Ok, just one more charter school post, and then we’ll put this topic aside for a while.

Little Rock School District lawyer Chris Heller has apparently secured the services of a promoter.  Or at least that’s the way it appears when every time Heller says or does anything it is immediately picked up and praised by the folks over at the Arkansas Times.  Max and his crew love this guy, and Heller keeps the information flowing.

And yes, the irony of our also posting about Heller’s every move is not lost on me, but here I go anyway.

Max’s most recently fulfilled his role by posting a document written by Heller providing recommendations to the State Board of Education with regard to a proposed Little Rock charter school.  The school in question, the Little Rock Urban Collegiate Public Charter School for Young Men (LRUCP), would aim to serve males who are at risk of dropping out of school.

In section eight (pg. 23) of this document Mr. Heller proposes nine conditions he feels the State Board of Education should place on the LRUCP charter. See four of the nine below.

1. Student recruitment efforts must be directed toward low-achievement students.
2. During the student registration process, the school must provide LRSD, NLRSD and PCSSD with weekly updates of their students who have applied for admission to the school.
3. At least 80 percent of new enrollees each year must qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and/or be performing at the basic level or below on the Arkansas Benchmark Exam.
4. The school must require parents to sign a “contract” agreeing that the student remain at the school for the entire school year.

I find these recommendations a little odd given the district’s previous claims about charter schools.  LRSD has routinely made two arguments against charter schools.  First they claim that charters increase segregation, or at the very least impede LRSDs desegregation efforts.  We have questioned their evidence of this claim, or lack there of, in this space many times before.  And second, in a related claim they say that charters dump their bad kids back on the district.  Charter schools cream the best and leave the rest.

Now, in a surprising about-face, LRSD and Heller have reversed their stance on both segregation and dumping with the four conditions listed above.  LRSD indicate they are all for charter schools as long as they are only used as a dumping ground for the district’s unwanted students.  Heller’s proposal would create a school that would be nearly completely segregated by income and achievement, and not only that, but he would also have the parents of these kids sign a “contract” to make sure they don’t come back to LRSD.  It must be strange for a lawyer who has built a career on civil rights issues to find himself first arguing against providing educational opportunities for black urban kids and then to make recommendations which would in essence create a segregated school.

I do not know if the proposed charter school will be able to deliver on the promises of their proposal, but shouldn’t they be allowed to try and serve students LRSD has failed without preconditions?  If the school does not serve their students well or violates their charter in some way, the State Board already has the power to revoke the charter.  Why complicate the situation with further, utterly unnecessary, conditions?

UPDATE:  Edited for clarity.