Neighbors have offered to help organize everything from a preschool to a spring fair to reacquaint school and neighborhood. The most significant reason is a cadre of dedicated and committed teachers whose classroom innovations could act as magnets for recruiting students - not just from the neighborhood, but citywide. It is logical to ask why radical change isn't necessary. The Gap Foundation's promise of $1.3 million for the privatization has all but sealed the deal.Įdison Elementary has experienced several false starts in the past three years. But the district's commitment has been derailed and neighborhood support sorely undermined by the privatization proposal. Robert Harrington, the associate superintendent who oversees Edison Elementary, had committed the district to conducting a national search, if necessary, to identify a turnaround principal for the school. We began telling other preschooler parents that Edison had some great teachers. Neighbors like ourselves, parents of small children, had kindled a relationship with the school, inspired by the variety of creative learning environments we discovered flourishing in Edison classrooms. Until recently, Edison Elementary seemed poised to follow Alvarado's path. And proving that neighborhood schools can be compatible with diversity goals, Latino and African American children comprise fully 60 percent of Alvarado's student population today. Greater neighborhood recruitment at Alvarado introduced a socioeconomic diversity said to benefit all students. Once over the threshold, Alvarado neighbors discovered teachers offering stimulating curricula, and as the word spread, more parents chose the school over ostensibly better The act of reaching out brought the principal together with neighbors longing for the simple pleasure of walking their children to school. Key to its transformation was a dynamic and visionary principal who knew public elementary schools need real connections with their neighborhoods. Today, Alvarado Elementary is widely touted by Schools Superintendent Waldemar Rojas as a model of successful school change. Alvarado even shared Edison's legacy as a 1982 consent decree school with mandatory busing linked, in many minds, to a downward spiral in school performance. Several years ago, Alvarado Elementary School was in similarly dire straits: chronically low test scores and a perception within its Noe Valley neighborhood that the school was too troubled to consider an option. The privatization plan is being sold as the only chance to save the school.Ī different vision of Edison Elementary is within reach. He is the Knoxville cable-TV entrepreneur whose previous foray into education required schools accepting free communications technology to broadcast the controversial "Channel One" mix of current affairs and commercial advertising. The Edison Project, based in New York City, is the brainchild of its founder, Chris Whittle. It states that the GIAA took more than two weeks to respond to their email.įor reference, the FOIA gives a person 4 to 10 business days to respond.įurthermore, in the complaint, JMI Edison file three claims of relief: first, that the Public Auditor failed to review and find Menzies is non-responsive and a non-responsible bidder second, the Public Auditor’s decision to dismiss JMI-Edison’s case was arbitrary and third, that the Public Auditor’s “failure” to review and find GIAA’s procurement records was contrary to law.Īccording to JMI-Edison, Menzies is currently working with GIAA under an emergency contract.The similarity of names is a coincidence. In the official case file, JMI-Edison states that the Guam Airport Authority had ignored their request for information under the Sunshine Reform Act–also known as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Today, JMI-Edison has filed an official suit against the Office of Public Accounting, the Guam International Airport Authority, and Menzies Aviation.Īccording to John Ilao, Vice President of JMI-Edison, “GIAA did not timely provide us the FOIA’ed procurement records we needed to determine if Menzies had a contractor’s license.”
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