Monday, January 9, 2012
Herenton Charter Applications Get Slow Walked
Posted by John Branston on Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 11:34 AM
"I am waiting to receive whatever questions the state treasurer is going to raise," Herenton said Monday. "I assume we will get them today. I am curious to know the questions."
In October, the unified city and county school board denied applications for 17 new charter schools, including several from Herenton and his partners Harmony Public Schools and the Cosmos Foundation. Herenton's group wants to start seven schools in Memphis in 2012 and two more in Shelby County outside of Memphis in 2013.
His fate as an educator is now in the hands of state officials in Nashville, including Treasurer David Lillard, a former Republican member of the Shelby County Commission. As Jane Roberts wrote in The Commercial Appeal Monday, Lillard may have follow-up questions once the responses are received.
"This could go back and forth for a awhile," state spokesman Blake Fontenay told Roberts.
I bet it could.
Fontenay is a former CA reporter and commenter who covered the mayor and City Hall during Herenton's tempestuous last two terms. Herenton and Fontenay were not mutual admirers.
The rejection of the applications in October combined with the delay that could last several more weeks means it is unlikely that applicants will be able to recruit students and secure buildings in time to open in August.
That's too bad because Herenton deserves a shot. To suggest he is not as qualified as any of the current charter school operators is absurd. He attended city schools, graduated from one of them, taught in them, and was a principal, superintendent, and mayor. He may have been unpopular in his last two mayoral terms, but many a fallen urban school superintendent, football coach, or politician has picked up the pieces and moved on to a second, third, or fourth act. The former school officials from Chattanooga and Charlotte who met with the Transition Planning Team admitted as much.
I don't think he is doing this for the money. He has two pensions that pay him more than his former mayoral salary.
Is he a front for Texas-based Harmony Schools and the Cosmos Foundation? Probably in a way he is. But every charter school in Memphis that I have seen has a hidden hand behind it. Applicants should be accepted or rejected on the merits of their proposals and their track records.
Memphis has the majority of the charter schools in Tennessee, and the largest number of poor children and failing schools. State funding follows students who transfer to charter schools. School boards can reject charter school applications because the loss of state funding imposes a financial hardship. In that case, why have any charter schools? And why merge the city and county school systems, which could result in the loss of thousands of students in 2013 to flight or establishment of separate suburban school systems?
We have fought those wars and made those decisions. The deregulation door has been opened. Everyone is a school reform advocate now. The question is whose idea of reform? Herenton and the other charter applicants deserve a response, yes or no, on the merits. It's probably too late for 2012, but some of them could be in the mix in 2013, the Year of the Big Change.
I would like to see Herenton in the picture, assuming his team can recruit enough students, staff, and suitable buildings, which charter school veterans tell me is a lot harder than you might think. There are few if any universally popular school figures. Michelle Rhee, Kriner Cash, David Pickler, Teach For America, KIPP schools — all have their fans and foes.
My Herenton bias comes partly from personal experience. In the 1970s I taught for three years in an alternative school in Nashville for kids who weren't cutting it. I was, like the current TFA corps, earnest but young and inexperienced. Such modest success as I had was due to small class sizes and a dozen paperback copies of a book called "Manchild in the Promised Land" by Claude Brown that we read aloud, often painfully slow at a rate of five or ten minutes a page, week after week to teach remedial reading. It was about growing up tough and dirty in Harlem, and it spoke to many of my students in a way I could not. I would not have lasted a year under the current teaching standards, but several students learned to read at a sixth or seventh-grade level thanks to Claude Brown. Herenton has lived that story, and I think he can reach some urban students who are not making it in the present system.
Comments (31)
Showing 1-31 of 31
If nothing else, Dr. Herenton will make for a lot more news stories than the average charter school director. If it's not for the money, I wonder if that's why he's doing it? I'm betting on the money motive myself.
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dislike
Herenton does not have an altruistic bone in his body. He is a megalomaniac simply looking to fatten his, as well as his cronies' wallets, while seeing his name in the news again.
Since when has enough money ever been enough? He's being paid handsomely to be the Memphis face for this group, no doubt with plenty of promises that he could walk this to the head of the line due to his local connections. That's what they pay the big bucks for.
Herenton used up the last of his chances when he was mayor.
