Oprah-Backed Charter School Denying Disabled Collides With Law

[proud2BlibKansan]

Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- When talk-show host Oprah Winfrey handed a $1 million check last September to the principal of New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy, 200 students watched the broadcast from a church and celebrated with a brass band.

Lawrence Melrose, a ninth-grader with learning and emotional disabilities, sat next door in a school office. The staff was concerned his fighting and cursing could be an embarrassment, said Shelton Joseph, his great uncle. Because he has trouble communicating, Lawrence needed intensive counseling and speech therapy, which the school didn't provide, Joseph said. He was repeatedly suspended and told he couldn't take the school bus with other kids, according to his lawyer.

The education of 16-year-old Lawrence represents a common complaint about privately run, taxpayer-financed charter schools: They often exclude children with serious disabilities or deny them the help they need, violating federal laws.

“They left me,” Joseph recalled the boy telling him on the day of the Winfrey celebration. “They left me out.”

more . . . http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LRVP690D9L3501-3E9Q9723I5Q1L37E4KD703IQ6V

[Enrique]

1. it's a race to the top

can't have kids like Lawrence slowing them down. :sarcasm:

[PA Democrat]

2. This is my biggest problem with privatizing education.

These schools pick and choose which students they will admit and leave the students with the most needs to be educated by financially strapped public schools.

[Selatius]

4. And then those public schools fail the NCLB tests and are shut down.

It's designed this way to privatize the whole system.

[Starry Messenger]

3. k&r

[Odin2005]

5. Another reason to not like Oprah to go along with her support got Jenny McCarthy.

[EFerrari]

6. Iirc from Skip Gates' series, Oprah is very proud of an ex-slave relative

who managed to found a free school for black children - a school she herself attended as a child.

How sad and creepy is it to see her using her wealth and influence to disenfranchise education for children who already face so many challenges.

Very badly done, Oprah. People of conscience should boycott you back to the 80s.

[MichiganVote]

7. They can and shoudl be sued. Public money means public problems. You no like?

Then don't take the public's money.