JIM COOPER: Weighing participating in charter school rally.

  • JIM COOPER: State Education Board chair weighing participating in charter school rally.

I’d mentioned previously the Billionaire Boys Club and their charter school pep rally at the Capitol next week. Jeb Bush will join such private school/charter school supporters as Jim Walton, Walter Hussman and Bill Dillard at a rally meant to promote the billionaires’ school package. (Interesting that Claiborne (Murphy Oil) Deming isn’t on the roster, though he’d been listed previously. He shouldn’t be. His great effort to help El Dorado public schools is imperiled by the unfettered public school transfer law the Walton billions are backing.

Advertisement

A key speaker will be one of the subsidized faculty members the Waltons have installed at the so-called school of education “reform” at Walton University in Fayetteville. Jeb Bush will lend this support for doing in Arkansas what’s been done in Florida (scandal after scandal in charter schools and scant education progress, to name two).

But enough of my usual.

Advertisement

I noticed that Jim Cooper of Melbourne, chairman of the state Board of Education, is on the panel. The billionaires want to jerk control of charter school approval and regulation from the hands of the state board and put it in the hands of a board controlled by appointees of the Republican (read bilionaires’) controlled Arkansas Legislature.

Dioes his presence mean Cooper supports the legislation? I’ve said before that he and other current members of that board, including numerous charter school advocates, have done a fair and tough job in recent years in approving some charter schools and rejecting others. The rejections seem to stick in the billionaires’ craw, however.

Advertisement

I talked to Cooper this morning.

He said he has some conflicts on Tuesday and he said he also had concerns about appearing on the panel if it were interpreted as a political statement. He said he’d agreed only to appear as an “objective” participant to talk about the board’s work in the past and future. He said he wasn’t prepared to speak for or against any of the billionaires’ school package — easier approval of charter schools, state construction funding for charter schools, virtually unlimited transfers between school districts and perhaps easing of teacher licensure rules, among others.

Advertisement

Does Cooper think the Board is doing a good job now in regulation of charter schools?

“I think they are doing a good job. Obviously, we may have made mistakes through the years. There may have been some that got through that shouldn’t have, but many were turned down and rightfully so.”

He added that it had been time-consuming and hard work for the board. But, “I feel pretty comfortable with the way I’ve voted through the years.”

Advertisement

He said he didn’t want to compromise his objectivity as board chairman by participation next week. “I may have to think hard about that the next few days.”

UPDATE: I also asked Rep. James McLean, a Democrat, if his participation constituted an endorsement of the billionaires’ agenda:

Advertisement

No sir. I am interested in listening to everybody and finding out as much as I can about all viewpoints