Out of nowhere the MinEdu aired his plan to clump all Public Schools here under a foundation’s umbrella, an arrangement similar to that of the Catholic Schools and the Protestant Schools, who are separately governed by mostly-dysfunctional boards.
I thought Public Schools are here to serve the public and should offer a decent education to all. Is it constitutionally possible to abolish Public Schooling?
CONS:
Absolutely ZERO savings: GOA pays for everything anyway, teacher salaries, books and supplies, and though parents could and should participate symbolically, they DON’T most of the time. The maneuver will incur added legal costs for the new Stichting structure, new headquarters, secretaries, coffee makers, copiers, the works.
Diminished control: There will be no oversight on expenses, or control over the quality of instruction. No room for outside, impartial inspection.
Exclusions: The schoolboard may decide not to enroll kids based on their shaky immigration status, their different religion, or below norm cognitive level and/or behavioral difficulties. Then what? We’re face by tragic inequities in the island’ education system.
Job Insecurity, and that is the main point: My friends who teach in the Public-School system are visibly shaken and upset, as the MinEdu is threatening their legal status. As teachers they are government employees, occupying well-protected and regulated job. Under the foundation umbrella, they would be at the mercy of the board. This is a REAL source of concern to almost 1,000 bread-winners. OK, some of them deserve to be shaken but most are entitled to job-security.
PRO:
None. But the MinEdu had arranged for a presentation which according to him was received as too good to be true. From my experience, anything which seems too good to be true, is too good to be true.
The MinEdu mentioned he wanted “politics out of the public schools.” I’m unclear what he means by that. Basically, if he appoints his party people to the board, he just introduced politics into the equation.
MinEdu = You have bigger fish to fry. This is a marginal issue, find something truly meaningful in need of change.
