Reply #16: I agree with most of your post

[noamnety]

"If every school in every district was a "school of choice," we could shut down the charter movement,"

I'd be fine with that. I think the charters exist because they fill a vacuum, and if the public schools were allowed to fill that vacuum themselves, we'd all be better off.

"Do you have a charter? Is there a reason your local district wouldn't, themselves, support a "school of choice" without it? It sounds like you'd be better off without the charter. "

We have a charter, yes. We wouldn't be better off without it exactly - we just wouldn't have the school without it. Just clarifying my use of the word "district" here because that varies by state. Our charter school is its own unique district with itself as its one school, and like the other larger multi-school districts, we fall under the larger "intermediate school district" which is run by the county. That ISD is the one that handles our finances and audits us, like they do all the other districts they manage in the county. Our teachers are hired by our district. Every teacher on our staff has their certification. We get hammered by the same (sucky) NCLB laws as every other public school.

If we could exist without the "charter" these would be the differences:

1. The county would give priority to students living in our (mainly white) suburb.
2. The inner city kids (mainly black) would only be allowed to attend if the suburban kids hadn't opted to take all the slots.

(Racism and classism would play a huge roll in enrollment, whereas currently we are about 50/50 suburban and city students, 50-50 white and black.)

3. The unions would be willing to represent us. That's an issue with unions, not with state or district laws. The district would actually allow us even to join the UAW, we were looking into that at one point.
4. The state would allow us to have tenure. That would obviously be appreciated. When our first group of teachers hit tenure, we had a little ceremony for them - and then a while later an email went out to all the staff saying oops, our bad, we didn't realize we weren't allowed to give that to you, nevermind."

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Where I'm confused or don't think I agree with your post - the implication that it's only a public entity if you are part of a local bargaining unit. Bargaining unit would be nice, but it's not criteria for excluding us as a public organization or claiming we are private. I was never part of a bargaining unit as a SGT, but I sure the heck was a public employee. Likewise, many private companies have union representation.