Lighthouse disappoints the city
As reported in the Journal Sentinel, the Northpoint Lighthouse Charter School of Milwaukee made the decision to close three grades this month, after the city’s Charter School Review Committee moved to terminate the contract of the school.
Public charter schools are designed to be held accountable to rigorous academic standards, and the city was right in revoking the school’s charter, which did not serve its students well enough to have the privilege of serving our community. Despite the challenges around student and teacher retention for a school that will be closing at the end of the school year, it is unacceptable to close grades in the middle of the school year like this.
To be clear, this should not be taken as a criticism of the board or staff of the local school, but of the non-profit entity that contracts to provide services to the school. By Wisconsin state law, charter school boards must be independent non-profit organizations that hold the charter contract with their authorizing entity (in this case, the City of Milwaukee). Those schools and their boards may contract out certain services to other entities, the same as Milwaukee Public Schools might contract out its textbook services, or certain staffing functions such as a search committee for an open administrative position.
Given that the school’s board contracted out with Lighthouse Academies to provide functions in the school, Lighthouse Academies should now should have a responsibility to see through the work it started in Milwaukee, especially as the national organization seeks to expand and is breaking ground on a new school in Arkansas. The challenges that the school here in Milwaukee faces are real. It’s difficult to retain teachers when the school’s closing is on the horizon, and it’s compounded by the difficulty in finding substitute teachers, a problem faced by all public schools in the city.
Rather than shut down three grade levels, Lighthouse Academies should make sure that students and families are wellserved through the end of the year. The national office could do this either by staffing the building with qualified instructors or assisting the school in finding solutions to address their families’ concerns, as I believe the local school already has made a good-faith effort to do.
For our part, we have been working with a broad group in the community to ensure that Northpoint’s students and families are transitioned as well as possible. Last week, we held a school and community fair for teachers and families at the school in coordination with several area schools, including MPS. We will continue to assist the community and encourage families or teachers to reach out to us if they would like more information on schools. However, Lighthouse Academies must hold up its end of the bargain, and we call upon it to allocate resources and time to ensuring the local families have what they need through the end of the year.
Our public charter schools in Wisconsin are first and foremost concerned with providing quality options to families, and are not supportive of Lighthouse Academies’ handling of this situation. Independent charter schools continue to outpace statewide averages in academic growth, and it is that commitment to quality to which we expect to be held accountable.
Sean Roberts is executive director of Milwaukee Charter School Advocates.
GOP food fight
I admit that Marco Rubio, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are not my favorite characters. They are even less my favorite characters after having watched the Feb. 25 GOP presidential debate. Actually, it wasn’t a debate; it was like nothing so much as a food fight at a sleazy cafeteria in some badly run high school.
The Donald tosses a dollop of mashed potatoes at Cruz. It lands on his forehead, and gravy begins to ooze down toward his eyebrows. Cruz retaliates by flinging an orange peel at Trump; some of it lands on the top of his golden locks. Not to be left out, Rubio flings a plate of cauliflower at Trump. It misses. Angry, Trump tries to splash Rubio with a glass of chocolate milk. It ricochets off the podium and lands on the floor.
What does it say about our country that large numbers of its citizens want to elect one of these three men as our president? Have we, as a nation, really sunk this far? Does anybody care?
Richard Foster
Whitefish Bay