Most vulnerable students shut out of charter schools
When Lydia Bellahcene’s son “E.E.,” who struggles with a reading disability, was picked from a lottery to attend Williamsburg Charter High School, she was elated. “I thought my son could be successful. He would be given the support he needed. I had no red light, yellow light to be cautious because they had an IEP team [a group of administrators who ensure special education students receive services].” Although her son worked with a special education reading instructor every day for 45 minutes beginning in 3rd grade at a regular Department of Education school, when he began 9th grade at Williamsburg Charter in 2007, the specialist was promised, but never appeared. As a result, he failed 9th-grade English, became depressed, and was forced to continue to wear the 9th-grade green uniform the following year, while his friends wore the gold 10th-grade Williamsburg Charter shirt, said Bellahcene.
Charter schools, which operate outside the city Department of Education and select students through a lottery, have become increasingly controversial as their numbers have grown. This fall an additional 24 charter schools are expected to open, bringing the total in
“Those charter schools are not serving the main population,” said Aixa Rodriguez, a Spanish teacher who worked at International Leadership Charter School in the
Charter school advocates disagree. “When somebody says a charter school is creaming, what they’re not telling you is there’s no way on God’s Earth you know who you’re getting,” said Jeffery Litt, superintendent of the Carl C. Icahn charter schools.
Charter schools claim they outperform neighborhood schools while enrolling the same student demographic. Opponents argue that charter schools only attract children whose parents are involved and invested in their education, since the parents had to seek out a charter school and fill out an application by the April 1 deadline. Additionally, because charter schools operate independently of the city DOE, opponents say there is no oversight to protect the most vulnerable students – those who don’t speak English or require special education services.
An analysis of student data involving some of the most challenging students to educate, students who are homeless, special education students, and English Language Learners (ELL), shows that charter schools don’t serve or enroll the same students as local public schools.
In
“With many charter schools, you have an application process. It’s not just you can show up at the school on September 1st and register your child,” Pringle said, “and many families in crisis aren’t in a position to see that process through.” Although most city charter schools are located in low-income neighborhoods, 34 charter schools enroll no homeless students. In East New York, Brooklyn, a politically-forgotten neighborhood with decrepit buildings and the infamous Pink housing projects, nine homeless shelters are located near Achievement First East New York Charter School. The school does not enroll any homeless students.
According to Emily Ente, senior external relations associate for Achievement First schools, although homeless shelters are located near their schools, some students living in those shelters attend schools as far away as the
Homeless shelters always fall within the boundaries of a school zone. Charter schools don’t have school zones and instead enroll students by lottery, giving preference to applicants who live in the DOE’s geographic district. Carl C. Icahn Charter School in the
“The application period is February and March and the lottery is held in April,” said Litt. “A mother who comes [to the shelter] in June is too late, so their kids go to the neighborhood school.” Homeless families may have priorities other than seeking alternatives to their neighborhood schools, he said. “They have daily survival needs. I don’t know if they have the time to research who we are, what we are, how to get in.”
Regardless of the burdens homeless students encounter, they should have the same right to choose a good school as students with a permanent address, says Pringle. “While I’m sympathetic to the challenges charter school face in attracting these vulnerable students, these students shouldn’t be effectively excluded from charter schools, which is often the case under their admission’s timeline,” she said.
English Language Learners
“I had an issue with one school under the Harlem Children’s Zone that would not admit a student because she did not have a social security number,” said Arlen Benjamin-Gomez, an attorney for the immigrant’s rights project at Advocates for Children, Insideschools’ parent organization. “We were able to resolve the issue for that case, but it’s unclear if other charter schools are similarly unaware of the laws prohibiting this sort of thing.”
Common sense says a teacher certified in a particular field, such as special education, should teach within that field. Charter schools, however, were created to challenge commonly-held assumptions about the best pedagogy. Charter schools may decide that what works best for ELLs is to have two teachers in one room, regardless of certification.
At New Heights Academy Charter School in
“Some of our ELLs are already receiving CTT services, so we don’t double-up on services,” she said, adding that many of her students are fluent in English but have trouble passing the English proficiency exam because they lack basic literacy skills in their native language. “For the vast majority, they struggle with reading period,” said Winitt. “If you’re struggling in your native language, it’s hard to transfer those basic skills into English literacy.”
A special education teacher helping an ELL is akin to an airline pilot steering a ship, say immigrant advocates.
