The Montgomery Education Foundation has applied to convert five Montgomery schools into charter schools.
Parents and citizens voiced their concerns Thursday evening at a listening session.
And they had plenty to say.
“Today the Ed Foundation, the business community, under the guise of improvement, they are assassinating public education in Montgomery!” said grandparent Rev. Willie Welch.
The Montgomery Education Foundation wants to take 5 Montgomery schools and convert them into charter schools.
The schools would have their own non-profit board, which 20 percent would be made up of parents. And it would work hand in hand with Montgomery public Schools.
“So our view was, can we be a partner in that intervention work and come along side to help accelerate, to help take a portion we can actually model and have proof points that are really the most important thing of this? Our kids can… we need to prove the possible,” said MEF Exec. Director Ann Sikes.
But there was still a lot of opposition to the plan.
“If you can do all this with a charter school, why don’t you do this with a public school?” said one person.
And there was also frustration over the lack of support for Montgomery Public schools.
“It makes no sense for the students in this one city to travel outside of the city to go to other schools to get the same treatment and not funded the same amount of respect, money, etc. and other things that we need in the system,” said Lanier student Kirk Davis.
“We should have had a meeting about common ground and see what did this community want, rather than come in and say somebody has dreamed up this and we want to talk y’all in to going along with it!” said Larry Lee.
MPS would be the authority of the charter school system and would oversee the 5 year contract.
Standing Strong for Public Education! 