As a follow-up to my post about the reopening of Bishop Perry Middle School, is this piece, Missing School in the Big Easy, from Salon.com:
...Before the storm, New Orleans operated 117 public schools for 65,000 kids -- over 90 percent of them African-American. Today, only 20 schools are open. School officials say that by August, as families, now scattered across the country, begin to return to New Orleans, the district will open more schools and be able to handle a total of 25,000 kids. But the current lack of available schools is about more than the physical destruction wrought by Katrina. To many activists, it points to serious inequities in the massive transformation of the New Orleans public school system. Long one of the nation's worst, the school system is being re-created as a laboratory for charter schools, a type of reform often favored by conservatives and opposed by teachers unions and others who see it as a gateway to privatization. Nearly 90 percent, or 102 schools, could ultimately be run as charters. Nothing on this scale has ever been tried before.
Brenda Mitchell, president of United Teachers of New Orleans, says she is not a conspiracy theorist, but when she considers the new charter system, she is not sure how else to think. "It's all part of the privatization and social engineering of the city, limiting the return of poor people and African-Americans," she says. "If you're not providing housing for them, if you don't want to provide schools to educate them, how are they going to come back to rebuild the city"...Posted by perry032 at February 13, 2006 02:12 PM | TrackBack