At the recent County Board of Education meeting, the trustees were to vote on the amended MOU with Summit K2 Charter school. Trustee Elster was absent. The trustees voted 3-1 to deny the charter MOU, pending the ethnic breakdown of current 140 enrollees. The ethnic breakdown information was not readily available because the petitioner "was not returning phone calls or emails." Trustee Mirabella pointed out previous attempts to obtain this information, stating "This seems very fishy." From what I witnessed at the meeting, I agree. It looked and sounded fishy.
Regarding ethnic composition, if I understand correctly, the school has to meet certain requirements, that the composition of the school must reflect that of the geographical area of the school, not of the district as a whole. What makes things tricky is that the school cannot manipulate the selection process to favor any particular race, that they cannot be discriminatory with respect to their selection process.
With the laws of statistics, a smaller school will be subject to greater statistical variation. Is it possible the ethnic breakdown of the current 140 enrollees does not meet the requirements as evidenced by census population data for this school site? "Build a charter school and they shall come!" Or maybe not?
This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.
The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?