“Special education and language acquisition services are completely two different things” said Benjamin-Gomez. “Under state and federal law, you have to have, at minimum, an ESL or bilingual program. You cannot put them in a special education program to satisfy their ESL needs.” According to Benjamin-Gomez, it is only permissible to place ELL students in a special education class without help from a certified ESL teacher if they are “non-verbal.”
Charter schools have found a way to dance around that law, in part, because that is the essence of a charter school: the freedom to create innovative, atypical programs that don’t match DOE guidelines. Before a charter school is approved, they must submit a plan for educating students learning to speak English. According to Democracy Prep Principal Seth Andrew, his plan for servicing some ELLs in CTT classes does not require certified ESL teachers to support them.
Special Education
All special education children in the
The number of students with IEPs in charter schools is a mystery. Although all DOE schools report the number of special education students on their report cards, charter schools don’t.
“We have the data, but it’s not something that we make public on our website,” said a representative of the New York State Department of Education. Despite dozens of phone calls to state and city DOE officials over a four-week period, the numbers were not released. Data from 2006-07, prepared by John Berman of the NYC Comptroller’s Office, shows that 15 charter schools did not enroll any special education students.
A few charter schools interviewed for this story released their current special education numbers. The Ichan C. Charter Schools each serve between three and five special education students.
“You have to understand, charter schools don’t make a lot of referrals [to special education],” said Litt. “We refer children only when it’s absolutely necessary.” Icahn class sizes are capped at 18 students, every teacher works with a group of five students daily for 40 minutes, and students attend tutoring and extra classes after school and on Saturdays, said Litt. “Instead of sending a kid to SETSS, I can provide targeted assistance here,” he said. For non-academic special education services, such as counseling or physical therapy, families are referred to
In contrast, parents at some charter schools say their children are not getting the targeted assistance they need.
When neighbors told Jamie Evans that the schools were terrible in her Morrisania neighborhood in the
But, when five-year-old Christina started kindergarten, trouble began.
“I started getting calls. They told me I had to come to school and sit with her in the classroom, because she was acting out,” said Evans, who at the time thought her daughter was just misbehaving, but now recognizes that her daughter has a disability. After Evans sat with Christina for three days during the school year, she calmed down. But, when 1st grade began and Christina shouted out in class, began fighting with other children, erupted in screaming tantrums, and wouldn’t sit on the rug, the phone calls started again.
“The principal, she gave up on Christina. She said, ‘I wasn’t raised this way, and what’s going on in the household? We don’t tolerate this.’” recalls Evans. “She was just not trying to help me in no kind of way. She wouldn’t give me the time of day. I would call her. I would schedule meetings with her, but she wouldn’t show up.” After a few months in 1st grade, Evans removed Christina and enrolled her at their zoned school, PS 55, where she was evaluated and given an IEP that mandates that she be given twice weekly therapy sessions.
Not all charter schools are alike. While some charter schools tolerate deviant behaviors, others do a pitiful job with children who don’t fit the straight-arrow charter school mold.
“Charters are so focused on the culture of the school, the routine,” said Principal Jessica Nauiokas of
“If a student’s IEP says self-contained, they technically can’t come to our school,” said Winitt, of
“I don’t think self-contained classes have been proven to work. I also don’t want to see a charter school send these kids away,” said Dr. Arthur Sadoff at the New York City Charter School Center, an independent organization that supports charter schools. “I’m more concerned about charter schools that don’t have any special education students. They counsel the kids out when they arrive…without doing what I’m saying.” Dr. Sadoff suggests schools work with parents, special education coordinators, and teachers to create comprehensive IEPs that allow a child with special needs to learn among general education peers.
“There are some kids who have needs that require more support, a small class ratio, and a school with more training and expertise and they may not be able to be in a mainstream environment,” said Kim Madden, director of legal services at Advocates for Children. Fed-up with underperforming neighborhood schools, many parents agree to IEP changes, just to secure a seat, she said.
“A parent is really scared, because it’s not a given virtue to be there, as it is at a zoned school…parents are just scared about where their child is struggling” said Madden. “They know this school can say ‘sorry, you can’t stay here,’ and that’s just a reality parents face all the time.” For charter schools to truly be inclusive, advocates say, more charter schools should be opened to meet the needs of special education students.
<!–[endif]–>
Charter school authorizers “just need to require that every school has an array of special education programs,” said Madden.
