(2009-05-15) Barr Greendot School Takeovers

Steve Barr runs Green Dot, a Charter School group, which has been able to take over Public School-s in Los Angeles without the consent of the school system. "We were trying to figure out how to get out of the charter-school business, and how to get into the helping-schools-transform business," he said.... They worked out of a housing project across the street from the school and collected ten thousand signatures from local parents. When the district still balked, Barr gathered a thousand parents and marched to L.A.U.S.D.'s central office, towing the paperwork for five new Green Dot schools in little red wagons. Jefferson remained an L.A.U.S.D. school. But the following fall more than half of its incoming freshmen entered the lottery for a spot at one of Barr's schools... California lawmakers had created an option for schools to abandon the district for a charter arrangement if at least fifty per cent of tenured teachers vote to secede... If we can figure out a national Teachers Union partnership, we can take away some of the opposition." Arne Duncan asked Barr if he could persuade Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, to support the idea. "I'd love to do that," she told Barr, but she also expressed concerns. "She said, I can't be seen as coming in and firing all these teachers. " So they talked about alternatives, like transferring teachers or using (ARRA) stimulus money for buyouts. Do you like the idea of Economic Stimulus dollars being spent to buy out poor teachers?