Duane Tron: A letter to (his former student) Congressman Jim Jordan re: charter schools

From Duane Tron, March 14, 2008
Subject: The charter school stench continues in Florida!

Congressman,

This is the kind of garbage you and other charter school advocates are promoting. This is disgraceful and most charter schools are a disgrace. Why? You can't replace schools where teachers and the community care about their children with a privatized system that promotes profit and greed. This will not foster or perpetuate education at its finest. I have spent many years working with at-risk inner-city children and they can be taught, and they can learn, in a nurturing and caring environment. There is a big difference between programs such as the one I help operate where we care about the kids, and the community, and the for-profit charter school garbage dumps you and others are promoting!

I have been following charter schools and vouchers closely and have determined they aren't about "true" educational choice. They are about people like your friend, David Brennan, fleecing the American people and trying to do it under the banner of better education. I haven't visited or observed a single charter school in Ohio that is better than the worst public school.

You tout the ideals of fiscal responsibility and protecting taxpayer dollars and then you promote a bunch of worthless schools that have one purpose and that is to rip off the taxpayers and deliver shoddy programs. I told you before I have the real answer to fixing education in this country and you just keep going down the narrow path of limited vision.

This means one of two things. The first is you don't really care about quality education and you are a supporter of corporate schools that are motivated by greed and profit motives as opposed to caring about children. Or secondly, it means you really lack a true grasp of what constitutes quality education. Since I have known you since you were a little kid I sure hope it's the second one but that doesn't speak well of your qualifications to be serving in Congress.

Nobody detests the OEA more than me. I know they have been one of the biggest obstacles to quality education in many schools across Ohio. They are bad news as they have never placed the welfare of our children ahead of their personal greed and power issues. On the other hand It is very bad on your part to engage in a strategy where you throw the baby out with the bath water and this is what you have been doing. Taking local control of schools away from the people is not the answer and is counter to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. If the OEA is the problem, and we both know they are, then take on the OEA and address the issues by diminishing their power but don't do it by destroying local schools.

Read the following article as it really points to the issues I am speaking to. I haven't heard from you in quite some time. I guess once you get up on the "Hill" you don't have time for ordinary people like myself. I have to go in and have a heart catheterization as I have some heart issues that need repair. I have been experiencing some heart problems for some time. At least I still have a heart unlike some politicians we elect to office and they forget where they came from! My heart may quit on me but it will be because of a physical and age issue and not because of the loss of my spirit and soul!

Sincerely,
Duane Tron
St. Paris, OH 43072

Source: Schools Matter
http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/index.html

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
School Choice or Schools Cheap?

If the school privatization mob could sink to a more morally bankrupt position, I don't know what it could be. For years conservatives who don't give a rat's patootie for the plight of the poor or the brown have disingenuously argued that poor parents should be given a choice of good schools just like the parents who can afford private schools.

That kind of cynical abuse of social sentiment just got exposed once more in Florida, as legislators of both parties try to finagle a way to give corporations huge tax credits for money they funnel through non-profit charters that, then, hand over cheap vouchers to poor families, vouchers that actually represent a reduction from what the State now spends in the public schools for these same children.

It's not called vouchers anymore because the Florida Supreme Court ruled those unconstitutional. How about corporate tax credit scholarships? I am wondering if Florida taxpayers want to assure that the obscene profits by McGraw-Hill and Pearson go untaxed, profits that both companies have extracted from the blood, sweat, and tears of the state's children and teachers. And what kind of scholarships are being offered? The 20 to 30K needed to enroll in a good private school? No, no, we are talking about $3,750 for a cheap charter school with poorly paid teachers who have been certified through ABCTE. Yes, Jeb Bush made sure that ABCTE would have a big footprint in Florida's brave new world of corporate socialist schools.

Here is a clip from the Bradenton Herald:

. . . ."It's going to be really difficult for us to support any expansion in corporate vouchers in an environment where the Legislature and state are having trouble properly financing schools," said Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the Florida Education Association.

State lawmakers already are poised to cut more than $300 million from education early this month, and more cuts could come by May. Gaetz, however, counters that vouchers could wind up saving the state money - a point echoed in a 2007 analysis done by the Collins Center for Public Policy. The argument is that it's cheaper to hand out a $3,750 private-school voucher than have the state pay $7,000 for each student in a public school.

Pudlow, however, said certain school expenses will continue no matter the size of a classes.

"The school is going to still be there, the lights will still be on and the buses will still roll," he said.

Corporations earn a credit on their state income-tax bills if they provide money to organizations that provide a voucher. Only children who qualify for reduced-price or free lunches are eligible for what are called corporate tax credit scholarships. . . .
Posted by Jim Horn