through their elected representatives in managing how and at what level their schools are funded should deeply offend every District resident.”
What has these individuals and groups up in arms is the notion that "the lawsuit argues that the School Reform Act of 1995, which established charter schools in D.C., can only be changed by Congress. But the Amici Curiae agree with the Attorney General that the District clearly has authority to legislate in quintessentially local issues such as the way in which its children are educated."
Especially interesting about Mr. Reinoso's remark is his action pledge for an upcoming Aspen Action Forum conference that brings together the world's leaders to not only reflect on the critical issues of the times but to actually do something to resolve them. His pledge is nothing less than "I will make it easier to replicate best practices in public education." But what he fails to mention anywhere in the 17 page brief is the undisputed fact that currently charter schools in the nation's capital receive, as the editors of the Washington Post have pointed out "$2,150 less per student than their traditional counterparts every year, resulting in a loss of $770 million since fiscal 2008." The $770 million would go an exceedingly long way in promoting the replication of the Public Charter School Board's Performance Management Framework Tier 1 charters to serve the estimated 40,000 children, almost all of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch, that are currently being educated in low performing DCPS facilities.
Also strangely missing is a discussion of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula which the School Reform Act identifies as the only method codified in law through which charters and the regular schools can receive their taxpayer money to operate. I guess the bottom line of their reasoning is that we are perfectly fine with the situation that a parent who decides to send their offspring to a charter school will receive an inequitable amount of public support as long as we defend the ability of locally elected officials to do whatever they wish with the schools. Sad, especially considering that it has been shown by the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools that students enrolled in charters, despite the illegal shortage of funding compared to DCPS, gain an extra 72 more days of instruction in reading and 101 days teaching in math each year compared to being at a regular school.
The executive director of FOCUS, the group that organized the lawsuit, summarizes the situation best through his comment, "The motion to dismiss, which the Amici support in their brief, asks the court to bless the government's long-standing practice of discriminatory funding of public charter school students. These students, now 45% of all D.C. public school students, are overwhelmingly members of minority groups and economically disadvantaged. The government says it has the right to treat these students anyway it likes, without regard to fairness or the requirements of law. This is the real offense, not the filing of a last-resort lawsuit asking that the court protect these vulnerable students from being treated as second class citizens."
D.C. Student's Family Sues for $3 Million After Alleged Sex With Teacher [Options PCS mentioned]
NBC4 Washington
By Shomari Stone
October 29, 2014
The family of a 17-year-old D.C. high school student has filed a lawsuit for $3 million, claiming a substitute teacher maliciously made sexual contact with him earlier this month.
Symone Greene, 22, was working at Options Public Charter School in Northeast D.C. Friday, Oct. 17 when she first met the victim, a football player at the school.
The student, who is described as having a learning disability, told police he was working as an office assistant and helped Greene twice that day in her English class. The student said he flirted with Greene during class, gave her his cell phone number, then texted her, asking if she was "kinky."
According to documents, the two later met up in her classroom, where she allegedly performed oral sex on the teen. The victim recorded the sex act and later shared the video with his teammates and a childhood friend.
Greene allegedly sent the teen a text message over the weekend asking him not to tell anyone.
The teen's mother filed a $3 million lawsuit Tuesday in Prince George's County against Greene, the D.C. Public Charter School Board, the court-appointed receiver and custodian of Options Public Charter School Joshua Kern and SOS Personnel, the private Delaware company that initially hired Greene.
The lawsuit claims Greene was "unqualified to serve as a teacher" for at-risk students at the school and shouldn't have been hired as a subsitute teacher in the first place.
It goes on to say Greene had deliberately and maliciously made sexual contact with the victim that day, and exposed him to possible sexually transmitted diseases.
The lawsuit also claims another teacher could have stopped the inappropriate contact between the victim and Greene, and says the school's "no cell phone" policy was clearly violated.
Although the age of consent in D.C. is 16, Greene was charged because she was the teen's teacher. According to D.C. law, age-of-consent rules are not in play in when it comes to "significant relationships," which include teachers and their students.
She pleaded not guilty to first-degree sexual assault against a minor in a significant relationship.