Tough choices for families
“Me pulling Christina out of Harriet Tubman was my fault as a parent,” said Evans. “By pulling her out, I cheated her out of a good education. I now know better. I should have reported [the principal]. I could have found out if public schools have paras [para professionals assigned to work one on one with some students], and I would have asked, ‘does charter schools have this type of thing’.”
Although Evans thinks that both schools have done a poor job serving her daughter’s special education needs, she misses the charter school’s small size, tough discipline, and weekly spelling tests. She’s currently on the waiting list at
UPDATE: After this story was published, the DOE released the percentage of special education students at individual charter schools. Opportunity Charter School in Harlem educates the highest percentage of special needs students at 55 percent. The school also holds two lotteries, one for students with an IEP and one for general education students. Bronx Charter School for Better Learning does not educate any special education students.
CORRECTION: Since initial publication, the embedded chart was revised to reflect the 2008-09 enrollment numbers. It was previously reported that New Heights Academy Charter School served the largest percentage of English Language Learners. The school that has the largest percentage of ELLs is Family Life Academy Charter School in the Bronx.
Subscribe to 
Charter schools are a sham. They are set by private companies to put public education out of business.. The City supports them because they eliminate unions and thus, pension costs. Government also likes the idea because they now become the “good guy”… The Government washes its hands of responsibility for educating the children and comes in to “close down failing schools” -instead of taking the responsibility to create successful public schools.
Charters claim they have a “lottery” but they make it very hard to get into the pool and remain in their school if an underachiever slips in.
Comment by Brian De Vale — May 19, 2009 @ 5:50 pm
I don’t think they are a sham. I have two kids that went to charter schools. One graduated and now goes to good public school. The youngest one just started at a charter school, and the third one is in a popular neighborhood public school. My middle son has an iep and started off at the charter school, they gave him pull out services, but they did not have the staff to give the proper services. I then transferred him to a public school for 3 years (k-2)and the services he got were mediocre. They kept trying to tell me he was on the autistc spectrum and he clearly was not. They recommended he go into a self-contained 12:1:1 but at another school. I transferred him again to his current school and found that the small self-contained 12:1:1 class was way below his level. He is now in general ed with pull out speech (where they don’t do much).
I think charter schools could use more funding if they need to serve students with special needs. The problem sometimes happens because there is a huge lack of space. 75 percent of the charters share a building with a public school and it is always a fight for space. Public schools have to know that charters serve the same students and they all need to be educated.
I have also found that in some public schools where the teacher development training is not strong, there is a huge amount of yelling at students goes on.
As far as my youngest son’s charter school, they let us know at the board meeting that about 12% of the students have iep’s. They are treated like other students and get push in services within small groups.
Is a charter school education better than public school. It depends on where you live. I am in fort greene where there are about three charter schools and many decent public schools. I think the charter school’s overall experience at my son’s school is stronger than the local public school. They welcome parent participation, have many partnerships and lots of trips including two overnight trips. Some other charters are very rigid in their style. Some parents like that. i don’t love that style since I think kids don’t need to feel burnt out from the long hours and too much homework.
Comment by blues clues — May 19, 2009 @ 7:51 pm
My son is in kindergarten at charter school in Fort Greene Brooklyn. My husband and I struggled long and hard to find the right school for our son. He has been receiving special education services since he was 2. We applied to specialized private special ed schools - didn’t get into any of them - and explored every public school that was an option for us. We entered the charter school lottery and got in off the wait list. I thank my lucky stars every day. They have two teachers in every class, excellent speech therapists, occupational therapists. I really feel they are committed to special education. He gets all the services on his IEP - something that our local zoned school couldn’t gaurantee. The teachers truly are committed to meeting the needs of each child. My son is still struggling with some things, but he has made tremendous progress. The bottom line is every school is different - public, private, charter. Its really up to us as parents to know our kids, advocate for what they need and to work the system to get the best for them. For my son, a charter school was the best fit.
Comment by Lisa — May 19, 2009 @ 8:41 pm
Great reporting. Many parents are sending their kids to a new charter school and are leaving the public school my child attends. The reason: the class size cap is at 20. How can charter schools get this and public schools can’t? Many of the parents who are leaving were active at the school.
And Lisa, the point the report made was that many parents can not “work the system” like you did. It’s great you are an advocate for your child, as all of us here are (and are lucky not to be in some horrible conditions that other families are in), but many families don’t know how to do this.
