Letter to the editor: Schools of Hope not the cure

Despite strident calls to veto, Gov. Rick Scott has likely signed into law the “Schools of Hope” legislation to replace failing public schools with charter schools. I don’t think anyone really believes this will help children.

We are now almost 20 years into the “education reform” agenda initiated by Jeb Bush to address the “education crisis.” An entire generation of children have been educated under the “reform” agenda and are now getting ready to send their kids to school, but we are still in crisis mode? If after all this time we still have chronically failing schools then I don’t think your reforms are very good and doubling down on them will just make them still not work twice as hard as they didn’t work before.

While the reform agenda has not been a complete failure there is little you can look at to say that there have been significant improvements in education. What the Bush reforms did accomplish was to create a political industry with deep pockets that gets what it wants from politicians.

We are not getting the schools that parents, teachers, and local school boards want, we are getting what lobbyists and political cronies want because it is profitable to them.

The good news for Clay County is that “Schools of Hope” won’t affect us. As of the last released school grades, the one single failing school in Clay IS a charter school. It’s funny that politicians will cry out about failing public schools but if you mention all the charters that have failed all you hear is crickets.

Travis Christensen

Lake Asbury