SCHOOL'S...OUT...FOR...SUM-MER!

Children fold time back on itself. My oldest son just "graduated" from kindergarten, and the three months of vacation stretches out before us like the promised land or purgatory, depending on the time of day and point of view. I know that this summer will be challenging in many ways, but I still feel the excitement of summer as seen through my newly-liberated child's eyes. Thank goodness for the pool, for naps, for window air conditioners. For the chance to live childhood again, with more power and less sleep.

School is behind us but also already looming in front of us. I thought I had put the school decision behind me when I signed big boy up for his current school last March, but my commitment to that decision is a weak reed indeed. Just as I met the new principal and started feeling really excited about next year, I learned of a new charter school. It's a language immersion school - kids choose Mandarin, Russian, or French - and it's just around the corner. Wouldn't it be amazing to grow up bilingual? I've been reading studies of children from immersion schools, and they tend to do better in all subjects, not just language. If I don't send the kids there, am I depriving them of a really unique opportunity? If I do, am I scarring big boy by switching him from a school where he's already comfortable? Think they'd just let ME matriculate, as a kindergartener, so I can learn Mandarin myself?

I need to put the littles to bed. Our bedtime creeps later with the setting of the sun. If we lived in northern Alaska, the poor kids would be reduced to a 45 minute nap around midnight (but would sleep 23 hours a day in winter, now there's an idea...).

Maryland charter schools being targeted by proposed legislation

My son goes to a charter school. Charter schools are funded like public schools (and are free to students) but are independently operated. In the case of the Baltimore City Public School System, under whose umbrella our school falls, this really can only be a good thing. This is a school system that recently "lost" 50 million dollars (as in, actually misplaced), a school system that has struggled with overcrowding, decrepit facilities, high dropout rates, poor test scores, and violence in schools. The Baltimore City school system has driven families out of the city, where their only options have, until recently, been failing public schools or insanely expensive public schools. Charter schools offer an alternative to those families - to my family - and yet they have been under attack from the very beginning.

Charter schools in Maryland are only in their second year of operation. There is a court case pending already to try to force the school systems to actually fund the charter schools appropriately - right now, the charter schools are operating at several hundred to a few thousand dollars less per student than public schools in the same systems, and yet they are doing a better job educating students and keeping them safe. Now, before that case is even settled, some of our state senators are proposing legislation modification that would further reduce the charter schools' already inadequate funding.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that government doesn't support education, but I don't get the push behind flogging charter schools. I can't imagine they'd make much money if they succeed - a lot of the families currently attending charter schools would choose private schools or move to a better school district or homeschool if the charters were no longer available, so those funds would be lost to the public school system anyway. Obviously, what is best for the students and community is not the driving force, I just can't figure out what is. It's so short-sighted, putting kids last. What are we supposed to do in 20-30 years when there is a shortage of qualified professionals to take care of us and a burgeoning prison population? That may sound overly dramatic, but it seems to me that the old adage about an ounce of prevention applies here - the current system is not working well (at least here in Baltimore City), so why not try something different?

I wrote to my state senator and all the misguided sponsors and signers of the proposed legislation and all of the committee members who will be debating it this morning. If you are so inclined, you can email them too, and ask them to vote NO on SB 669:

Sponsors/signers (just add "@senate.state.md.us" to the end of each name to get the email address):
roy.dyson
gwendolyn.britt
robert.hooper
lisa.gladden

Committee members (just add "@senate.state.md.us" to the end of each name to get the email address):
joan.carter.conway
richard.colburn
janet.greenip
andrew.harris
mike.lenett
paul.pinsky
jim.rosapepe
bobby.zirkin

Fight the power, man!