Comment by wow — May 20, 2009 @ 5:40 am
Having worked on student recruitment at Achievement First, I can tell you that we personally walked into a Help USA homeless shelter in East New York and distributed applications. We also worked with their executive director and staff to have applications distributed to every family there. We also distribute applications to NYCHA buildings all over Brooklyn. Our school “applications” are incredibly simple: parents simply fill out their child’s name and their contact information. This is something even a family undergoing extreme hardships can complete.
Comment by Rachel — May 20, 2009 @ 5:53 am
I have a 6 year old daughter in Kindergarten at
Amber Charter School in Spanish Harlem and I thank GOD every single day for the gift she received by getting the opportunity to attend that school. Academically she has progressed tremendously. Teachers and all staff are wonderful. It’s like family at Amber. I think that in order for your child to get into a good charter school the parent has to do the work. It’s not hard work at all. A little time comsuming but ask yourself, Is my child worth it? My answer was absolutely YES!
Comment by Ms. S — May 20, 2009 @ 7:58 am
It is inappropriate to compare individual charter schools to a school district with over 1 million students. While the overall percentage of students who have disabilities or are ELLs is one thing, of the 1400+ district schools in New York City I’m sure you can find many schools that have few IEPs or ELLs. So don’t single out charter schools without looking at the range of demographics and performance in individual district schools. I’m curious how many IEPs and ELLs are served at selective district schools. And some charter schools actually serve disproportionately large numbers of ELLs and students with disabilities. Take a look at Family Life Academy Charter School in the Bronx, or the Autism Charter School that was mentioned.
I also think a hard look needs to be taken at how students with IEPs (Individual Education Programs, not Plans) are referred, evaluated and labeled. For those charter schools with low numbers of IEPs, it may be that they simply do a better job of educating their students and thus don’t need to put their students on IEPs. How many students end up with IEPs because their schools didn’t have effective instruction and cultures? And it’s important to remember that charter schools have no control over IEPs. Like district schools, IEPs are determined by local CSEs (committee on special education).
Finally, charter schools are schools of choice where enrollment is by lottery. That’s the law. Two areas need to be investigated: recruitment of parents to sign up, and pushing students out. While your anecdoates certainly illustrate possibilities, there’s no data to support a clear conclusion. I believe part of the charter application process is to present a recruitment and admissions plan, so someone should check to see if charter schools are complying with what they said they would do. Similarly, charter schools are evaluated annually, so someone should look at their reports to see if anything is noted about IEPs and ELLs.
Comment by Gideon — May 20, 2009 @ 8:41 am
I do believe that some charter schools serve the student well. For example my daughter is attending Bronx Preparatory Charter School in the Bronx. At Bronx Prep they work with the children and teach them not only an excellent academic curriculum but also to be good citizens, behavior modification and to learn how to take responsibility for their actions. In the other hand because my daughter was so successful at Bronx Prep. I was looking for a charter school for my son, he was selected at the Bronx Light House Charter School, located in the Bronx, My big surprise was that the academic curriculum was not good, and since my son was bore he was misbehaving in school. Long story short the principal met with me and my husband and give us two choices “to take my son out of his school or he would expelled him. We did it and my son is receiving quality services at his zone school. I learned that the fact that a school has a “Charter” title doesn’t mean good education, dedication and understanding for the student. Some charter schools are manage like private companies that are only interested about the numbers to meet the terms of the grant they receive from private sectors.
Comment by Aracelis Reynoso — May 20, 2009 @ 9:21 am
I’d really like to see more reporting on the actual facts of the “charter application process” and what it consists of across schools. It’s frequently presented as being something so arduous or complicated that a troubled or non-English-speaking parent would find it to be too great a barrier.
Getting a child registered in a DOE school requires finding the zoned school and showing up there in person with all required documentation for your child (immunizations, ss#, passport, etc.) To me this sounds far more complicated and difficult for a struggling person than simply filling out a form with contact information.
Charter schools frequently reach out to their populations with direct mailings, drop-off applications in large buildings, and even door-to-door solicitations in some cases.
I’m sure creaming takes place at some schools, both charter and DOE. It’s illegal and it’s wrong but I have never seen evidence that a charter application process is exclusionary. Yet this myth persists and is quoted as fact over and over.
Comment by Rita T — May 20, 2009 @ 11:18 am
Perhaps it was a mistake, but my comment about homeless children was incomplete as reported. What I said was that we had many homeless children from Icahn House, but the social workers work closely with the residents to get them permanent homes within six months so they are no longer homeless.