Herenton is without a doubt part of the tools of the Gulen Movement. Does Tennessee REALLY want to mingle with a Foundation that was subject of a NY Times investigative article? I guarantee you, Herenton was paid a whole lot of dough to be a talking head for Hizmet. There is a special place for Herenton, with other Gulen Politicians.
http://www.gulenpoliticians.blogspot.com
What is it about Mayor Herenton that intimidates people so much? Oh- I know. Personally, I am hoping Dr. Herenton will get his schools assimilated- and he will have NO problem acquiring excellent Instructors to make a difference in these children's lives. I will be one of the first in line. Keep striving, Dr. Herenton. You will prevail, because we want our children to prevail.
anderfire1,
You might consider substituting the word infuriates for intimidates. I doubt he's intimidated anyone since his Golden Glove days.
Anderfire1, this is what I am talking about. You express your honest opinion about an article and you do not get one like. The other posters that posted negative opinions and/or facts, based on no evidence, get all likes. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Well, I grew up with Willie, attended the same school, he stayed about 10 blocks from me. During the years that we grew up, attended school together, I never liked him. I still, personally, don't like him. But I have personal, intimate knowledge of him, during his formative years, these other posters with the dislikes know nothing, personally of the man.
Even with me not personally liking him, I will give him his due. He has a doctorate from Southern Illinois University, has been the supt. of a very large urban school system. His qualifications far exceeds any of the charter school operators in Memphis. Why was he denied, and why is the state foot dragging on his application? If the state keep dragging its foot and eventually turn him down, they are asking for trouble. He will get his charter schools, either through the state or in federal court. The state will then be out of more money.
This is an issue that I have constantly brought up. The suburban people of Shelby County has a bias against Memphis and its residents. The saying of, let's work together to them, means if you do as I want, we will work together. It does not matter what is fair or not.
Give Willie his shot, based strictly on his qualifications, as you have done for others. If he fails, he fails; or maybe, just maybe, you are afraid that he will succeed.
Why in the world would anyone give Willie Herenton any authority to do anything? All he cares about is his ego and what WW will get out of any venture. If he cared about our school children, he would have acted differently in his years as the destroyer of the MCS. I have no doubt that money is not his objective, only self-service.
OTP - I've known many very worthy people who in their declining years I would not trust with the keys to a car. Past greatness is erased by recent idiocy, as Herenton showed in his last years as mayor. Just because once upon a time he was capable doesn't mean he is capable today.
For example, what are these kids going to do when Herenton quits halfway through the spring semester?
Like I said, he used up his last chances. Give someone else a chance. His day is over.
Sorry, but screw Herenton and anything with which his sorry, racist, do-nothing name is associated.
He is the worst thing to happen to this city since the Yellow Fever Epidemic. I wish this endeavor as well as anything he will ever do nothing but failure.
Give the poor guy a break. He's only looking for a hot principal to schtoop.
Chris in midtown, since the yellow fever epidemic? What about Boss Crump? Alcoholic, Wyeth Chandler and, of course, high school graduate, Dick Hackett? Just asking?
Herrenton deserves a shot based on his qualifications. The job he did as mayor can't be justified by your personal belief that he was bad. To be mayor, one has to be elected. Herrenton got the majority of votes casts in every election. If the majority kept electing him, that is what it is all about. Political office is not about perceived competency, but about the will of the voters.
By the way, after the yellow fever epidemic, Memphis was bankrupt, that is, until a black man, Robert Church loaned them the money and saved the city financially. His reward; he summarily got ran out of the city, by the very whites that he saved. That is about what I think of your viewpoints on Herrenton or any other african american political leader in Memphis.
Have a nice day!
Chris in midtown, I forget to mention the most obvious racist that was mayor, Henry Loeb. I know about him personally, some of my family and friends worked for him in his Laundry and restaurants.
Read your memphis history.
Henry Loeb didn't have the laundry chain. His brother Bill did,and equally pleasant individual. One was tall and intimidating, the other in a wheelchair.
One's educational degrees or popularity with the voters shouldn't take precedence with the voters over their corruptions and failures in office. As true with Herrenton as it was with Henry Loeb.
Indeed, I always thought Herrenton was some kinda cosmic payback for Loeb.
