Virginia doesn’t have the worst public school system in the country — we’re fair to middlin’ as measured by spending per pupil and educational outcomes — but it is arguably the most resistant to change. The latest evidence is a rejection of a charter for the Patrick Henry charter school earlier this week by the City of Richmond school board.
Keith West, one of the school’s main backers, wound up voting against the proposal on the grounds that it had been bound up by so many contract restrictions that the city was setting up the school for failure. ‘The contract “micromanages them,” he said, as reported by the Times-Dispatch. “We’re telling them how to do what they’re supposed to do.”
The elementary school would have occupied a school building that had been closed down more than a year ago, and would have offered an integrated science and arts curriculum that integrated the neighboring Forest Hill Park into the curriculum to teach “environmental awareness and social responsibility.” The school would have been funded by the usual state and city sources for schools, supplemented by private sources. It would have been governed by its own board of directors.
The school was opposed by the usual constituencies. The NAACP, the Richmond Council of PTAs and the Richmond Education Association had mobilized in protest. “We oppose any scheme that creates a private school in a public school setting,” said Melvin Law, a former School Board chairman and a Richmond NAACP branch member.
As Times-Dispatch columnist Barton Hinkle points out, there are about 4,200 charter schools across the United States. Only three are located in Virginia. Support for vouchers, an even more radical alternative to charter schools, is spreading. Opponents, he suggests aren’t worried that the school might fail — “they’re petrified that it might succeed.” In the words of one school board member, “By allowing this group to proceed, it would open the door for any other group that wants to create a school.”
As infuriating as such thinking is, it’s not restricted to the City of Richmond. Outside of one school in Albemarle County, one in the city of Hampton and one in York County, there aren’t any charter schools anywhere in Virginia. (According to the Virginia Charter School Resource Center, five other charter schools have opened and closed.)
What a disgrace. The educrats and special interests are determined to protect the current system, regardless of what it costs the children. And no one in Virginia is willing to override them.
