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May

27

Toledo: Trouble in the charters, student arrested?


A friend of mine sent me this link and the text of a comment on DailyKos that describes, in the mother’s writing, how her son was arrested on Friday, 5/25, at Toledo’s Performing Arts School of Metropolitan Toledo (this is the website to which the Ohio Council of Community Schools links but it looks quite…non-operational; the site for OCCS hasn’t been updated for long periods of time, according to date marks on the site itself).

I’ve emailed Lisa Renee of Glass City Jungle to get her take and input on the situation, since she is always so close to this stuff. She informs me that the local media hasn’t mentioned the arrest at all and I’ve found nothing to controvert her observation.

In the meantime, the Toledo Blade reports on the unrest at the school recently here and here and another story about the school and teacher’s wanting to be paid here.

Anyone else with knowledge, feel free to comment. As I’ve written Lisa Renee, and I know it sounds a little naive, but I just can’t understand: there are students, parents and teachers who want the charters to work. Why is that so hard?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:21 pm May 27th, 2007 in Politics 

Comments

3 Responses to “Toledo: Trouble in the charters, student arrested?”

  1. 1 Lisa Renee on May 28th, 2007 12:12 am

    Jill, as I shared with you via email, I think the main problems with this school is mismanagement.
    If the school was being financially managed properly to the point where the teachers had no worries of insurance and salary this probably would have never happened. Which is a big concern with many of these charter schools. Considering that the director of OCCS got quite a nice raise in 2006, perhaps the issue is a sense of skewed priorities of funding going to them rather than to the teachers and for the benefit of the students…

  2. 2 Unique Material on May 28th, 2007 12:21 am

    Not hard, Jill. Just another lack of accountability and perhaps malfeasance.

    Per one article:

    “Two of the three governing board members resigned after The Blade reported that one of the two other partners in the management team with Mr. Baker was convicted of fraud in 1997 involving a United Way chapter he formerly headed in Washtenaw County, Michigan.”

    A convoluted sentence but from what I understand here, the honest ones left; the crooked one(s) stayed. {I think} It doesn’t say Mr. Baker was convicted of fraud, one of the two remaining partners was. {I think}

    “Ms. Perz last week estimated the school’s current debt at between $200,000 and $400,000.”

    Why should this school have a debt at all? Aren’t your charters publicly funded? Ohio not paying the bills? Or money being diverted?

    sigh. poor kids. keep digging.

  3. 3 Charter school operators steal away to Parma | Writes Like She Talks on October 19th, 2007 2:36 pm

    [...] Performing Arts School of Metropolitan Toledo has been in the news at least a few times this year. And, today, this Toledo Blade article details the latest revelations of alleged wrongdoing, [...]

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