TISA director Greywolf has message for lawmakers
'If you support this bill, you are taking away choice'
The director of the Taos Integrated School of the Arts (TISA) is headed to Santa Fe March 2 with a message for lawmakers: don't obliterate charter school funding.
The visit comes as Senate Bill 30 — a funding bill that would affect charter schools — comes before the Senate Finance Committee. Greywolf decided to try and get some attention by dressing as The Cat in the Hat, on the birthday of Dr. Seuss — Theodor Seuss Geisel — and make other points as well.
The following is what Greywolf is expected to read to the Senate Finance Committee regarding the bill:
"Honorable senators, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and give my opinion regarding Senator Morales’ Bill, SB 30. I am dressed today as the Cat in the Hat because today is Theodor Geisel’s birthday, the well-known author Dr. Seuss.
"Most honorable ladies and gentleman, you have before you a bill, whose part three provision contains a sentiment that Dr. Seuss, Theodor Geisel, was all too familiar with… discrimination. However, this is not a discrimination against race, but instead it is a discrimination of a historical problem here in New Mexico, it is a discrimination of urban vs. rural.
"This bill’s small schools provision component attacks, specifically, rural charter schools. This bill treats them as if they were a different entity, somehow separate from their mainstream public school counterparts. This falsehood must first be addressed, before we can clearly understand the inequity that the small schools provision of this bill supports.
"Senators, I hope you understand that charter schools are public schools, they have the same requirements, address the same populations, and are required to provide the same services as those of their mainstream schools. We are required to take the same tests. We are held to the same standards. The only difference between a mainstream school and its charter equivalent are that charters can have their status revoked if they do not fulfill the educational obligations of their students.
"Second, it is an immoral claim that charters refuse to grow or that charters are somehow able to choose their population. Senator Mimi Stewart, of the Senate Education Committee, made this false and irresponsible claim, when defending this SB 30. I would expect that Honorable Senator Stewart would have, at least, a cursory knowledge of how charter schools are structured, especially being someone that is a member of the Education Committee.
"Charters have population caps assigned to them and are not allowed to grow as Senator Stewart unreliably claimed. In addition, charter schools do not get to “hand pick” their population. Instead, charter schools are required to hold a fair and impartial lottery, and can only fill open slots. SB 30 holds an unfair standard for charter schools to uphold and penalizes charters for not growing when the system’s very constraints prevent it.
"Finally, senators, if you support this bill, you fail to recognize the difference between rural and urban centers in our state. Rural areas that hold fast to the traditions that built New Mexico will be unfairly amerced. Our rural areas do not grow as those centers of our urban brothers and sisters. Because of this, many of the charter schools in these rustic towns fall under the provision of small schools. If you support this bill, you are taking away choice, the very essence that is the charter movement. You, honorable senators, will be stealing choice away from our agrarian children in the very rural heart of New Mexico."
