Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
13,000 children are being denied an education over a funding fight
13,000 children are being denied an education over a funding fight
Oct 30, 2024 7:27 PM

Millions of schoolchildren are currently out of school under state orders intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus. However, in Oregon, at least 13,000 students are being unnecessarily denied an education to benefit traditional public schools’ monopoly over education.

Earlier this month, Gov. Kate Brown ordered all Oregon’s public schools closed until the end of March. She then extended that deadline to April 28.

This would be unexceptional if not for the fact that she also closed online public charter schools, where students meet virtually. This arrangement presents zero threat of spreading COVID-19.

Furthermore, state officials confirmed that the 13,000 students enrolled in those schools are needlessly sitting idle so munity public schools can maintain their funding levels.

Educators admit that traditional public schools are “10 years behind” in providing adequate online education and fear that, as parents discover schools that are better suited for their children, the educational exodus will wipe out pulsory funding.

So, the governor shut down petition. Gov. Brown’s “Executive Order 20-08 closed all public schools, including virtual charter schools,” said Marc Siegel, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Education.

“Virtual public charter schools can continue to provide supplemental education and learning supports just as other public schools have been asked to do,” he told Willamette Week, which broke the story.

Until the order was extended, all public schools were to provide “supplemental education” online. These lessons are not nearly as intensive as classroom instruction and are not graded. They exist to keep students active during the state-ordered shutdown. Effectively, they’re academic busywork.

“As a parent, I don’t want my kid doing supplemental work,” said Marc Thielman, superintendent of the Alsea School District. “I want them in online courses, learning.”

Online schools—which have the potential to provide full-time education to the thousands of students, and parents, who have chosen them—are being forced to provide similarly inadequate studies.

Why? The state could scarcely be clearer that it is purposefully closing online alternatives, and denying thousands of Oregon’s students an education, to keep taxpayer money flowing to the inflexible and union-dominated traditional school system.

“Enrollment of new students to virtual public charter schools during the closure would impact school funding for districts across Oregon and therefore may impact the distribution of state school funds and delivery of services,” said the Oregon Department of Education’s guidance to school districts.

Charter school providers felt they were being penalized in order to munity schools dominated by teachers’ unions:

Gary Tempel, superintendent of the Scio School District, in a statement … “Families make the decision to do online learning for many reasons and did so long before the crisis began. I hope that we will be able to honor the choices that families have made and not punish them.”

The state has said something else is at work: State schools simply cannot keep up with their petitors.

“You cannot open a brick-and-mortar school in Oregon unless it is accessible to every student in their school district,” said Siegel. This includes special needs students, non-English speakers, and homeless children without internet access. “The same rules apply to an online school.”

Online charter schools have already made all the necessary changes—but their students must wait, because traditional public schools have not.

Gov. Brown acknowledges that students may not return to school this year, so she’s told school districts to provide online “Distance Learning for All” by April 13. Many officials have confessed their districts will not be able to guarantee all students have online access by that time. Until they do, online public schools will also remain shuttered.

Thousands of students are watching their intellectual skills atrophy, as their education is caught in the middle of a war over taxpayer funding.

Alas, this too has e unexceptional. The charter school es less than a year after the Oregon Education Association held a walkout that closed some school districts. The OEA claimed at the time that depriving children of an education actually constituted “advocating for students” who, in the words of one second-grade teacher, “deserve so much more” than the state provides.

This issue is in no way isolated to Oregon. It lies at the heart of the Supreme Court’s Espinoza v. Montana case, in which Montana’s teachers unions sued to shut down a tax provision that allowed citizens to write off small donations to scholarships that could be used at private schools.

The adversarial relationship between state-run schools and the children they teach is one of the many reasons figures such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed public-sector unions should not exist. FDR called militant labor tactics against the citizens who pay their bills “unthinkable and intolerable.”

Christians have always placed parental rights ahead of the needs of the state. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children.” The Code of Canon Law is more explicit: “Parents must have a real freedom in their choice of schools.”

It is not enough that parents exercise their right to choose but, the Catechism states, “Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise.”

