Comments on: Teachers’ union opposes charter school lawsuit

By: ed

ed — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 18:33:02 +0000

Unhappy that it has come to this, but I have to agree whole-heartedly with Ethan’s comment.

By: Liz Evans

Liz Evans — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:06:16 +0000

It’s not that the charter schools do not accept financial audits from the comptroller’s office. It is that the comptrollers office is stepping out of their traditional role of fiscal audits into the area of judging performance that is hard to swallow. Charter schools are small entities with limited resources and the new comptroller’s audits last months and create quite a strain on operations.
As shown with Enterprise charter school in Buffalo, the auditor’s report can influence charter renewals, whereas with traditional public schools, there are truly no consequences…what is accountability without consequences?

By: Carl Korn

Carl Korn — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:58:46 +0000

The charter schools named in the lawsuit collected some $45 million in public dollars last year alone—that’s money from the federal government, state aid and local property taxes. Don’t you think anyone getting public tax money should be accountable for how it’s spent? We vote on our school budgets, get property tax report cards, elect our school board members and can attend school board meetings. Every test score is reported publicly, and proof is in the Journal News’ excellent series on schools. Yet, charter school management wants a different set of rules, with no accountability. And you blame NYSUT for calling them on?

By: Ethan Edwards

Ethan Edwards — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:21:50 +0000

As a general “golden rule,” anything the teachers
union is against…is a good thing to be for.