Kindergarten Lawyers

Kudos to this law firm for starting a charter school!  The Chairman of Democrats for Education Reform, Kevin Chavous, works at this firm and is on the board of the school.

The nation has 3,617 charter schools, that is, ones that get public funding but stand outside the established public school systems. They are usually run by nonprofits, church groups or universities and get to set their own rules. The one in North Lawndale has a most unusual operator--a law firm. To celebrate its hundredth anniversary, Chicago’s Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal decided to open a school and will donate $1 million, office equipment and professional talent over the next five years (the school’s annual budget is $1.2 million). It’s quite likely the first law firm in the nation to run a charter school, and the firm’s lawyers found the assignment no snap: They struggled to surmount hurdles thrown up by bureaucrats and politicians.

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Kindergarten Lawyers
Mary Ellen Egan 03.13.06, Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2006/0313/096.html

A well-heeled Chicago law firm undertakes to discover whether charter schools can work for poor minority children

Anissa Smith, a 38-year-old mother of three, has few good things to say about the public schools in North Lawndale, a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood 4 miles west of downtown Chicago. Her eldest son, Joe, 13, switched to North Lawndale’s Mason Elementary in 1998 from a parochial school. Two years at Mason was enough to turn her son from a good to an indifferent student, Smith says. “He’s lazy now, and we have to fight to get him to do his homework,” she says.

So when Smith’s two youngest, Justin, 6, and Jazlynn, 4, were ready for school, she swore she’d move out of state before sending them to a neighborhood school. But last August a charter school opened, using classrooms in Mason’s building. The kids enrolled, and Smith is ecstatic now...