![]() What happens at the Santa Clara County Board of Education meeting on Wednesday night will tell a story of how quickly the revolution is coming. Students and staff are working very hard on raising achievement to new heights. Rocketship built the two-story school in record time for its grand opening. Rocketship Mosaic, approved by the Franklin-McKinley Board of Education, opened to huge fanfare and support from the community in September of this year. Rocketship Mateo Sheedy School was approved on appeal by the SCCOE shortly after SJUSD’s denial in 2005. It was in 2005 that the SJUSD Board turned down a request for Mateo Sheedy, the first Rocketship school ever. 17, 2011: “The (SJUSD) Board of Education grant the Charter School Petitions to form ‘Rocketship in SJUSD’ Charter School for a term of five (5) years, beginning July 1, 2012.” More evidence that things have changed for the better is San Jose Unified District’s recommendation on the agenda for Nov. It’s a very good thing to have a large group of parents working to change systems that have not been as responsive to the needs of underserved students, as they should have been decades ago. The parents plan to advocate for the quality of their children’s education. For example, Rocketship told me to plan for over 600 parents and students at our meeting Wednesday. I take what is happening in Santa Clara County-in relation to district schools, public charter schools and student achievement-as evidence that things are changing for the good on behalf of underserved students. ![]() However, during the first vote in 2009, on the same schools, the SCCOE Superintendent/staff recommended approval. The recommendation by County Superintendent Charles Weis and staff is to deny the petitions for Rocketship 6-8. In fact, there was hardly a whimper from the traditional educational community about the SCCOE Board’s approval of five countywide Rocketships. It’s peculiar that no such letter was written before or after we approved the original five Rocketship Countywide Charters in 2009. ![]() We further urge the County Board to deny the charter petitions for Rocketship 6, 7, and 8 as they fail to meet the requirements of law for countywide charters.” … The undersigned school districts urge the County Board to comply with all legal requirements when considering the Rocketship countywide charter petitions. The draft letter, which I lifted from a board packet from Santa Clara Unified School District, reads: “We believe both the Guidelines and the Rocketship petitions themselves fail to satisfy statutory requirements as well as the spirit of the Charter Schools Act, and we urge the County Board to deny the charter petitions accordingly. Six district superintendents are in the process of signing a letter that was drafted by the law firm Dannis Woliver Kelley. If all receive approval, Rocketship will have 28 total charter schools in the county and approximately 15,000 K-5 grade students. Their approval was withdrawn by Rocketship on a technicality, so that each school can be voted on again in order to have their own State Independent County School District # (CSD #) for accountability and funding purposes.Īlso on Wednesday’s agenda, the county board will hold a mandatory public hearing on 20 additional Rocketship Countywide Charter Schools to open in San Jose and Santa Clara County over the next four years. These three schools and two others were part of the original five countywide charter schools approved by the SCCOE Board in 2009. These votes are listed on the SCCOE Board agenda as Action Items 9A-9C. Rocketship 6 would open in Alum Rock Union School District, while Rocketship 7 and 8 would be in San Jose Unified School District. 16, sometime after 6:30pm, the SCCOE Board of Trustees will vote on petitions to authorize (or not) Rocketship Schools 6, 7, and 8-all potentially opening in August 2012. We will know answers to some of these questions after the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) board meeting this week. Will innovative means of learning be the norm? Is the timing right for a revolution in our public school system in Santa Clara County? Will the status quo prevail? Or, can change be the only constant now? I wonder if the growing presence of high quality charter schools in Santa Clara County will serve as the revolution for eliminating the achievement gap. It all appears to be part of a pattern of tumultuous change to institutions that were remarkably stable for so long, for good or ill. The Arab Spring, the European monetary systems in Greece and Italy in flux, and here in America, the increasing shift to charter schools to enhance education. ![]() The rapid change in economic, political and education systems around the world has accelerated to hyper speed.
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