Strickland Plans to Charter Out Education
March 21, 2009 by Andy Vogel
120 million has said to be cut for charter schools. Ohio charter schools are receiving less than $3,000 per student than public schools. According to the Ohio Alliance For Public Charter Schools‘(OAPCS) website, there are 325 charter schools in Ohio. OAPCS on goes to explain that that charter schools only revive 2/3 of what public schools make because they do not receive the funds from levees or property taxes.
One of these schools that would be deeply effected by this cut is my former high school, The Graham School. The Graham School is a charter school located off of Indianola Ave in the neighborhood of Clintonville. This school doesn’t have a sport team, less alone a field to play on. There is no school band or even lockers to store the instruments. The building was never to built for school use. It used to serve the purpose of making Xerox copies. Aside from seeing the green spray painted dragon on the side of one the buildings, no would guess that this place was or could be used as learning environment.
While it is hard to visualize 200 plus students to come together in form into a small space for classes, somehow does get done. Hallways share the same nightmare as a lot suburban schools do with a sea of students running around. On the upside, classroom sizes only get up to 20 kids, something most schools could never have.
The numbers of students is low for graham, but some of these students have literally come out of the woodwork to enroll into this school. Some of my classmates came from Buckeye Lake, Mount Sterling, Hilliard, Upper Arlington, Johnstown, Bexley, Whitehall, the list is almost endless. All of these students that went to Graham wanted a higher education.
The experience isn’t cut out for anyone. Yet, this is why certain kids go here. These is why some students look past the sports and the extracurricular activities. They want to partake in the experimental education Graham School offers. Every Tuesday and Thursday grades 9 through 11 work at unpaid internships. Sophomores and Juniors get to decide what internships they want. If they work hard, there is a possibility of getting a paid job.
Seniors must achieve a much more fulfilling goal. Each senior has to go on “Walkabout.” Walkabout is a fulltime internship that can last up to nearly six months. Students most demonstrate serious goals in order to receive this privilege. Some of these experiences can lead students out state or across the world. Some got a chance to work with children in Brazil, others got to live on there own in Europe. Few stayed home and enrolled into college classes for high school credit. These decisions were based on getting the student based on his or her career path.
Any Graham School Alumni has plenty of stories to tell. They can all tell you that none of their goals would of happened at traditional public school. They can also can be living proof that Graham has helped them get into colleges. OSU, OU, and CCAD, are just a few of the schools that have accepted students.
Cutting the funding is a fancy way of saying survival of the fittest. Charter schools do not make money off of public schools, as stated before they don’t even receive the same amount funding. They were developed for students have a higher choice in education. Before there weren’t very many choices for students. It was either pay for a private school or go to a public school. Charter schools are free private schools. Cutting the charter will cripple the choices for the youth.