Mac Dann Sues Another Crappy Charter School

I was going to write about this yesterday but I wanted to do a little research first. It doesn’t help anyone if I just reprint the story from the Dispatch, right?

So anyway- Dann personally drove down to Cincinnati yesterday to file a case against Harmony Community School – Cincinnati charter school – accusing them of “abject academic failure, gross financial mismanagement, ethical lapses, and what amounts to consumer fraud.”

Dann added: “During my time in office I have rarely encountered a more egregious abuse of the public trust or the public treasury.”

Wow, that sounds pretty bad.

And while I know charter school supporters will be quick to remind us that almost all of the students were black, inner-city kids and a majority of the students were receiving free or discounted lunches- but that excuse doesn’t hold up here.

Plenty of schools do well with the same same type of students. As a matter of fact, many Cincinnati PUBLIC Schools – serving the same communities – have increased graduation rates by over 30 percent while students at this charter school fail- year after year. They did it with smaller class sizes and smaller schools.

The problem with Harmony – besides the horrible management – is pretty simple: 756 students and 16 teachers. That’s a student-teacher ratio of 48:1!

Schools need to hire – and pay – enough qualified teachers to teach our children or they should be shut down.

It also seems worth mentioning that Harmoney has a long history of money and management problems.

They were evicted from their original location IN A STRIP MALL in 2001 because they didn’t pay rent- and kids were forced to attend classes at the main PUBLIC library!