What next? The John Gotti Charter for Entrepreneurship?
The latest episode of charter madness is featured in this morning’s NYT. In the Bronx the 78 year old Alfred E. Smith Vocational High School has been shut down and replaced by a charter school founded by a guy under federal charges for embezzlement of non-profits.
What next? The John Gotti Charter for Entrepreneurship?
Supporters of Smith, the Bronx’s only high school with state-approved construction trade programs, fear its technical shops will suffer under the charter school’s management and wonder why the city would eliminate an established school only to put an untested school in its place.
“What we offer disadvantaged students in the Bronx is a route to the middle class, to job security through a trade,” said René Cassanova, Smith’s principal. From a vocational standpoint, she said, the charter school “is a fake.”
