Looks like Sisters Charter Academy of Fine Arts (SCAFA) is winding down its days.
The school will be able to stay open while it appeals to the Oregon Department of Education the Sisters School District’s decision to terminate its contract, so it’ll probably hold on through most of the rest of the school year.
The charter school board has already decided they won’t attempt to renew the charter when it expires this summer.
It’s hard to see how things could have played out another way. The charter school never had enough students to meet minimum state requirements and never showed the sponsoring Sisters School District that it could be financially viable.
Frankly, the proposals the charter school offered to demonstrate the potential for financial viability were rudimentary at best. They offered vague ideas, not a concrete course of action.
Under those circumstances, the Sisters School Board really didn’t have a choice but to terminate. They would not have been doing their duty to let things continue as they were.
But the outcome is terribly unfortunate for the families who used the school. SCAFA turned out to be a kind of alternative learning environment for many kids who didn’t — and won’t — thrive in the standard public school setting. Several parents have told me how much better things are for their child at SCAFA; they don’t know what they’ll do with it gone.
How can you not sympathize with their plight?
SCAFA got off to a rocky start. There were serious problems there, beyond the financial viability question. But after two years of floundering, SCAFA seemed to have righted the ship educationally, if not economically. As one parent put it, it was creating square holes to accommodate the square pegs — and that means everything to the parent of a square peg.
It’s too bad that it took too long and that it appears that it’s too late.
Real educational choice is important in every community, large or small. Sisters Christian Academy has provided that for some parents; homeschooling works for some families.
It’s not easy to provide. Charter schools and private academies alike have a tough row to hoe and they really need a solid business and educational plan going in to have a hope of success.
The school board did the right thing in terminating SCAFA — from an institutional standpoint, it was the only thing they could responsibly do. I know that board members regret the impact it will have on the children and teachers involved.
Sisters is poorer for the loss of the charter school, especially that small group of families whose children were thriving and now have no place to go. Nobody is better off here.
We like to think that we can make something work for everybody and sometimes we can’t. The pencil is tough and sometimes it leaves everybody whipped.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Bits & Pieces
• Mark McGwire admits to using steroids. Now there’s some breaking news...
“I wish I had never touched steroids,” McGwire said. “It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”
Well, at least we’ll never hear Keith Richards say “I wish I’d never played rock-and-roll during the heroin era.”
• Sarah Palin joins Fox News as a contributor. Didn’t see that one coming...
• From the L.A. Times: “Peter Robinson, Northern Irelands first minister, said he was giving up his post for six weeks in order to concentrate on clearing his name and on caring for his wife, Iris, (60) an influential lawmaker whose spectacular fall from grace has rocked the province’s political scene.
The revelation last week of her affair with a 19-year-old youth and allegations that she solicited secret loans to help him open a coffeehouse have left her career in ruins and put her in need of “acute psychiatric treatment,” Peter Robinson said.
She may have Tiger Woods beat...
• Never mind unemployment, terrorism, home foreclosures...
(CNN) — James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.
Oooookaaaayyy...
• Harry Reid has retired from the Senate and will take a job as a spokesman for the NAACP.
(I just made that last one up. I think...)
Jim Cornelius, Editor
“I wish I had never touched steroids,” McGwire said. “It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”
Well, at least we’ll never hear Keith Richards say “I wish I’d never played rock-and-roll during the heroin era.”
• Sarah Palin joins Fox News as a contributor. Didn’t see that one coming...
• From the L.A. Times: “Peter Robinson, Northern Irelands first minister, said he was giving up his post for six weeks in order to concentrate on clearing his name and on caring for his wife, Iris, (60) an influential lawmaker whose spectacular fall from grace has rocked the province’s political scene.
The revelation last week of her affair with a 19-year-old youth and allegations that she solicited secret loans to help him open a coffeehouse have left her career in ruins and put her in need of “acute psychiatric treatment,” Peter Robinson said.
She may have Tiger Woods beat...
• Never mind unemployment, terrorism, home foreclosures...
(CNN) — James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.
Oooookaaaayyy...
• Harry Reid has retired from the Senate and will take a job as a spokesman for the NAACP.
(I just made that last one up. I think...)
Jim Cornelius, Editor
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
The pioneer spirit
David Brooks once again puts his finger on the cultural pulse (read his column in this week’s Nugget, page 2).
Brooks examines the nation’s reaction to the foiled attempt to set off explosives on a transatlantic flight over Christmas.
Brooks notes that we’ve plowed a lot of money and technology into preventing terrorist attacks, and it seems to have worked. But we want perfection and that just ain’t possible.
... the system is bound to fail sometimes.... Brooks writes.
Resilient societies have a levelheaded understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.
“But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week. There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy. There have been demands for systemic reform — for more protocols, more layers and more review systems.
In a mature nation, President Barack Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.
When that didn’t work the official line went to the other extreme. “I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said.
