Click here to read the letter from the ACLU in which they express "grave reservations" about the proposed Ross Valley Charter School. The ACLU based its opinion on "publicly available documents," not on promises, rumors and assurances. Why was the ACLU concerned?
The MAP program has a "troubling history of ... discrimination." Click here to read about the history of this group, here to read their own statements about their plan not to help negotiate a peace at Manor, but to organize and become a charter to avoid district regulation, and here to read the discrimination report.
As the ACLU says, "Rather than staying with Manor Elementary to make the MAP program more welcoming and responsive to the needs of English Language Learner students and students with disabilities, through the admission and enrollment procedures instituted by the District Superintendent, it appears that the leaders of MAP wish to export the exact program (and its students and teachers) that an independent investigator found was operating in a discriminatory manner into a Charter School which will necessarily have greater autonomy from District oversight (their emphasis)."
Note how MAP/RVC leaders are now discounting the ACLU with statements such as, "I normally like the ACLU, but they're wrong on this one." In other words, it's great for the ACLU to step in and help end discrimination and work for our constitutional rights in other places, but NOT IN MY BACKYARD! We're fine here - these aren't the droids you're looking for.
Discrimination is real, it is happening here, and we need to work on fixing it and healing our own community.
It makes no sense to continue to rely on promises and assurances from the MAP/RVC community, for as the ACLU says, "many of the leaders of the MAP program are now apparently proponents of the charter school."
Can't we just have ONE GREAT FAIRFAX SCHOOL FOR FAIRFAX KIDS?