LYNN — District staff members across eight public schools gathered outside their respective facilities Monday morning for a stand-out protest opposing a potential expansion to the KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School.
The expansion would result in a budget cut of approximately $24 million annually for LPS, which equals 20% of the district’s total budget.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Evonne Alvarez, President of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts Jessica Tang, Lynn Teachers Union President Sheila O’Neil led the demonstration at Lynn Classical High School, along with Mayor Jared Nicholson. Teachers held signs that read “Lynn Public Schools and educators serve every student every day.”
The demonstrations come after KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School submitted an application to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to expand their charter by an additional 1,361 seats on Sept. 24.
According to Dr. Alvarez, who wrote a letter to BESE expressing the district’s strong opposition of the charter expansion, LPS serves more special education, housing insecure, low-income, and English Language Learning students than KIPP and the loss of the funds would be “devastating.”
“We will continue to make the case that our public schools, who welcome every student every day, should not lose critical funding in the interest of charter school expansion,” she said. “It is gratifying to see Lynn Public Schools and LTU staff unified in support of the work that is being done in our schools every day, and in opposition to an initiative that would result in a crippling reduction in resources,”
Tang said that is wrong to take from one person to give to another.
“The threat of the KIPP expansion would decimate the Lynn Public Schools and all the students that we’re trying to serve,” Tang said.
The loss in funding could directly lead to a loss of assets such as enrichment programs, electives, and teaching positions.
“We want the DESE Board to listen. We need equitable education for all students,” O’Neil said. “Not just Charter Schools.”
The district-wide standout purposefully coincided with the national deadline for public schools to utilize Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds before they are no longer available.
Nicholson described the potential expansion as “punishment” for LPS for the educational struggles it faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When the charter system was created, no one would have imagined a global pandemic and the kind of setback that would have been for our community,” Nicholson said. “And the fact that we’re about to be punished for the learning loss is unprecedented and unfair.”
Lynn Classical Teacher Sallie Mello partook in the protest as someone who has more than two decades of experience in the field of special education. She asserted that public school students should never have resources taken away from them.
Shortly after the demonstration, Ward 4 City Councilor Natasha Megie-Maddrey expressed her belief in a Facebook post that LPS’s poor academic performance is a reason for why the KIPP Academy Lynn Charter expansion is being considered, and that they should improve from within in order to justify stopping KIPP Academy from growing.
“Let’s not forget, KIPP is applying for more seats because LPS has fallen into the bottom 10%,” Megie-Maddrey said in a statement on Facebook. “Maybe the next letter that is sent out should be about how LPS is going to get out of the bottom 10%, how safety is going to be addressed, and how we will support all students that live in our community… We must not pit one school system against the other.”
