Regarding SABIS as a for-profit institution, that is not the concern of the Board of Education. Many of the reasons they decided not to renew SABIS’ charter in Massachusetts was due to corruption and lots of missing money, even after being given substantial amounts of time to bring their books to order. This is a completely legitimate concern for a project that handles taxpayer money, or for any investor, really. It’s one thing to get what you pay for, it’s another to pay double what you should.

Regarding SABIS’ treatment of children with special needs, all I have to say is, my regional manager insisted that learning disabilities do not exist because “everyone can learn with the point system” and that “dyslexia is a myth used for lazy children.”

You can read the recommendations for yourself if you wish. It’s available to the public
http://www.mass.gov/ig/publ/somcsex.htm

As someone who had taught in the system, I can tell you that I would never send my child there, and I would highly discourage anyone from working for them. If nothing else, working for SABIS has made me appreciate my own American public school education all the more.

The Brockton Enterprise article he cites (http://www.wickedlocal.com/brockton/news/education/x1783675118)
does a good job of summarizing the criticisms of SABIS’s proposal to create a charter school in Brockton.

The points are: (1) local officials fear losing funding to the school; (2) a union appointment to the BOE is “wary” of for-profit companies providing education; (3) SP Reville questioned the track record of the Springfield school; (4) SP Reville and Ruth Kaplan questioned the Springfield SABIS school’s dedication to special education and repeatedly mentioned a negative DOE report from 2004/5; and (5) SP Reville noted that SABIS’ copyright policy may be a “violation of the spirit of the law” that requires charter schools to share their programs with other public schools.

Ahem. A little throat clearing as this will take some time:
(1) The SABIS charter would have served primarily Brockton and Randolph. Even without a new charter these districts are in fiscal straits. Randolph, because of mismanagement, may go into state receivership. On a larger point, isn’t it a kid’s constitutional right to have access to a good education? I am concerned about that, not the “system” which is currently centered on the adult employment (and benefits) rather than the kids.
(2) There are only two for-profits in Massachusetts. SABIS is one of the longest serving in Massachusetts. It is an international company, with schools throughout the Middle East and the US. Solid. Good product. I am more concerned about the monopoly system we currently have than about the addition of a single for-profit (out of 60+ charters, and out of thousands of public schools in Massachusetts).
(3) Problems with SABIS’s performance? Hardly worth a response on the academic side of the ledger. It is one of Newsweek’s top high schools. SP Reville’s Rennie Center called it one of the top urban high schools in 2004.
(4) On the number of special education students in the Springfield SABIS school (again, not the proposed school): when you have a lottery, you cannot exactly replicate the district population. All of the issues raised in the critical Coordinated Program Review (CPR), which dated back to 2004/5 were, and DOE officials noted this at the BOE meeting, remediated. DOE sent an official letter to that effect well before the recent decision by the Board to turn down the SABIS charter in Brockton.
(5) This is a very curious issue. It has never been raised, and it is without logic. All districts buy copyrighted material. Think textbooks. Maps. AV materials. Public schools of all kinds are flush with copyrighted materials. The “spirit of the law” is that charters will share best practices not all materials.
Hope that’s specific enough. And I hope I did not bore you.