Regarding children with special needs, I reported that we have approximately 5% among our total population, in addition to those found to need special services (IEP), but refused by the parent(s). Those students are in fact, in our school.
Icahn Charter Schools do not discriminate and enjoy an outstanding reputation.
Jeff Litt
Superintendent
Comment by Jeff Litt — May 20, 2009 @ 10:17 pm
I am the Development Manager at New Heights Academy Charter School, and this article presents a very incomplete, unbalanced, and unfair portrait of the service we provide to ELL and special education students. The percentage of ELL students in our population is 18%, not 42%. It rightly sounds outlandish to say that we have only one teacher to serve nearly half of our students, but this is far from truly the case. Additionally, approximately 13% of our students are special education students. So while, as stated in the article, we don’t have self-contained classrooms, we are not at all underserving or pushing special education students out of our school.
Comment by Courtenay Barton — May 21, 2009 @ 8:39 am
As a public school teacher and assistant principal for 13 years (all in the Washington Heights community) before founding New Heights Academy, I am well aware of the issues facing public schools. I am also aware that public schools that are appropriately meeting the needs of their students have nothing to fear from a charter school in their neighborhood. If parents are satisfied with their children’s education, why would they transfer them to a charter school? I will not apologize for opening a school in my community where I saw a need. And given the fact that 1,048 families applied for approximately 300 available seats in our school next year, I don’t think they are sorry that I did. It is time for the debate to be focused on providing all students with a quality education, not demonizing charter schools for filling a need that has existed for far longer than anyone wants to admit.
Comment by Stacy Winitt — May 21, 2009 @ 10:11 am
Response from Stacy Winitt, Founder and Executive Director, New Heights Academy Charter School: It is disappointing that my comments were not used in their entirety and were taken out of context. When I was informed that someone from InsideSchools.org was calling for me, I did not hesitate to take the call as I have always found the website to be fair and unbiased. Evidently, as a blogger, Ms. Witenko does not have to meet those standards. Ms. Witenko told me that she was “gathering information about ELL students in charter schools” and wanted to talk to me as my school had the greatest percentage of ELLs of all charter schools in NYC. At no time was I informed that my comments would be published in a blog entry or that Ms. Witenko had evidently made up her mind that charter schools “cream” students and “shut out” the most vulnerable students before uncovering all the facts.
Fact: My school’s population is 17% ELL, not 42% as reported by Ms. Witenko. Her actual number of 78 is accurate, but Ms. Witenko did not bother to confirm our current enrollment (468) and instead used our enrollment from 2006 (192).
Fact: My school does not duplicate services for students with disabilities and ELL students. As we use the co-teaching model to serve our students with disabilities and our ELLs, it would be ridiculous to have 3 teachers in a class of 24 students when a few of them require both special education and ESL services.
Fact: My school has a higher percentage of enrolled students with disabilities than surrounding zoned public schools (13% as compared to 11%). As I told Ms. Witenko, our lottery is random. After students are selected, we work with the parents of those accepted students to ensure that our school provides the necessary level of services that their children require. It is not in anyone’s best interest, and certainly not the students’, for them to be enrolled in a program that is not designed to adequately meet their needs.
Fact: My school often enrolls students who were not successful in their zoned schools. I told Ms. Witenko that I sometimes believe “reverse creaming” is occurring as some of our families were strongly “encouraged” to apply to our school by administrators in their previous schools. It is interesting that many of those students were scoring at level 1 on the standardized exams and/or were experiencing behavioral difficulties.
Comment by Stacy Winitt — May 21, 2009 @ 10:13 am
Why would it be wrong for the charter schools to “cream” when the practice is quite evident in public schools in the “more desirable” Manhattan areas?
In a search for adequate kindergarten programs for Fall 2009, my daughter took the G&T; entered 5 charter school lotteries; entered D3 lottery; applied to public schools by my home (NE Bronx); and paid a deposit to hold her seat at her current private school. The EASIEST application process was for the charter schools. The most EFFICIENT and TIMELY process for notification was the charter schools. Even as she is accepted to a school in D3, we must now go through another application process for consideration for their dual language program.
I, too, do not understand why many people fight the charter schools. If ALL schools were performing at the same level, this competition would NOT exist.
Let’s just bring EVERY NYC PUBLIC SCHOOL up to reputable status for the sake of our children’s future…and sanity of their parents.