Loeb was the worst mayor in Memphis history, bar none. He was exactly the wrong man at the wrong time. (to give an example of his short-sightedness unrelated to race, he was in favor of "refurbishing" Crump Stadium and against building Memphis Memorial Stadium (now the LIberty Bowl). His pigheadedness as regards to the sanitation strike is well-documented.
If Herenton had quit after 2 or even 3 terms, he would have been thought of much better. His ego and hubris wouldn't let him, though. So his legacy is much much worse than it would have been otherwise. He did some good and positive things, but his last 2 terms were a case study in atrocious public leadership.
Cracked on Loeb: http://www.cracked.com/article/89_the-6-mo…
"Political office is not about perceived competency, but about the will of the voters."
Your point is taken; however, the fact that someone was elected (repeatedly) only speaks to popularity, and competence and actual performance are something else entirely. Witness, HItler (elected) Tammany (elected-for decades), Loeb, (elected), Ray Blanton (elected), George W. Bush (selected, then elected). Etc.
Packrat, well taken. I totally agree with you. But, let us not equate competency with being elected and then compare it to operating a charter school.
Listen, I don't like Willie, never have, and I know more personal things about him than most of you know. By the rules listed for operating a charter school, in the state of Tennessee, he is well qualified. So, give him his shot. He will have 2 years to improve his students, just like everyone else have.
Until we learn how to put personal feelings and one upsmanship aside, we will not, as a county progress.
Poor Willie; he is, and always was, a dupe of the white power structure. He reached his level of incompetence as MCS honcho, but when he couldn't keep his pen out of the company inkwell he became the ruling (i.e., white) class's useful idiot for the next umpteen years, trading his self-respect (and the electorate's trust) for the proverbial mess of pottage (i.e., having his pockets lined with all manner of special "deals"), all the while successfully fooling black voters into believing that he was one of theirs (and re-electing him), while continuing to do the bidding of his white overlords.
Many black folks rushed (and even now continue to do so) to Willie's defense, clinging to the illusion he benefited them (he had to, right?--he was, after all, black, like them), much the same way many blacks rush to Obama's defense, in spite of all the evidence that contradicts their fantastic belief either of these hacks act(ed) in their best interests. And, of course, they justify this defense by resorting to claims of racism, even though much of the criticism, in both cases, has come from members of their own race.
Willie is qualified to lead a charter school, I agree. There seems to be some issues with the group backing him, however.
M_Awesomeburg,
Willie Herenton most certainly equals hack by any measure, but the 44th POTUS...are you kidding me? He may not be the reincarnation of FDR that many of his want-to-be "white overlords" desire, but he certainly does not deserve to be called a political hack.
I say Kennedy-esque or Regan-esque, but absolutely not Wilie-esque!!
It's nigh on impossible to get elected to high office in this country, much less POTUS, without making deals with the devil, Wall St., etc. Now Wall Street seems to have their boy as the putative nominee for the GOP, so you can expect Obama to get much less from that quarter than he did last time.
realistically, Obama is/was a slightly left of center corporate shill. He instituted a health care plan that was actually a Heritage Foundation idea that conservatives once promoted as an alternative to government run single payer, and then the Right took a hard right turn in response and denounced what they had previously promoted b/c Obama co-opted it.
It's Auburn vs. Alabama, folks.
Pack - Wall Street will only back Mitt a certain amount until they're certain he can beat Obama, which he can't, barring the revelation of Obama's Kenyan birth certificate.
And it's not Auburn v. Alabama. That, at least, is an actual contest.
Politics is Jerry Lawler v. Austin Idol.
Politics is Ma and Pa Kettle after shock treatment and a hit of Monterey Purple.
lawler vs. Idol is entertainment, Jeff, Auburn VS Bama is real, true, pure hate. That's what we have now in politics. Real hate.
Packrat - only at the precinct level. Everything else is scripted.
So it's more like the BCS...scripted/co-opted/brokered so as to keep the powers that be in power
Simply put, if anyone deserves to open a charter schools, it's the former Mayor.
My problem is that I believe Charter schools are just another way to privatize public goods and suck the money out for sheer profit. They are not good for public education or education in general. They inflate and over-estimate their supposed successes, and they are a negative, not a positive, in the long term.
Just my .02.
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