My six year old son is being abused. Not by a parent or a by a care giver, but by a school system that has found a way to benefit financially from willful neglect. He attends a charter school in Pasco county, Countryside Montessori Elementary. The school has policies that create a stage for fraud that is masked beneath a broken financial system operating on an already starving educational budget. As a parental unit we need to know where to go to protect our child from this abuse. With over 30 years of experience and degrees in education we are embarrassed that it has taken this personal affront to raise these questions that even we can not answer.
Montessori as an ideology and school is an amazing environment for children. The belief system is that every child can learn. We sent our son to a school we believed followed Montessoris practice of helping each child grow toward independence by building confidence, competence, self-esteem and respect for others. This particular school is not upholding this belief system or, as it turns out, any respect for the public funds that go toward keeping the school up and running.