Hartford’s Milner School debacle gets attention across Connecticut

Sep 23

jonpeltoCharter Schools, Corporate Viewpoint, Hartford, Malloy, Stefan Pryor, Steven Adamowski, Wendy Lecker , , , 13 Comments

“Connecticut’s May 2012 education reform law provides for state intervention to implement “turnaround plans” in the neediest schools. Hartford’s Milner School was among the state’s first targets.

The reformers’ solution was to help Milner School by simply handing it over to the Jumoke Academy, a private charter school operator.

In support of the move, Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, a founder of the Achievement First charter franchise, declared that having Jumoke take over a public school was “an important transition in the charter school movement.

The comment indicates that some reformers apparently believe that expanding charter schools is more important than addressing children’s needs.”

Wendy Lecker, a columnist for Hearst Connecticut Media Group and one of the leading forces behind the Connecticut chapter of Parents Across America has a must read commentary piece on the Milner School issue.  You can read  Wendy’s article here:  Helping Kids Or Helping Charter Schools.

Wait, What? readers already know the story about Hartford’s Milner School’s

  • A quarter of the students are English Language Learners (ELL) (that is they are not fluent in English)
  • 38.7 percent come from homes where English is not the primary language
  • 11.3 percent are students with disabilities.

Back in 2008, Steven Adamowski, then Hartford’s Superintendent of Schools, and now Malloy’s “Special Master” for Windham and New London’s schools, implemented a “Turnaround Plan” for the Milner School.  But Adamowski and his team never made the investment of resources that were needed to really help the Milner School.

So now, the school in which 1 in 4 four students aren’t fluent in English, 4 in 10 go home to households where English is not the primary language and more than 1 in 10 have disabilities that require special education services, remains a “low-performing” school when it comes to standardized test scores.

Along comes “Turnaround Plan” #2.

This time Hartford’s present Superintendent of Schools, along with Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor, and the State Board of Education, have decided to give the school, its students and its entire budget over to the Jumoke Academy, a charter school in Hartford that has never had a student who wasn’t fluent in English and has never had a student who went home to a household where English wasn’t the primary language.

In addition, despite state and federal laws making it illegal to discriminate against students who require special education services, only 2 percent of Jumoke Academy’s students have special education needs.

Wendy Lecker’s piece goes on to reveal the strange and disturbing politics behind the effort to give the Milner School to the Jumoke Academy.

Later in the day, Diane Ravitch, the country’s leading voice for public education, picked up Wendy’s commentary piece and posted it to her blog.  You can Diane’s perspective here:  http://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/23/charters-riding-high-in-ct/

It makes it very clear that Stefan Pryor’s long-standing relationship with charter schools is helping drive Governor Malloy’s policy of giving scarce taxpayer funds to charter schools at the expense of the local public district schools that need and deserve those resources.

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  • Linda174

    We have no money to help you UNTIL you become a charter and then we have MILLIONS. And now you can decide to or not to enroll a student, you can threaten parents with DCF action for absences, etc…one way to control your population is to scare and intimidate the families….but don’t forget that charter schools are public schools EXCEPT that we can’t do any of that and money doesn’t fall into our laps just when we need it. Brought to you by our charter commissioner, no prior teaching experience, Stefan Pryor.

    • Querculus

      My God. I hadn’t thought of things like profit-motivated DCF threats. Wow.

      • Linda174

        They have no shame.

  • Linda174
  • Aparteid First

    Great work, Jon and Wendy! And wonderful comments and links by Linda174.
    Adamowski, Vallas, Fischer in New London, Kishimoto–they are leading the charge to increase segregation in schools; to deprive poorer children of art and music (an award-winning Middle School music program at Windham Middle School is currently languishing, with students not allowed the time to take what used to be daily music classes–more test prep, more test prep); to turn schools over to for-profit companies and mercenary non-educators from TFA and Broad–but all roads lead back to Hartford. With the current commissioner, Stefan Pryor, things will only get worse. Pryor is truly a force of reaction and racism.
    Will it take a strike? How can we expose the interests who are guiding the policy, the Broad-funded privatizers who are given positions of power and authority with no public imput or scrutiny? How far are Malloy’s hands in the pockets of the hedge-fund managers’ school reform wallets? It may indeed take some radical, mass action.

    • Linda174

      PAA – How to tell if your School District has the Broad Virus:
      Schools in your district are suddenly closed.
      Even top-performing schools, alternative schools, schools for the gifted, are inexplicably and suddenly targeted for closure or mergers.
      Repetition of the phrases “the achievement gap” and “closing the achievement gap” in district documents and public statements.
      Repeated use of the terms “excellence” and “best practices” and “data-driven decisions.” (Coupled with a noted absence of any of the above.)
      The production of “data” that is false or cherry-picked, and then used to justify reforms.
      Power is centralized.
      Decision-making is top down.
      Local autonomy of schools is taken away.
      Principals are treated like pawns by the superintendent, relocated, rewarded and punished at will.
      Read here for more:
      http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2011/04/how-to-tell-if-your-school-district-is-infected-by-the-broad-virus/

      • Apartheid First

        this is so incredibly accurate!
        so many people have seen through the reformers/rheeformers. They have no credibility left.
        (and now a note of paranoia–my computer is so slow tonight–I wonder if I’m being hacked? Sorry for missing some caps and misspelling things–it’s almost as if I can’t backspace and shift won’t work).
        Then again, I am a STEM flunk-out…

      • Linda174

        Unfortunately they have plenty of money left. Don’t worry…for every three STEM graduates there is only one job.

    • msavage

      I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I think the only thing that will stop them is radical, mass action. Unless you’re willing to wait a few years until they finish with their feast and then try to reassemble a working system from the picked corpses that are left.

  • Aparteid First
  • guest

    If I were a lawyer I would be waiting on Jamoke’s doorsteps with business cards and legal documents in hand waiting for the exited children and their families so we can sue the living hell out of all of them. A new niche business “charter chaser”.

    • msavage

      Great idea! All those newly-graduated lawyers who can’t find jobs should consider setting up “charter-chaser” practices. If only it weren’t so sad, it’d be funny.