HB 165 – DL Readers, You Have Homework!

HB 165 is up for a vote in the House today.  If you are not familiar with this bill please read this post – More importantly, click on EVERY link in that post.  Those links will take you to blog posts from other bloggers fully explaining HB 165.  Lord knows, you won’t find any of these concerns in the News Journal.

So here’s your homework, CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE!  No excuses.  Just do it.  Also, contact your friends and family and have them do the same.

I’d like to return to an email Rep. Jaques sent to Elizabeth Scheinberg over at Children & Educators First blog.  This part jumped out at me:

If you took the time to read House Bill 165 you would see loads of transparency and accountability throughout. I hope you are not listen to the nay Sayers who just like to yell at the top of their voice, but most of the time don’t know what they are talking about! HB 165 has been properly vetted and has loads of support throughout the education community.

First, I know Elizabeth read the bill, and it was insulting to imply otherwise.  Second, naysayers?  “Who just like to yell at the top of their voice, but most of the time don’t know what they are talking about?” Is that what Rep. Jaques considers citizens who have concerns about HB 165?  What’s the opposite of naysayers?  Yes men?  (Yeah, that ticked me off.)

And about that “loads of support” for HB 165?  Well, Charter School advocates love this bill.  In fact, if this bill was full of compromises like Jaques implies, surely charter supporters would point out the areas they weren’t so pleased with.  Haven’t heard one complaint or concern.  In fact…

Steve Newton has the emails going out to charter parents, urging them to contact their Reps and to tell them to vote for Hb 165.  Read them.  There’s a lot of talk about money in these emails.  So much, that one would be forgiven in thinking HB 165 was a funding for charter schools bill.

Moving on… Steve rescues a comment from Citizen about the Charter Working Group which is very interesting.

This year Earl (D-Charter Schools Network) has claimed vociferously that he–NOT the Charter School work group–authored HB 165.

The problem with Earl is that he can’t keep his stories straight, as commenter Citizen aptly documents:

BTW, 2-3 wks ago when I was in email contact with Rep Jaques about the poorly worded nutritional asst. provision in HB 165, he replied at one point (in relation to my request that the federal breakfast program be explicitly included) that he would need to “check with the Charter Schls Network” about that (then he wrote back to say that yes, they planned to include b’fast & there was no need to include it in the bill!!). This was b4 the bill was publicly available.

So there was no effort to disguise who wrote this, or whose bidding Jaques is doing. 

So we have an “informal work group” that the Attorney General’s office thinks “may have been a public body.”

Go read the rest.  Especially the letter from a charter supporter. I’ll give you the first paragraph as a teaser:

Delaware charter schools pay facilities expenses out of their operating budgets, which means they have less funding for teacher salaries and classroom materials. This is unfair to my child, who attends a public school, and is from a family paying the same taxes as our neighbor, whose child attends a different kind of public school.

Follow the money.  It’s all about the money.  HB 165 is the first step in charters receiving capital funding.

Now, go do your homework.  Call your Representative!