I have a problem with the elitist style in which you make children feel as if they are not good enough to receive an education at this public institution. As an actor, mother, and teaching artist I will make my voice heard. As a tax paying citizen and artist I’m calling you and Don Harris out (policy not made by you). If too many incoming 6th graders are applying for the school then decisions should be made by lottery. Yes they have to apply and audition and yes in the real world rejection happens on a daily basis I know this first hand being in the business myself. So tell me how does it feel to play GOD with a huge group of impressionable young children? How does it feel, or maybe you haven’t considered, that you and Harris have the power to decide which children are worthy of studying at OSA and which are not. How do you sleep at night knowing you’re responsible for the educational future of so many kids? It’s just business, right? The talented tenth, right? Well now that I’ve opened up a dialogue I hope you sleep less at night pondering the future of our youth. Oh by the way, do you have any of your own kids? If you do how would you like one or two people to decide if they were worthy of a PUBLIC education.

Peace Love Theater
For The Children

Natasha E Noel

http://www.sfgate.com/columns/williesworld/

Sunday, April 26

They’re still letting me in to Oakland, even after last week’s comment about the wine. While I was there I spotted Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn and Tosca’s Jeannette Etheredge, strolling into the Oakland School for the Arts.

I investigated further and found Penn acting as professor to students who were responding as if they were watching Susan Boyle and Simon Cowell exchanging expressions of appreciation.

That school is one of Jerry Brown’s finest achievements from his years as mayor. I would love to have that institution in our city.

[In response to this item, the Chron received many letters pointing out that San Francisco has a successful School of the Arts after which Oakland School for the Arts is modeled -- including from me and my co-SFSOTA PTSA president, and from the SFSOTA principal. It printed two of the letters.]

Sunday, May 3

Item A: Got a call from one very ticked-off backer of the San Francisco School of the Arts – my wife, Blanche.

Like all the others who have let me have it the last few days, Blanche was upset that I wrote last week regarding Oakland’s School for the Arts, “I would love to have that institution in our city.”

“You obviously are slipping,” Blanche said. “We have a School of the Arts.”

I said, I know that, Blanche.

Obviously, my writing missed the point. What I meant to say was that no one has pushed – at least to my knowledge – to advertise our school and tell the world that it is as glamorous or attractive as Oakland’s.

The good word is that they are trying to raise the money to bring the school to the Civic Center area where it belongs.
Item B:

The SF Jazz Gala at the Four Seasons the other night was quite the party, with elevated seating, incredible lighting, wonderful sound and a group of teenage players who had McCoy Tyner tapping in time.

This gala is definitely on its way to becoming an annual San Francisco must. Hooray for Robert Mailer Anderson, the man responsible for bringing it all together.
Here is my letter to Willie Brown (not intended for publication as a letter to the editor) in response to this week’s column items:

Dear Mayor Brown — thank you for clarifying your comment about SFSOTA. And also thank you for plugging the teen jazz musicians at the Four Seasons gala — the SFJazz High School All-Stars. The group you heard includes three student musicians from San Francisco School of the Arts, all soloists in the ensemble (Natalie Cressman, trombone; Rachel Woods-Robinson, trombone; and my son Will Rubenstein, trumpet). They follow numerous SFSOTA student jazz musicians who have been admitted by audition to the SFJazz High School All-Stars over the years. There has never been an Oakland School for the Arts student in the SFJazz High School All-Stars, just for the record.

