If RPS had signed a contract like this, we would have to close 50 schools today. How many years has RPS had to become ADA compliant? 18 years? How many Richmond Public Schools can folk wheels themselves into?

I say approve this Charter and give them a fair amount of time for ADA compliance, like 3 to 5 years. I’d like to know of the other unfair things in that contract.

I’m thinking that our representatives want this Charter to fail because we know for a fact that most Richmond Public Schools would have failed under the same conditions and requirements.

Yes a contract would be good.

Another good idea that a fellow parent once suggested -have parents fill out exit surveys. Find out why families are leaving their neighborhood schools. This would help RPS zone in on problem areas and fix them.

I should probably write this is an email, but I don’t want anyone to think I have a personal vendetta against you.

Having said that, I consider your abstention on the PH Charter initiative one of the most respectful, professional, reasonable, and important actions I am aware of your doing.

Even if the possibility of a conflict of interest law suit was at the heart of it, I think the division that has developed since the original vote is an indication of a recognition by at least some board members of the lacking, if not conflicting, research of the efficacy of charter schools and the realization of the possibility that the charter school would only further propagate the de facto segregation already evident in our school system.

This very evening, I have spoken with many teachers in RPS who feel that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it is important to remember that there are many squeaky wheels that are more like loose cannons. We realize that you are advocating for your precious children. We realize they are precious. However, we know that education and economics has a lot to do with why schools are the way they are. The grand question that we would like to answer is how to solve inequality/inequity in our schools. Unfortunately, many of us have come to the conclusion that there will never be an end to this problem. Perhaps this is due to capitalism. However, we have vowed never to give up fighting for equality and we are making every effort to better understand how to make this a reality.

The fact a charter school would remove funds from public education via the reduction of enrollment in other public schools is a major reason that anyone who believes in improving public education is important must abstain from supporting charter schools.

The fact that Mr. Day (I hope I have his name correct) left the meeting saying that “we must consider our legal options” is only a further indication of a position in which the will and effort to improve education is wrongly affected. If Mr. Day spends one dollar fighting the system, one hour rallying against it, it is time and money that would be better spent in improving the very schools that already exist.

I sincerely hope that people will recognize this force to dis-incorporate from public school will bear fruit only for those whose interests are served by it. We can not continue to try to avoid the negative in our schools. We must face it with full-hearts and bravely work together to say the time has come for our schools to be what everyone knows they can be. There is not a lack in funding as much as there is a lack in priority. We may just have to sacrifice a little something to get what we want. Someone might have to not drink a beer, see a movie, buy a new pair of shoes, get a manicure, go to the golf club, or some other such luxury, so that we may make our schools the priority that they should be, the highest priority.

Mr. Day, are you willing to sacrifice your efforts in one area to improve another?

Do those of you who fear for your children dare to embrace your neighborhood school and be a part of the team who can proudly say we have chosen to stay when others have ran because we believe that though RPS is in a dark hour, the darkest hour is just before the dawn of a new era? For it is through our schools that we will solve poverty, crime, blight, pollution, and other social ills that no amount of policing, welfare, imprisonment, abandonment, and fear ever will resolve.

Yep let’s band together and insist on better enviroment, higher standards, less multiple choice work and more critical thinking, qualified teachers and wise leaders, and let us finally rid the system of the street like thugs from the bottom up and top down. I never want to encounter again bullying and lying leaders or rabid foaming at the mouth cafeteria monitors.

I don’t feel powerless and I’m not afraid to speak out. However, I do have reason enough not to bite the hand that feeds me. I can appreciate that Ms. Wolf has done some good things, but I doubt there are many school board members who haven’t done at least one good thing for our schools, so what I am saying is there ought to be as much qualification for a school board member as there is for a medical or law board.

I hope I have made myself clear and that you can share the logic behind my thoughts.

Are you out of your mind? We’re now expected to keep our children in a dangerous enviroment, like the one I described above where a principal mentally abuses children, for the sake of staff and other children? You’re nuts. No, downtown needs to fire employees like that. If you think for one second that a child should be left with cruel abusive adults then you shouldn’t be teaching anymore.

Look my kids attend/have attended their neighborhood school but if I continue to hear anymore bull like you have been dishing out, I’ll fight for vouchers (If you look around on various threads you’ll find that I’ve been fighting against vouchers).

No child should be left ever with an abusive adult.

We live in a culture that fears crime, poverty, drugs and violence.

And no matter how highly qualified the individuals are who are running the system, no matter how highly qualified the elected officials are, facts are we will continue to battle the death-dealing inequalities of class struggle in this nation.

We are blessed to have some sincere (and some self-righteous) do-gooders who offer to help our schools out of pity or because they want tax deductions, or both.

These do-gooders, church people and just plain folk, some stalwart business leaders, seem to love to help out in our elementary schools, but once our kids hit middle and high school, these good citizens are suddenly too busy, too scared or just too tired.

We have teachers in our schools, such as you, who know the score, but who remain silent. I do not know of one single teacher in this system who HAS NOT taken money out of his or her own pocket to help a child or family.

We have teachers, such as you, who are so accustomed to feeling angry and powerless that you allow yourself to attack the parents of children with disabilities and the lone School Board member who have dared to demand change and have somehow managed to make some change happen, meager and miniscule that it is.

We have teachers who dare to speak out and who are then driven out. We have families who suffer the horrors that Gray describes who are then “moved” to another school in the hope of silencing them.

Until the “silent majority” of the not-really satisfied and the lucky ones with the money to move their kids elsewhere, decide they have had enough, that they are not going to sell their homes or pay private tuition, this is what it will continue to be.

The bottom line is the buck stops with us and open enrollment passes the buck to those who are unable or unwilling to do the same. President Truman is probably turning over in his grave.