Cassandra Frazier, a Buena Vista High School graduate, found this news particularly disturbing. "My daughter Senethea, she expresses herself through art, through drawings," she said. "They need art teachers." When Buena Vista shut down this year, she immediately moved Senethea into Arthur Eddy Academy, a Saginaw school -- but now that school is closing, too. "I don't know where I'm going to send her," Frazier said. "I'm going to try to send her somewhere where she can wear a uniform. I hope they accept her, I hope I'm not too late."

Charter schools, like those represented by American Charter Education Services, are using the dissolution as an opportunity to recruit more students before the beginning of the school year. This Thursday, the group will organize a meeting at which parents can enroll their children in local charters, which are publicly funded but can be privately run. So far, about 15 charter schools have confirmed their participation in the meeting. "We want to let the parents know that they have a choice and don't have to stand by and have their kids shipped away to the new boundaries," said Josh Coggins, the group's CEO. "We hope to help with dispelling the myth of charter schools and letting them know that a charter school is a public school."

almost

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has found a great way to drum up business for charter schools: make it easier to close entire local school districts . That's what's happened in Buena Vista and Inkster, Michigan, leaving thousands of kids forced to either relocate to neighboring school districts or pick charter schools, and leaving hundreds of teachers without jobs—and, in some cases, without paychecks they earned. Most Buena Vista students are being sent to Saginaw, which has its own serious budget problems and is laying off its art teachers:Meanwhile, in Inkster, charter schools are moving in to offer a "choice":Of course, that's a choice engineered in part by an anti-public education, pro-charter governor: send your kid to another town, or go charter. It'sexactly like destroying public education was the game plan all along.

Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's news in education and labor.