Comment by Me2004 — May 21, 2009 @ 11:20 am
I thank God every day my DD was accepted to a charter school for next year. She’s been shut out of G&T entering Kindergarten, she is certain to be shut out of G&T for first grade, and our zoned school is just not the right place for her, as an extremely painful year has proved to us. We applied to 6 charters, and when we got that ONE acceptance letter I cried. It is absolutely disgusting the hoops I have had to jump through as a taxpayer to find a school for my kid. My heart goes out to every single parent in this position. I know from experience how hard this is. KEEP FIGHTING and BE HEARD — you are the only advocate your child has. We are FIGHTING the DOE — the one institution that is supposed to be on our child’s side. And the sheer fact of that statement is appalling.
Comment by parentinNYC — May 21, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
This year, I have the privilege of working as the special education coordinator at New Heights Academy Charter, where students with disabilities are welcomed, cared for, and educated. All one has to do is look at New Height’s statistics to find that both ELL and students with disabilties are succeeding at a much higher rate than the district in general.
I have now run admissions lotteries for charters for five years; four for a school I worked in and one for the school I am opening with my co-founders in September. During those years, we have done the following outreach to families: 1) mailed notifications and applications to schools, churches, community organizations, agencies, afterschool programs,and daycares within a 1.5 mile radius of the schools; 2) personally contacted administrators and guidance counselors via the phone and on-site visits; 3) met personally with representatives from the Committees on Special Education and with school-level special education coordinators; and 4) run numerous informational meetings and personal tours. This type of outreach is manpower-heavy and financially burdensome, but what is evident is that we–as have other charters–HAVE reached out, rather than waiting for the families to come to us. No child has had to take an exam, write an essay, or pass an interview to enter those lotteries, unlike many of the public schools that they might want to attend.
This year, although Equality did not have a site at the time of our lottery, nearly 400 famlies applied for 132 spaces, and more applications come every day–even though people know that their child will be number 200 on the waitlist. Already, 18% of the students who have been accepted from the lottery have special education services, and one third of those middle schoolers will have the exciting opportunity to exit self-contained classrooms and join their peers in inclusion, where research proves that they will be much more successful.
Students in self-contained classes have some of the lowest graduation rates in the entire city, and we do not intend to replicate a failing system. As charters, we choose to educate, rather than abandon, these students.
Comment by Peg Hoey, Equality Charter — May 21, 2009 @ 12:32 pm
May 26, 2009
Dear Inside Schools,
This article puts forward a highly biased and factually inaccurate report about my school, the Williamsburg Charter High School.
If your organization had taken the time to learn more about our school, you would find that the chair of our Board of Trustees, Lourdes Putz-Rivera, is the director of United We Stand, a nationally-recognized, federally-funded organization that serves families of students with disabilities in Brooklyn. The percentage of IEP students in our school is far from being “a mystery” as it was published in our 2008 School Report Card. We currently serve 70 students with IEPs as well as 15 English Language Learners (ELLs), and the number of IEP students that we serve is rising. Our current freshman class is 16% IEP, a 6% increase over the other three classes enrolled in the school.
Our staff has received extensive training on supporting all types of struggling learners because the average academic levels of our incoming 9th grade students hovers around the 6th and 7th grade level. The teachers have also received consulting on differentiated lesson planning, team teaching, and differentiated assessments for IEP students. In addition to our Special Education teachers, we employ a Speech and Language pathologist and five staff members who address students’ social-emotional needs, including a full-time school psychologist and a social worker. We feel that our program design demonstrates that serving Special Education students is at the heart of our school’s mission.
It is illegal to divulge information about specific students and families such as Ms. Bellahcene and her son who were mentioned in the article, but many of the alleged facts that Ms. Witenko published in her blog article regarding this case were blatantly untrue. Not once did Ms. Witenko contact any of our school’s staff members to verify her information. It is highly unprofessional to engage in such one-sided reporting without first reaching out to the other party which is, in this case, our school and its staff.
Your article, though perhaps published with good intent, has a great deal of potential to do significant harm to schools like ours that are working in good faith to serve all of their students. Inside Schools should be cautious with these types of communications in the future. We are requesting that Ms. Witenko engage in comprehensive fact-finding regarding her assertions and that she publish another article in order to retract her incorrect accusations against our school. We would also be glad to invite any of the staff of Inside Schools to come visit our school if they would like to observe our program.
In service to students,
Ethan Mitnick
Principal
Comment by Ethan Mitnick — May 26, 2009 @ 4:54 pm