Letter: Painting CCDS as 'exclusive' is incorrect

As so many have said, it is just the consistent arrogant propoganda that CUSD hit people are hired to put out. It gets the ignorant fired up and leaves the victims scrambling to defend themselves. It creates controversy and that creates the doubt that CUSD planned on.

CCDS is a public school and is very successful. That has driven CUSD nuts. How can you be more successful than they are with less? How can you be in the black with less money? How can parents be lined up to get into your school when people are dissatisfied with CUSD? There will be an excuse to each answer and they will avoid taking responsibility for any of their problems. It's their style to do that to everyone, so don't take it personally. They hate you and they hate success. When it's all over and you get the loan, they will say they were just doing their due diligence. Then they will start all over again with some other issue. They have mismanaged to the hilt and it's always someone else's fault. We have worked our tails off at CCDS and don't intend to fall victim to a bully as David Little says. If we have to start over and not use CUSD's buildings, we will do it. Go pick on someone else, CUSD!

Let's see, you have your own psychologist, while our entire district has one for all grade levels. You have a nurse, we have health aides- parents hired to call mommy and have her pick up her child. You have your own language and speech therapist, again, we have one for the entire district. You have a librarian, we have an aide, another parent paid minimum wage to keep track of check outs. And you're not Exclusive. Everything you mentioned makes you exclusive.
You have a parent involvement requirement, we have no aides, and all the parents who would have volunteered are at the charter school.
If you don't want the moniker of exclusiveness, tell your parents to quit writing in bragging about your test scores. It's obvious why you have higher test scores.
You didn't even mention you have the ability to ultimately expel kids who don't perform.

Close charter schools and lets get back to the basics. We need to put our eggs in one basket, and watch that basket.

Don, you are an idiot. CCDS is able to provide all of these things with the same amount of money per student that CUSD is given from the state. This just goes to show how CUSD is mishandling their money while CCDS is not. CCDS is just showing how an efficient school district should be run. CUSD should come over with a pad and paper to write down the methods for running a district in the black and not in the red. Of course CUSD will say there are a million excuses why they are in the red.

Devolution of the school district is the right way to go. Let parent committees run each school, hire and fire and dump the district overhead.

Don wrote:

Let's see, you have your own psychologist, while our entire district has one for all grade levels. You have a nurse, we have health aides- parents hired to call mommy and have her pick up her child. You have your own language and speech therapist, again, we have one for the entire district. You have a librarian, we have an aide, another parent paid minimum wage to keep track of check outs. And you're not Exclusive. Everything you mentioned makes you exclusive.
You have a parent involvement requirement, we have no aides, and all the parents who would have volunteered are at the charter school.
If you don't want the moniker of exclusiveness, tell your parents to quit writing in bragging about your test scores. It's obvious why you have higher test scores.
You didn't even mention you have the ability to ultimately expel kids who don't perform.

CCDS cannot win with comments like this. First they are accused of having none of these things, now they are bad because they have them. The district does have librarians. Schools do have speech therapists and psychologists. All schools do not share one.

The negative comments just prove that America has become full of sorry azzed people that would rather champion mediocrity than cheer success. Amazing and sad how many people are happier with lowering the bar rather than giving kudos to things done well --- and CUSD is absolutely a model of that crappy attitude. While Chico and CUSD fight hard to be status quo, there are many north valley cities and school ditricts pushing ahead to become better.

I appreciate the tone of Mr. Leiker's informative response. However, much of the following comments are too adversarial and laced with frothing words. I am sure many policy makers who are chosen to represent CUSD and CCDS do not agree with or appreciate these over zealous statements. This is a battle but lets not loose site of civility. Thank you for your passion and hopefully it is well directed.

Informed Chico Citizen wrote:

Don, you are an idiot. CCDS is able to provide all of these things with the same amount of money per student that CUSD is given from the state. This just goes to show how CUSD is mishandling their money while CCDS is not. CCDS is just showing how an efficient school district should be run. CUSD should come over with a pad and paper to write down the methods for running a district in the black and not in the red. Of course CUSD will say there are a million excuses why they are in the red.

Don is an idiot. CCDS, and all the charters, are the way out of this mess. The district only looks out for themselves. CCDS is simply the best while all CUSD can do is run crummy schools into the red. You are right, all the excuses are hollow as a rotten log. Lousy teachers and unclean bathrooms. Zero support kids. Country Day all the way!

Informed Chico Citizen wrote:

Don, you are an idiot. CCDS is able to provide all of these things with the same amount of money per student that CUSD is given from the state. This just goes to show how CUSD is mishandling their money while CCDS is not. CCDS is just showing how an efficient school district should be run. CUSD should come over with a pad and paper to write down the methods for running a district in the black and not in the red. Of course CUSD will say there are a million excuses why they are in the red.

Do I have to bring out the differences in Special Needs kids and programs again...jeez I covered the differences 3 weeks ago.

Not again, are you saying that the difference between CCDS and CUSD is in the special needs students and programs, because I would like to hear the correlation in this difference when compared to the financial aspects of both school districts.

