Dear John,
So you got the Education Amendment Bill passed and Kiwi charter schools are now all go go go. Nice work.
It was a good move to get your pal Catherine Isaac to chair the panel so it could ignore all advice and submissions and push the legislation through. Clever.
And a big high five for getting The Maori Party to fall for it. Hahahaha, I did have a good titter at that one.
So funny that they forgot that you said quite proudly on TV that “If we continue the bankrupt response of just paying young Polynesian, young Maori men in South Auckland the dole to sit in front of TV, smoke marijuana, watch pornography and plan more drug offending and more burglaries, then we’re going to have them coming through our windows regardless of whether we live in Epsom or anywhere else in greater Auckland.“
Pfffst, it’s not your fault if they don’t remember stuff like that. Losers.
Anyway, I’m fairly sure that every Maori or Polynesian man in South Auckland is stoked to hear you are so keen to save them, so let’s get cracking and set up this school.
The John Banks School for Errant Maori and Polynesian South Auckland Lads (Ltd)
Now I know what you’re thinking, John. You’re worrying that you don’t have any background in education. But it’s okay – you don’t have to be trained in education to run or work in charter schools. You don’t need to have even taught. No, nothing at all. You just have to convince the panel to say yes to your plan, and seeing as we’ve got Catherine and Hekia on our side and Ministry staff fearing who is next for the chop, I’d say we’re pretty much in!
Lucky that.
Johnny (can I call you Johnny?) can you believe that we make up our own curriculum, our own school day and term times, and not have to prove any of it works or is for a good reason. We can pretty much do whatever we like. And for the teachers we just have to hire some warm bodies to teach lessons they’ve printed off the internet – they’ll be way cheaper than those folk who wasted years training for the job and do their own lesson planning. We’ll save a fortune and make a killing!
By the way, what’s ‘differentiation’? I heard that mentioned by some militant teacher type on TV last week. If you get a second, Google it, would you?
It doesn’t matter really though, because so long as we put out good press releases and cool glossy brochures everyone will think we are fabulous. The South Auckland lads will never notice – far too drugged up. No it’s true, I heard a prominent politician say so on TV.
Aww Thanks Di, it’s a lovely idea – but is there any money in it?
Oh yes, John, there really is!
We get a nice handout from the government of hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up the premises – and we don’t have to return a red cent of it if we close the school. Stop laughing, I’m serious. Really.
I think we should maybe choose one of those well kitted out schools in Christchurch that are about to become available. I’ve heard one of them has a $1 million plus upgrade just 2 years ago, and I bet we can get it mega cheap.
What else? Well the students will be funded as decile 3, and the funding for things like special needs and ICT won’t have to be spent on those actual things so we can do with that whatever we like! We don’t need to bother with those pesky tricky things Dyslexia or Autism or speaking Te Reo or Samoan or anything. Yeah, nah, just filter out anyone like that (like lots of the US charters do) and we can keep the cheaper kids. The public system can get the more difficult ones back – that’ll be a hoot. Our results will look better and the state school’s will look worse. Take that trained teachers. Hahaha, such fun!
Oh lord, I just thought, what if we get hungry kids? Can you get your staff to whip up some eggs bene for them to share? No? Oh man, well best get that Weetbix lined up, then. But still send the eggs – we claim that on expenses. I doubt we would we have to declare it, eh?
Money money money … it’s a rich man’s world
I’ve had another great idea:
Maybe we could call this principal in the UK who used school money to hire her mates, claimed expenses multiple times from different organisations, gave contracts to businesses she was close to, and used funds to pay for private taxis costing well over $6000. She’d be able to give us tips for making the most of those tax dollars!
It’s okay, we can do all that and everyone will still think we are fabulous. I mean to say, that teacher was named Head Teacher of the Year at the 2007 Teaching Awards and appointed CBE, so all good. I’ll get our people to talk to her people.
If she’s unavailable, we could call the guys who conned US$17 million from Oregon. They were super clever – they pretended their chain of charter schools schools was not for-profit (aww bless their faux charitable socks) and then “submitted false, incomplete and misleading records about how many students were enrolled in the schools and how they were spending the state’s money.”
You’ve got to laugh.
What if we’re rumbled?
No, don’t worry about that. When charter school fraudsters are investigated they don’t hang about. Once the cash cow is rumbled we could just close the school like these guys. Overheads would be gone immediately and we can skedaddle with the school EFTPOS card. It’d leave students with nowhere to go, but hey ho.
Man alive! Google threw me 2.8 million hits for “charter school fraud” so we’d have to be careful in case anyone is onto this scam.
Look at these idiots…
- The FBI report that Dorothy June Brown and four other school executives were “charged with defrauding three charter schools of more than $6.5 million between 2007 and April 2011.”
- a Charter Head in Brooklyn New York was indicted for fraud
- California Charter Schools executives “misused at least $25.6 million in public education funds, including $2.6 million for personal expenses.”
If we were investigated, do you think you could get one of the boys to nudge the right fella, tip the wink, whip out the handshake and so on, so the police don’t investigate? Chur.
Anyway no, no, don’t think about that. Easy solution… if the crap hits the fan and anyone tries to get the facts out we can just say it’s all daft leftie mudslinging and get one of our blogger mates to bash them on their blog. By all accounts, they wouldn’t charge us too much for that.
So what do you think, Banksy? Shall we do it? You and me?
The John Banks School for Errant Maori and Polynesian South Auckland Lads (Ltd)?
I await your reply with eager anticipation.
~Dianne
Great post. Shame on all politicians who supported this legislation. One of the most destructive and damaging changes to education in this country, ever.
You forgot to go into the curriculum. “to teach lessons they’ve printed off the internet”? Oh no, there’s some useful information on the Intenrnet. Charter School teachers can all teach that Jesus may have ridden on dinosaurs.
Yes, lots of great stuff is on the internet, but it still needs to be chosen careful, differentiated for your own students’ needs, etc etc and can’t be just plucked off willy nilly. My own son had a lesson like that – paid for at a holiday programme for bright children – and it was so dire we walked out. All lessons, even if found in a book or on the internet, need to be adapted for the children they are aimed at. My point in the article is that I doubt someone with no training could do that well.
Dinosaurs? Dinosaurs? No no no! Six days my friend. That’s all it took. Dinosaurs are a commie unionist drug fiendish con-trick just to plant seeds of doubt in young impressionable minds!
This is so well written! Love it and will share it on Facebook.Thank you
Brilliantly written, Dianne.
Yes, I concur; trying to teach children with untrained people, lifting stuff of the internet, is just balmy. If Labour had pulled a strunt like this, Key would be all over it, calling it “dopey”.
I now await for the MSM to pick up on all these stories and present a cogent report on Charter School failures around the world…
I’m looking forward to starting my Cheezburger charter school, in which the entire curriculum is based on lolcat pictures and videos.
I enjoyed the bit about John Banks charter school. It’s starting to sound like Mt Eden Prison which is now a privately run “Charter Prison.”
Apparently they received about $2m from the tax payer for cultural and education courses for a 9 month period for the inmates. At least one tutor had his stopped after only 3 months of a 9 month contract. He received no reply when he asked about the 6 months left. As it is privately run there’s no recourse. Is that how John Banks charter schools going to operate? And is that where the profit is going to be made?
Comments are closed.