Washington County in Southwest Alabama, though sparsely populated, has a long and significant history. The county has been around longer than the state of Alabama. St. Stephens, on the county’s northern border, was the Alabama territorial capital before there was officially an Alabama. Sitting atop a limestone bluff, it was a trading post and steamboat landing for cargo headed downstream to Mobile and the place where official territory business was conducted.
The county’s rich history includes the place where Aaron Burr was captured in 1807 when he was fleeing the American federal authorities. This small county may be creating another bit of important history–leading the charge to save public education.
Betsy DeVos is the current face of the charter school movement, which is bringing about the privatization of public schools. Basically, the voucher and charter school movement takes money out of a state’s education budget and provides funds to private schools that are unregulated. That would be objectionable even if these schools provide better education; however, they do not. A report from the Center on Education on Policy finds no research support for the idea that students benefit from taxpayer-funded vouchers allowing them to attend private schools.
Bill Phillis, a retired state official in Ohio and founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy follows the money. And he finds that nearly $15 billion has been diverted from public schools to charters and vouchers in Ohio.
Importantly, DeVos’ primary educational policy, the privatization of public schools through the development of voucher programs and charter schools, discriminates. A study, “Dollars to Discriminate: The (un)intended Consequences of School Vouchers,” confirms that voucher programs discriminate on the basis of religion, disability status, sexual orientation, and possibly other factors. They have the ability to exclude people they do not wish to educate.
From journalists who follow education in rural areas in Alabama we learn about a major effort in Washington County, Alabama, to stop the installation of an unwanted charter school.
In Alabama, charter schools can get permission to operate either from local school boards or the Alabama Public Charter School Commission. The school board and virtually all of the residents of Chatom, Alabama, opposed the charter school.
Despite widespread community opposition and the fact that the nonprofit National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which had a contract with the Alabama State Department of Education to review charter applications, gave the school the thumbs down, the Alabama Public Charter School Commission approved the school. The association had written that the proposed school had major problems with its curriculum and its financial plans.
The citizens of Washington County, Alabama revolted against the school for two very good reasons. First they feared that it would undermine funding for the local public schools, and they opposed the 15 percent management fee that was to be imposed on the direct costs of Woodland Prep by the problematic manger, Unity School Services of Sugarland, Texas.
Local citizens remained tenacious in their fight against the charter school, suing the charter school organization for fraudulent behavior and appealing to the Charter School Commission. Last month the community won, as the Charter School Commission, with a majority of new members, by a seven-to-one decision moved to revoke the charter application.
Hopefully, this is a step in halting this attack on public schools.
