Later this week we’ll learn whether the state will approve or kill the application for a Chapel Hill public charter school that aims at helping kids that aren’t achieving in a traditional public school. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system and the local NAACP are adamantly opposed to the school. Why? You can read this Carolina Journal story for their arguments and for the comments of Howard Lee, whose daughter is the driving force behind the charter school.
Former Chapel Hill Mayor and State Board of Education Chairman Howard Lee — the first black mayor elected in a predominantly white Southern City since Reconstruction — said he is surprised the NAACP is using a diversity argument to oppose plans to open a K-8 charter school bearing his name in Chapel Hill this August.
“I thought that was a weak argument and one that should not ever be elevated above educating our kids,” said Lee, who also is a former state senator and current executive director of the North Carolina Education Cabinet. The debate, he said, “should be about choice and it should be about education, and not about diversification.”
For me, it boils down to this: they ‘re afraid of competition. And who loses? The kids who are trapped in a traditional system that doesn’t serve their needs. Shameful.
