The charter school lobby is likely to gang up on ANC6A

The Washington Times had an editorial yesterday (Public charter schools) and an op-ed last week by Deborah Simmons (Capitol Hill vs. Capitol Hill) , about the group of residents in ANC6A (near Lincoln Park) "Northeast Neighbors for Responsible Growth" and their lawsuit seeking to block a pre-school charter school from using and expanding a residentially-sized row building. (The Examiner wrote about this earlier in the month, "D.C. residents file suit to block Northeast preschool.")

The "Northeast Neighbors" make an important point. "Public schools" have publicly accountable (well, sort of, at least in reality) boards and officials. However, even though "Public" charter schools are overseen by either the DC School Board or the DC Public Charter School Board, at the level of the individual school, charter schools are private, albeit non-profit, corporations where DC citizens and/or residents have no rights of participation.

So charter schools, which I used to support, but now I don't because of:

- this general lack of transparency;
- the broader agenda of defunding and ignoring, rather than improving, public schools--granted that might be a futile quest; and
- the disconnection of charter schools from neighborhood-serving purposes makes it much less likely that such schools serve as sources of neighborhood stability and improvement;

get to misuse DC Zoning Regulations, because the clauses are intended to cover "public" institutions which have clear oversight and accountability mechanisms, including the ability to vote overseers in or out of office.

The DC Public Charter School Board is not publicly elected, and neither are the boards of charter schools.

The Washington Times, which tends to support citizens up against "big, bad" government, is letting its agenda of privatizing public schools trump its normal favoring of civic engagement and citizen participation.

Index Keywords: education; zoning; civic-engagement