Obama's 'Race To The Top' Drives Nationwide Wave of School Closings, Teacher Firings

[HiPointDem]

85. Another one of those superior Memphis charters:

Eskew and another kindergarten teacher called the meeting to explain why they had resigned from Omni Prep...only eight weeks before the end of the academic year. The following Monday, April 4th, three more teachers would resign...by the time the story broke, five of the six lower school teachers at Omni Prep, which includes kindergarten and first grade, had tendered their resignations — including one Teach for America Corps member.

News outlets and Omni Prep administrators alike reported that the five teachers left because Omni Prep told teachers in mid-March that they would only receive one-third of their paychecks. (This was not the first time Omni Prep had been unable to pay teachers; they skipped a pay period in July...) But the former teachers have since come out in defense of their resignations, citing a host of concerns about the overall functioning of the school....

"I think the fact that I started to work for a school that had no students — that was my first moment of doubt," Eskew says. "We were told, Training is stopping because we don't have our quota. We asked, How many students do we have? They said five. And two of them were one of the principal's own kids..." "In the days leading up to the school opening, Memphis City Schools were doing their registration, and we were asked to stand across the street, off of school properties, and flag down cars to give them a flyer and the elevator speech about Omni Prep," Eskew says. "We didn't have an address... The school site wasn't confirmed until August 7th, two days before opening. That was the day we were allowed to start decorating our rooms."

Teachers also expressed concern over not being fingerprinted, a standard safety procedure for working with children in the Memphis City Schools system. They were similarly uneasy about their training being cut short. "We were promised a month of training," says Felice Ling... "We got a week or two of fluff."

No books, no curriculum, no consistency, and no recourse for their concerns were among the top grievances... Students were regrouped again in January and again the week before Eskew resigned. "I was informed that I would be receiving new students to work with in the last two months of school. And I would not necessarily be working with the students I had had since January," she says. "I did not leave only because I wasn't getting paid, but also because I was informed that I could potentially not be working with my students for the remainder of the school year."

Eskew recalls when a potential donor came to visit the school and sat down with teachers. She asked them specifics about the curriculum. "Our response was, We have no curriculum... Booker doesn't agree that the school had no curriculum. "We started out with a plan for teacher-created curriculum," he says... According to former teachers, however, after being tasked to create a "teacher-created curriculum" they received little or no guidance. "They sent us a link to Tennessee grade level standards, and said, Use this... You have the Internet, go and use it." As a result, teachers say they relied heavily on a colleague, Molly Logan, the one kindergarten teacher with experience. "Molly was aware of what a kindergarten curriculum should look like," Eskew says. "She was our only real resource. She also resigned."

http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/schools-out/Content?oid=2725952


AND IT'S STILL IN BUSINESS!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Omni-Prep-Academy-North-Pointe/143837249014873