Admissions Data: the key, missing data to exposing charters

Finally, finally, finally…

The front door clear advantage awarded to charter schools by the Deformists in charge is city wide admissions. [The ejector seat advantage allows them to “counsel” ahem force out low performers.]  Charter schools can selectively admit from a disadvantaged demographic - not freely admit and act as a dictionary-definition neighborhood school.  They aren’t like a magnet school quite yet.  I like the term “privilege school” like “your attendance here isn’t a right it is a privilege.”

Here is an Alderman in Chicago who used a political moment - where UNO needed his support to obtain a zoning change - to extract a commitment that UNO would act more like a neighborhood school and less like a privilege school.  Now let’s see how it plays out.  I suspect The Friends of Juan (Rangel) was the determining admissions factor…not neighborhood address.  Joravsky won’t let this story go I’m sure.

Well, the last year hasn’t been so glorious for UNO. In February, Sun-Times reporter Dan Mihalopoulos began breaking stories showing that companies owned by the brothers of UNO’s former chief financial officer had received no-bid contracts for school construction.

With each new Mihalopoulos exposé, UNO became an embarrassment to the charter school community. Quinn temporarily suspended state funding for their projects. The Tribune wrote a critical editorial. Emanuel backed away a bit. And, ironically, Rangel agreed to let his teachers organize.

Moreover, Sposato was still on the case. Based on calls from constituents, he started to doubt that UNO was living up to its agreement to give local applicants the first stab at seats in the school. “Constituents told me they never got in even though they lived very close.”

So over the spring and summer he began asking UNO officials to meet with him. Specifically, he asked that they bring the addresses of applicants for this year’s kindergarten class so he could compare them to the addresses of the kids who got in.

"They said no problem," says Sposato. "But it took forever for them to meet."

And when they finally did show up to his office on August 16, they didn’t have the information he’d requested. “They gave me a piece of paper that said something like 45 kids out of 160 who applied came from the neighborhood,” Sposato says. “This wasn’t what I asked for or what they said they’d bring. It’s just numbers on a piece of paper. Bring me the proof. They said they’d come back for another meeting with what I wanted.”

Sposato suspects that UNO has gone back on its promise. He suspects it gerrymandered its admissions lottery to make sure that a favorite few got in.

At the very least, he vows to press on until UNO opens its books.

"It’s stall, stall, stall, stall," he says. "First they stalled before we met. Then they didn’t bring what they said they were going to bring. And now they’re stalling on another meeting. I just want to make sure they’re living up to their deal. What’s wrong with that?"