I’m really mad, Johnny. But don’t worry, I’ll make it all better.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration has to be seen doing something, so it added another layer to its stage play, “Security Theater” — more baggage regulations, more in-flight restrictions.
At some point, it’s worth pointing out that it wasn’t the centralized system that stopped terrorism in this instance. As with the shoe bomber, as with the plane that went down in Shanksville, PA., it was decentralized citizen action. The plot was foiled by nonexpert civilians who had the advantage of the concrete information right in front of them — and the spirit to take the initiative.
That last bit is a critical point. I’ve just started rereading Allan W. Eckert’s “That Dark and Bloody River,” a chronicle of the half century of savage warfare that won the Ohio Valley for the new United States.
The people who struggled to make homes in that watershed lived lives of constant insecurity. Just making a living was dangerous enough — you might fell a tree on yourself, get kicked in the head by a horse or succumb to the myriad diseases for which there was nothing but folk remedies.
Add to that the militant hostility of the region’s native peoples — some of the most formidable wilderness fighters ever bred, fighting to preserve their way of life. Any day could bring terror down on a settler or a hunter and his family.
The government wasn’t much help. It was weak, distant and distracted by other things, like trying to win independence from Great Britain and then forge some kind of union. Formal military expeditions against the Ohio tribes tended to end in farce or disaster.
It was independent ranging companies led by the likes of Captain Samuel Brady or Simon Kenton that secured the frontier. That and countless unheralded individual acts of courage and fortitude.
Brooks, wordsmith that he is, calls it “decentralized citizen action.” Those frontiersmen would have likely called it gumption. Gumption might not get you through, but you sure as hell weren’t going to make it without it.
The world is a hell of a lot more complex than it was in the 1780s, and maybe that complexity — and a life of heretofore unimaginable wealth, convenience and ease — has leached a lot of the gumption out of the American bloodline. But not all of it.
There’s still plenty of room for “nonexpert civilians” with “the spirit to take the initiative” to make good things happen and to stop bad things from happening.
We see it a lot in Sisters, actually. We built our own elementary school classrooms, we help our neighbors, we band together to weather storms both physical and economic.
That’s gratifying evidence that the pioneer spirit is still alive. Let’s hope we never lose it.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
Brooks examines the nation’s reaction to the foiled attempt to set off explosives on a transatlantic flight over Christmas.
Brooks notes that we’ve plowed a lot of money and technology into preventing terrorist attacks, and it seems to have worked. But we want perfection and that just ain’t possible.
... the system is bound to fail sometimes.... Brooks writes.
Resilient societies have a levelheaded understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.
“But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week. There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy. There have been demands for systemic reform — for more protocols, more layers and more review systems.
In a mature nation, President Barack Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.
When that didn’t work the official line went to the other extreme. “I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said.
I’m really mad, Johnny. But don’t worry, I’ll make it all better.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration has to be seen doing something, so it added another layer to its stage play, “Security Theater” — more baggage regulations, more in-flight restrictions.
At some point, it’s worth pointing out that it wasn’t the centralized system that stopped terrorism in this instance. As with the shoe bomber, as with the plane that went down in Shanksville, PA., it was decentralized citizen action. The plot was foiled by nonexpert civilians who had the advantage of the concrete information right in front of them — and the spirit to take the initiative.
That last bit is a critical point. I’ve just started rereading Allan W. Eckert’s “That Dark and Bloody River,” a chronicle of the half century of savage warfare that won the Ohio Valley for the new United States.
The people who struggled to make homes in that watershed lived lives of constant insecurity. Just making a living was dangerous enough — you might fell a tree on yourself, get kicked in the head by a horse or succumb to the myriad diseases for which there was nothing but folk remedies.
Add to that the militant hostility of the region’s native peoples — some of the most formidable wilderness fighters ever bred, fighting to preserve their way of life. Any day could bring terror down on a settler or a hunter and his family.
The government wasn’t much help. It was weak, distant and distracted by other things, like trying to win independence from Great Britain and then forge some kind of union. Formal military expeditions against the Ohio tribes tended to end in farce or disaster.
It was independent ranging companies led by the likes of Captain Samuel Brady or Simon Kenton that secured the frontier. That and countless unheralded individual acts of courage and fortitude.
Brooks, wordsmith that he is, calls it “decentralized citizen action.” Those frontiersmen would have likely called it gumption. Gumption might not get you through, but you sure as hell weren’t going to make it without it.
The world is a hell of a lot more complex than it was in the 1780s, and maybe that complexity — and a life of heretofore unimaginable wealth, convenience and ease — has leached a lot of the gumption out of the American bloodline. But not all of it.
There’s still plenty of room for “nonexpert civilians” with “the spirit to take the initiative” to make good things happen and to stop bad things from happening.
We see it a lot in Sisters, actually. We built our own elementary school classrooms, we help our neighbors, we band together to weather storms both physical and economic.
That’s gratifying evidence that the pioneer spirit is still alive. Let’s hope we never lose it.
Jim Cornelius, Editor
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