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• StillRelaxin

  Oh yes, here it comes “THE NEXT BIG PLAN” brought to you by politicians to save education. When was the last time one of those actually ended up saving you money? Too late folks, you’ve already taken the bait. In 15-20 years you’ll see the light, you got scammed AGAIN!

• Anonymous

  Still waiting to see which restrictions and regs that won’t apply to charter schools.  Could be a far way from an even playing field.

• StillRelaxin

  In the end it won’t matter because charter schools (Which are not Magnet Schools for the gifted) will be getting about the same results as the public schools (Some do better, some to the same and some do worse) from which they drained average students (Usually by lottery not talent or who your daddy is, or who your daddy thinks he is) and taxpayer money form.  This is all little more than another money grab for taxpayer dollars by slimey politicians who want you to believe that THIS TIME they have the answer to our problems and we won’t have to lift a finger to make it happen (Just open up our wallets).  Here’s a question, if we can’t afford to fund the schools we have, how are we going to fund them PLUS 10 more charter schools?  How gullible are we?  Pretty darn gullible.

• Anonymous

  The black leather polished Jack Boots of the hacks still press on the free rights of the people.  More of the same – delay, hinder, stone wall.. and generally be an obstacle to progress.

• Anonymous

  Charter schools, taxpayer funded madrassas.

• Anonymous

  One big restriction that usually applies to charter schools is the lack of a union. Another common one is that it is extremely easy to expel students. A teacher that is more concerned with enjoying the job than getting the highest possible paycheck might switch to this environment despite a much lower salary.

  Some schools require a certain amount of parental involvement. Ask a public school teacher how classrooms would be different if every parent went to the teacher once a quarter and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” It is a world of difference to them. The schools can get help outside the classroom also. The school cafeteria, library and office could have much lower staffing because you could have volunteers helping.

• Anonymous

  I am confused about a lot around the legislation that was passed. In reading it I could not determine if private for-profit companies can create and run a public charter school. If they can, then you have an ALEC inspired ’model bill’ and taxpayer dollars will be siphoned off to create profits for, most likely, an out-of-state business. Join us on ALEC Watch in Maine, a Facebook page, to monitor these efforts to gain access to our tax dollars.

• Anonymous

  A backhanded way to teach religion and intelligent design with public moneys.

• Anonymous

  The refined rules for charter schools addresses one of their biggest faults:  cherry picking their student population by creating enrollment barriers to all but choice students.  The new rules will make it harder for charter schools to create an exclusive private school using public funding.
  It  tries, but only weakly , to control for-profit educational corporations chicanery.  The use and abuse of expensive for-profit educational programs is somewhat restricted.   However, it doesn’t address the buying and leasing of properties  which for-profit corporations have used very effectively to siphon millions of dollars out of a state.  Additionally the rules for turning a public school into a charter school have been somewhat tightened but still allow the school district and the charter school authorizers to determine most of the criteria.