Peace & Justice

This is the blog of the Commission on Peace and Justice for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Do charter school undermine parochial schools?

Scott Waldman of the Times Union reported this morning on a draft report by Abe Lackman, the former head of the Coalition of Independent Colleges and Universities and, before that, the Senate GOP’s point man on budget negotiations, who claims in a draft report that charter schools in Albany have undermined parochial schools:
"We’ve wound up replacing a good system with a system that is inferior, and it’s cost the taxpayer a good deal of money," he said Monday.

For every charter school that has opened in New York in the past decade, a parochial school has closed, Lackman states in the report that will be published next month in the Albany Law Review.

In Albany, the drop has been precipitous and has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and wiped out "good schools" along the way, the report states.

Albany’s parochial schools have lost a staggering 65 percent of their enrollment, double the statewide average. In 1998, before charters were introduced, Albany had seven Catholic elementary schools and a high school with 1,812 students. By the 2011-12 school year, four elementary schools had closed and enrollment plummeted to 575. At the city’s only parochial high school, Bishop Maginn, enrollment declined for years. Annual tuition is about $6,000.
You can read more here.

Labels: , ,