Informed Chico Citizen wrote:

Don, you are an idiot. CCDS is able to provide all of these things with the same amount of money per student that CUSD is given from the state. This just goes to show how CUSD is mishandling their money while CCDS is not. CCDS is just showing how an efficient school district should be run. CUSD should come over with a pad and paper to write down the methods for running a district in the black and not in the red. Of course CUSD will say there are a million excuses why they are in the red.

Idiot? That's how you start out talking to me calling me an idiot? You who shows by your entire entry that you have boiled the entire "problem with schools" to money management call me an idiot? You who call yourself "Informed" simply don't understand the situation. But you go right ahead, I don't have time for you.

I would like to see the average of CUSD demographics in comparison to the letter writer's given stats. Would bet my bottom dollar that the charter school's numbers are well below the district's average.

America's schools and their success are directly related to the home from which the children originate. This is not a factor that education can control. Charter schools are organized through active, literate, connected parents coming together and donating both time and money. These are not luxuries that the low income/English learner families can afford, or even access.

Don, in my opinion, is making very valid points.

Interesting wrote:

<quoted text>
CCDS cannot win with comments like this. First they are accused of having none of these things, now they are bad because they have them. The district does have librarians. Schools do have speech therapists and psychologists. All schools do not share one.

I'm trying to make sense out of what you said, but parts are vague. I never accused CUSD of having or not having anything, I was "quoting" from the letter, did you read it? My district has one speech therapist and one district psychologist-- they service the entire district and share time at each sight. My comment was about the word "exclusive" and the denial thereof. Compared to what the rest of us have, CCDS has "exclusiveness" that we don't have.

not again wrote:

<quoted text>
Do I have to bring out the differences in Special Needs kids and programs again...jeez I covered the differences 3 weeks ago.

Yes, this was covered. And so was the response. You have decided the special needs kids at CCDS do not meet your standard of special or needy enough so you discount them. As far as I am concerned you are choosing to ignore the fact that every charter school in this town is FULL of special needs kids. Stop by Blue Oak, CORE or Four Winds and pay attention to the students there. Does Shasta have enough special needs kids to suit you? Marigold? Sierra View? Do any schools?

Why is it that the only schools of worth or reality in this town are underperforming, and all of the other schools are worthless and don't count because they don't have enough special needs kids?

not again wrote:

<quoted text>
Do I have to bring out the differences in Special Needs kids and programs again...jeez I covered the differences 3 weeks ago.

I don't know how you feel about it, but these protesters aren't into this to understand. They're shouting the same lines over and over and nothing's going in. I have to deal with this all day, this emotional ranting.

Statistics wrote:

...Charter schools are organized through active, literate, connected parents coming together and donating both time and money. These are not luxuries that the low income/English learner families can afford, or even access...

This statement is completely false and willfully ignorant. This may be the case for charter schools in Chico, but not nationwide. In California many, many, many charter schools were created as big business. In San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, etc. the state shut down underperforming schools and those schools were re-opened by corporations as charter schools. Oakland Unified and San Jose Unified are over 50% charter schools. These schools are not like Chico where we have CCDS which is supposed to be an integrated thematic school, Blue Oak which is Waldorf, CORE which is homeschool, and the new Montessori charter school. They are rigid schools that use scripted curriculum to improve student performance. The schools are full of second language learners, special needs kids and have very little parent participation.

This myth that charter schools are only successful because they take the best kids is ridiculous. Lots of kids go to these schools with varying abilities. Look at the test scores for Blue Oak they are very low. There is a waiting list for almost every grade over there. CORE has scores over 800 and that school has a ton of special needs kids.

I do not have a child in a charter school but I am sick of hearing this town disparage anything successful and discount it as not a "true" school. Bull. This whole debate is ridiculous and this entire community should be outraged the school district refuses to put this grant approval on the agenda.

"10 percent from the local Barber neighborhood (who have priority) and 12 percent from Chapman and Rosedale areas."

This is the first I've heard of this. We live in the Barber neighborhood, in the Chapman attendance area, and were told our child would get no special preference and that we were to participate in the same open lottery as everyone else.

We asked repeatedly if there a neighborhood preference and were told no. We live just a few blocks from the CCDS campus.

This is such a ridiculous argument undoubtedly fostered by the CUSD staff to create an illusion of impropriety. How long did they argue that charters were the downfall of public education? How long did we hear how anyone who started a charter was foolish? Now CUSD is starting a charter high school! If they didn't see the advantage of a charter, they wouldn't do it. In fact, they are doing one on Chico High's own campus where they could have just started it as another smaller learning community. No, they recognized that the school would succeed only if it didn't have to be governed by the current district office. What will they say now?

The other thing I wanted to say is to encourage the school board to tell the district that it's okay to learn from others. Instead of spending 25 thousand on a survey, they could have hired Chico Country Day's staff to help CUSD. Maybe they could advise CUSD how to better run its schools. I will bet you they could help. Instead of CUSD evaluating CCDS, it should be the other way around. If the local district could swallow its ego and ask for help, it might actually get some benefits. They are a total disorganized mess and could benefit from some outside scrutiny. If they are going to keep the people they have, then they need to get them some training. I would recommend having the successful schools in the area help them.