Oregon officials have done just the opposite, and thousands of children are paying the price.

domain.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
News: Acton Institute Among Top Global Think Tanks
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Feb. 1, 2011) — A new survey of 5,500 organizations by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania ranked the Acton Institute among the best global social policy organizations and in the top 50 think tanks overall in the United States. The 2010 Global Go-To Think Tank Rankings, directed by James G. McGann of the International Relations department at Penn, put Acton at No. 12 on the Top 25 Social Policy Think...
Acton Lecture Series 2010: Joseph Morris on Saul Alinsky
There’s still time to register for tomorrow’s opening lecture of the 2011 Acton Lecture Series (click here to reserve your seat for Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s “Christian Poverty in the Age of Prosperity”), and while we’re anticipating the start of the 2011 series we’ll continue our blog recap of the 2010 series. Today, we highlight one of my favorite lectures from last year: Joseph Morris’ “Alinsky for Dummies: His Persistent Influence and Its Meaning for American Society and Politics.” Saul...
The New Circuit Riders and the Bicycle Economy
God and Money passes along a news story about a church in Nebraska raising money “to buy motorcycles (probably not Harleys) for pastors in the African country of Tanzania. Pastors there serving multiple congregations cannot simulcast their sermons–they have to walk upwards of 60 miles to be with their flock.” It brings to mind the early American Methodist practice of sending out circuit riders. But it also illustrates the kinds of needs that can be met in unconventional ways. This...
Rev. Sirico: Civility, not just after tragedy
The Detroit News today published a new column by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute: Civility, not just after tragedy The Rev. Robert Sirico The tragic shootings in Tucson that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords gravely wounded and a score of others dead or wounded have sparked a national discussion about how we conduct our public discourse. This is something we should all e, in an age of instantaneous media and its often vitriolic political...
Reagan Centennial Roundup
Rev. Robert Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute called Ronald Reagan a “sunny warrior for freedom” with “a clear sense of moral priority.” mentary was written a day after the former president’s death in 2004. If you walk into the Acton office you might notice a photo of Rev. Sirico and Acton executive director and co-founder Kris Mauren with Reagan at his former office in Century City, California. He holds a visible imprint at Acton. Sunday is Ronald...
After Cape Town: Still Learning to Talk About Business and Ministry
Stephen Grabill and I follow up on the Lausanne Congress in this week’s Acton Commentary: After Cape Town: Still Learning to Talk About Business and Ministry By Brett Elder and Stephen Grabill The Cape Town Commitment — a document that flows out of the Third Lausanne Congress on Global Evangelization held in Cape Town, South Africa, this past October — has generated a great deal of discussion since its release last week.Prior documents and declarations proceeding from the previous two...
Acton Lecture Series 2010 Recap: Miller & Carrasco
Continuing our recap of last year’s Acton Lecture Series in anticipation of Thursday’s opening lecture of the 2011 ALS (which you can register for right here), we’re pleased to present the video from February and March of 2010. On February 18, 2010, Acton’s Director of Media Michael Miller Delivered a lecture entitled “Does Capitalism Destroy Culture?” His lecture discussed the positive and negative impact of capitalism in society today. Miller pointed out that it’s not just Christians that are worried...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 105th Birthday
Today is the 105th anniversary of the birth of the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From the R&L archives: Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Nazi regime included his support for and pastoral participation in the Confessing Church along with other prominent Protestant theologians like Karl Barth and Martin Niemöller, as well as his intricate association with the broader ecumenical movement. When the effectiveness of the Confessing Church’s opposition to Hitler was blunted and his efforts to bring the moral authority...
Humor and Prison Rape Culture
Yesterday I noted some items related to the question of punishment and restorative justice in the American criminal justice system. And in the past we’ve looked here at the PowerBlog of the issues surrounding political and social activism on prison rape. Now today Joe Carter, web editor at First Things, considers the Prison Rape Elimination Act and the broader cultural attitudes toward prison rape: While such laws are a useful beginning, what is needed more than any legislation is a...
Stewardship and the Human Vocation to Work
The following is my latest article for Acton Commentary: Stewardship and the Human Vocation to Work By Rev. Gregory Jensen Paying the bills and contributing to the collection basket are laudable. But Christian stewardship is significantly more than these; like prayer, fasting, and the sacraments, it is an essential part of our Christian life. More than what we say, the way we use our time, talent and treasure, reveals what we value, how we understand ourselves as men and women...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved