Wednesday, April 27, 2011

New Common Ground Article Coming Soon...

I finished a piece on the proposed Achievement First Mayoral Academies for Common Ground last night.

This one got a bit stressful because it became apparent as I was working on it that there are enough problems and mistakes in the proposal that there's a real chance the now friendlier Board of Regents will reject it, particularly if Taveras doesn't support it, and I don't see how he can. It is just a horrible deal for Providence and Taveras, politically and substantively, and rejecting it doesn't even mean rejecting the idea of mayoral academies in general. Just that Providence demands equal treatment in planning and executing ones that involve us.

Also, RIMA will fight back, so this is one case where you need to make sure to have your ducks in a very straight row. Luckily there is more than enough ammo in the proposal itself and exacerbated by the conflicting priorities of the various players in the overly-complex mayoral academy governance structure.

In particular, it doesn't seem like anyone from RIMA checked the enrollment assumptions built into AF's budget projections, which are nice and unambiguous and out of line with both the spirit and statutory requirements of the mayoral academy law.

That, and the governance structure is just ridiculous.

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