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December 7, 2011

All of our children deserve a quality public education. That's why two bills being pushed in Lansing require our urgent action. The bills would further undermine Michigan's schools for the benefit of shady special interests.

SB 618 and SB 619 put our most basic and critical social infrastructure at risk. SB 618 is a massive expansion of charter schools, removing all caps, numbers and limits of all types of charter schools. Here in Michigan and across the country, charter schools operate with limited oversight and accountability to parents and local school boards, and this bill would make the situation far worse.

In fact, SB 618 could create a statewide school district, leaving thousands of Michigan students in schools with no local elected school board and few options for parents. Companion bill SB 619 promotes "cyber charter schools" that will result in experimental online learning opportunities with no regard to success or sustainability. Investigation into results of cyber charter schools' pilot programs have seen dramatically higher dropout rates.

Instead of working with parents and teachers to improve our public schools, these bills encourage profiteering and reckless education experiments. They would allow expansion of charter schools and cyber charter schools regardless of unqualified staff, narrow curriculum, inadequate facilities or questionable methods.

Our scarce resources shouldn't be squandered on unproven charter schools with little or no public accountability. Power struggles in Lansing resulted in deep cuts to public education, and now more than ever our elected officials need to work together to support our schools - and our children.

The risky ventures and potential for harm in SB 618 and SB 619 far outweigh any potential benefits and would further fracture our communities.

Contact your legislator TODAY. A directory of phone numbers and e-mail addresses can be found here. Click here to lookup your Representative.

In Solidarity,

Karla Swift, President
Daryl Newman, Secretary Treasurer