No seat at the table for the Charters and, Alb Journal bias

In the Journal, link, a report on yesterday's APS' Special Board Meeting, link, on charter schools.

One of the policy statements approved at the meeting;

The district reserves the right to request "any and all information from a locally authorized charter school at any time."

Journal bias;

"That was a point of contention in February when the district demanded financial statements from four charter schools and threatened to shut them down if they didn't comply. The schools initially resisted but eventually turned over the records." (emphasis added)

It reads like the charters in question were trying to hide something and "the District" backed them down. The real story reads a little differently, link.

The leadership of the APS is threatened by the relative success of charter schools and is responding by trying to assert more authority over them. It smacks of bullying.

Their disrespect for charters is manifest in their refusal to include the charters in the decision making process surrounding the development of charter school policy. They will be "included" in the process only after the process is complete;

The board approved a basic policy Wednesday, ... and will be presented to charter schools for comment in coming weeks.
Robert Baade, director of Robert F. Kennedy Charter School, said ... "They need to meet with us." ... presenting the policy to the board before consulting with charters leads to bad feelings. "

The APS Student Standards of Conduct require the meaningful involvement of stakeholders in decisions that affect their interests.

Students are told that denying stakeholders a seat at the table comes at the forfeit of their good character. The leadership of the APS, by their own deliberate choice, is not accountable to that same standard of conduct.

More Journal bias; the Journal steadfastly refuses to investigate and report upon the abdication of the leadership of the APS as role models of the student standards of conduct, and upon their removal from their own code of conduct, the phrase and requirement;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,
be lower than the standards of conduct for students.

Journal editors make that decision at the forfeit of their good character.

And one last, I recently met with a charter school principal. He complained to me that he could not get the Journal to publish any stories about the successes that his students were enjoying, while the Journal routinely does stories on the successes of students in regular APS schools.

He asked if I had any ideas about how to encourage less biased Journal coverage.

I told him, no.