Comments on: David Brennan, family give $6million to wife, daughters, granddaughters’ school, Our Lady of the Elms

By: Jill Miller Zimon

Jill Miller Zimon — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 15:49:20 +0000

Thanks, Keith. I’ll try to dredge up the PD piece on it, though, in my post-fast fog, I’m not sure – I may have already looked and just forgotten it. Memorable work it must have been.

Oops – yup – I did see it. lol

By: Remains of the Day, 9-21-07 | Writes Like She Talks

Remains of the Day, 9-21-07 | Writes Like She Talks — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:10:03 +0000

[...] David Brennan, family give $6million to wife, daughters, granddaughters’ school, Our Lady of t… [...]

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:56:34 +0000

Agreed. It would be better for all students to have greater oversight of the charter schools with an emphasis on best practices. Saw the PD finally picked up on this today. Typical PD, a day late. . .

Blessed Yom Kippur to you and your family

By: Jill Miller Zimon

Jill Miller Zimon — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:21:19 +0000

Ok! Now you’re depressing me! JUST KIDDING.

Yeah. Sigh. I do agree with what you’re saying but I hope for the best, that the people who are sincerely motivated to give kids who really do need alternatives – and we KNOW that such kids exist – can still do what they want to, to help these kids. If you’re not familiar with E-Prep, I would encourage to take a look at it online. It’s definitely a success story, a not for profit that holds itself to very, very high standards.

What I would like to see (ha ha, I know you’re going to say!!) is the state take the best practices of the charter schools that are doing the best with kids (meaning, kids are happy, families are happy, employers are happy with the grads, teachers etc. are happy) and make those the absolute minimums that charters must meet.

Might have to wait for a change in the Ohio Legislature to at least one house being Dem majority, but I do think the idea of charters is salvageable. All in the implementation.

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:16:43 +0000

PS Chardon is beautiful in the fall. Before that 125 inches of snow falls.

By: Keith

Keith — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:16:10 +0000

Oh absolutely I agree with you. I didn’t support charter schools in Ohio and I still don’t simply because the whole system was set up to be gamed by people like Brennan. The whole idea seemed to be to let the free market cowboys loose to do exactly what they have done. Of course you have some charter schools run by people who didn’t start with state dollar reimbursements dancing in their heads and to those people I wish well. The problem is, as you know, in Ohio all is politics and all politics is who gets paid.

The whole idea of the kind of oversight you and I would have wanted to see was fought from the beginning by the right because they claimed it would hamstring innovation. And nonprofit? What are you, some kind of socialist? (: I kid, but you know what I mean. The predominate zeitgeist hates nonprofit nowadays.

We can dream, can’t we?

By: Jill Miller Zimon

Jill Miller Zimon — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:21:56 +0000

Hey Keith – thanks for reading and the comment. You’re reminding me that I should drive out on a beautiful fall day to Chardon and check out a new bookstore I’ve heard about.

Seriously – what do you think of charters? My opinion has been that done properly, charters could be great niche alternative schools, but I want them to be nonprofit and want the oversight to be much much more regular and coordinated.

You?

By: Keith

Keith — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:39:20 +0000

“Through his donation, Brennan proves he knows the value of investing real money into education. The question is: why can’t he do the same for his own schools?”

Because. . . he . . . doesn’t. . . really. . . CARE! Students at White Hat are profit units. The ones in the Catholic schools are the ones he and his wife most likely consider ‘the future’ and therefore are the real benefactors of his personal largess. People like Brennan make me ill and nothing will ever happen to his little scam because of all the legislators he pays off in Columbus. Grrr.