I’m very familiar with Oakland School for the Arts, whose growth I’ve followed since its founding. While I am a critic of charter schools largely because of their union-busting intent (this is the heart of the charter movement), I agree with a friend who’s a parent there and says, “Oakland really needs a school like this.” But a few points:

– OSA is still a new, struggling school. It has been badly troubled since its founding in many ways, and many agree that it would never even have survived — let alone achieved its high-profile new location — without the relentless commitment and involvement of Jerry Brown.
– OSA gets a huge amount of private money, again directly and solely thanks to Jerry Brown. SFSOTA has no comparable income stream from private donors.
– The “glamour” and “attractiveness” you attribute to OSA are brand-new and due to its new location in the restored Fox. Until a couple of months ago, it was located in portable classrooms and tents in the parking lot of the Fox, surrounded by construction equipment.
– OSA’s principal is the longtime former principal of SFSOTA, Donn Harris, wooed away directly by Jerry Brown — who has long struggled with rapid turnover of administrators and teachers at OSA. I know that Donn began working to bring an AP (Advanced Placement) class to OSA for the first time. One OSA parent told me it’s not the kind of school where students want AP classes, so she questioned how well that would do. By contrast, SFSOTA has a thriving AP program in multiple subjects. That gives you a picture of the contrast between the two schools.�

It was a great achievement for OSA when it moved into its new home at the Fox (Phil Tagami also gets major credit, along with J. Brown), and of course the Sean Penn fundraiser was a fantastic PR and income-generating coup. (I’m not sure how Penn would feel if he understood the extent to which the charter-school movement is based on eliminating teachers’ unions, but that’s another story.) But your idea that OSA is a stronger or more “glamorous and attractive” school that SOTA should envy is still not fully based in reality.

Thank you very much for your attention to this, and please thank Mrs. Brown for her advocacy! We’ll send you a schedule of SFSOTA’s performances for the rest of the school year; we hope you can attend one or more. Please share it with Mrs. Brown. — Caroline Grannan, parent of Will Rubenstein (SOTA class of 2009/trumpet student; Oberlin Conservatory class of 2013) and Anna Rubenstein (SOTA class of 2012/trombone student)
�

But one point is that there’s truly no evidence that charter schools are peeling off the best teachers and leaving the true public schools with the dregs. Teacher turnover is blinding at some of the most-vaunted charters, especially KIPP, because they place such crushing demands on their teachers.

Also, of course, lots of factions love the fact that charter school teachers have no job security — that’s one of the basic principles behind charter schools. But teachers don’t love that at all; it’s not a desirable workplace environment.

http://www.examiner.com/x-356-SF-Education-Examiner

And first order of business is survival and growth. If they lie all the time to do it, not a problem. the families who send their kids to the charters know the truth anyway, that’s why they go there.

The Charters are what the public schools should have done for themselves. Segregated campuses and programs where real learning and progress occurs and where failures and troublemakers are not welcome.

Schools for damaged goods kids should exist and the publics should create them and fill them. We used to call them Reform Schools and Home for Wayward Girls. That sort of thing. We should have kept them and kept the clear-as-a-bell names for them also. I’d rather have a school named The Oakland USD Reform School than Martin Luther King High. Locking gates, metal detectors and all.

– That doesn’t solve the primary problems of U.S. public education, because it’s the children from families in what Sharon Higgins calls the Incarcerated Class (or Elijah Anderson calls “street” vs. “decent”) who pose the true challenge. If traditional public schools could serve only the “deserving poor,” things would be lots easier for them too.

– The charter world does not honestly acknowledge that they are serving only the “deserving poor.” In fact, here’s the typical conversation I have about it (you just demonstrated it in real time):

Me: Charter schools screen out the most troubled and challenging students.
Charter advocate: That’s not true.
Me: (explains why it is true.)
Charter advocate: “What’s wrong with screening out the most troubled and challenging students?”

This exact same conversation happens pretty much every time I get in a discussion with charter advocates.

– Charters are showered with money, support, gushing press and other acclaim (despite the fact that their actual achievement is overall no better than non-charter schools’) based on the widespread belief that charters ARE serving the full spectrum of kids, not just the “deserving poor.” For those who deny that charters are showered with money — ahem; note the subject of this very post.

The charter world of course promotes the belief (hat they are serving more than just the “deserving poor.” Yet, as you implicitly acknowledge, that’s a misstatement (for short, we can call it a “lie”). Obviously, it harms other schools when charters get all this money, support, acclaim etc. based on a lie.

So, those are some things that are wrong with charters’ limiting their energy to the “deserving” poor.