The illusion of transparency and false realities...

Good morning everyone.  As goes with the "standard" at Chester Upland, recently a "revised" Request for Proposal Document was shared and uploaded to the district's website.  Alarmingly, the district has amended pages 26, 27 and 28 of this document with language specifically to charter schools and the possible operation of one building within the district to be a charter building.  Now if you were in attendance at the last Board meeting you will recall a frazzled school board president, Anthony Johnson, making the statement, "We are not going to charter".  Honestly you can take from that what you will, though the board president has been less and less an advocate for the students and seemingly confrontational with community members when he is questioned.  Somehow he remains in his position all the while still making egregious comments and decisions.  Yes, the board is powerless within a Receivership, only able to levy taxes, but they are the overwhelming majority of the "task force" designed to resolve this economic collapse the district is in.  If you read the description of the "task force" they are to be comprised of community members, staff and faculty within the district...to date no staff (teaching staff) have been afforded an invite to this "team".  Also what community members (outside of the board) are involved as well?  What is printed and what is being done are not two in the same here.  The school board is comprised of those who have no shame in supporting charters within Chester Upland,  Fred Green taking photos at the new campus for CCCS as well as Anthony Johnson making comments about how well the charter school in Chester is doing.  They both seem to forget the data (provided by the state) show the charter has done little to better the academic performance of the students.  Even so, CCCS is notorious for "removing" students near testing time...maybe to pad their numbers or try to guarantee they have higher testing scores; to date they have not.  Uploaded are the original and "newly revised" Request for Proposal's and well, to me they read like an old "Bait and Switch" but you can be the judge of that.