The Urban League of Greater Madison ran into its first significant roadblock in its quest for an all-boys charter school last month. The Department of Public Instruction did not approve a planning grant application for the proposed 300-student school, Madison Prep, due to legal concerns about gender discrimination. But it didn’t deny the application either.

Instead, members of the Department of Public Instruction met with the Madison Metropolitan School District officials and Urban League/Madison Prep officials to discuss ways in which the district could provide educational services to girls “comparable” to those being proposed by Madison Prep. According to an e-mail sent out by Urban League President Kaleem Caire today, the department has determined that if they open a girls’ school at the same time as the boys’ school then the letter of the law will be satisfied.

But the Madison School Board must first approve that proposal before the department considers releasing the 3-year planning grant. Back in March the board voted to approve the proposal, but with several strongly worded reservations, including the concern about exposure to gender discrimination lawsuits. Other concerns involved Madison Prep’s insistence on using non-union teachers, and how to raise the $4 million a year to fund the school, including $240,000 salaries for the top two administrators in a climate of massive budget cuts.

The campaign for Madison Prep has been aggressively pursued in the media for the past year. Kaleem Caire takes every opportunity to talk about the achievement gap between African American and white kids, low high school graduation rates for kids of color, and the school-to-prison pipeline: All are real conditions in our community. He then asserts that Madison Prep is going to address these issues, without showing any convincing data that this will be the case. He blames teachers and the inflexibility of their union contracts for the problems, once even asserting that two-thirds of the teachers in Madison schools don’t care about black boys.

Controversy about the proposal has been kept largely under wraps because there have never been any open community discussions about the proposal or what cutting $4 million (over $9 million if you add in the girls’ school) out of the Madison Metropolitan School District general budget would mean for the quality of education for the 8,000 African American kids who are NOT fortunate enough to be selected to attend Madison Prep. The Urban League has hosted a number of tightly controlled presentations, but it has not allowed dissenting viewpoints to be debated.

It pulled the most bizarre PR stunt this week sending out an e-mail and press release saying that the US Department of Justice had taken an interest in achievement gap issues in Madison and a staff member from the Community Relations Service was coming to “facilitate” between the District and the community. Neither Kaleem Caire nor the Superintendent of Madison Schools nor the Department of Justice would say how this process was initiated or by whom. A “listening session” for parents of African American and other students of color was held last night at the Urban League offices, and members of the press, including bloggers, were not allowed in the room.

As a parent of three African American kids in the District, two of whom are boys who graduated on time, one of whom is in middle school, I felt perfectly comfortable in attending. It turned out that most of the 100 – 120 people in the room did not actually have kids in the Madison schools. Many were employees of the Urban League or businesses that support Madison Prep. It also turned out that only a select few bloggers and other people perceived to not be supporters of Madison Prep were told to leave. Kaleem Caire even told one person that if he sat down in the room the meeting would be cancelled! The people who write for Urban League-friendly publications were not asked to leave, however.

Kaleem Caire opened the meeting by saying, “We had the opportunity to talk to the Department of Justice about supporting us to move toward a change agenda more rapidly than is usual in Madison.” He reiterated that he did not want the press there because, “We can’t facilitate our changes through the media.” A rich irony coming from a man who has used the media as frequently and deftly as he has done over the past year to promote his project!

He also noted that press coverage could lead to “restricting the resources you get, and it allows for whisper campaigns behind your back.” I would note that when you don’t allow for open discussion of your public education project in public, whisper campaigns and skeptical press are the natural outcome. Before he handed the session over to the Department of Justice person, Caire asked everyone to pledge to not speak to any of the members of the press when they left the room and to indicate their pledge by raising their hands. I was among a dozen or so with hands planted firmly in lap. I may have even let out a cry of “that’s crazy!” under my breath.

The Department of Justice official explained the shadowy, confidential nature of the Community Relations Service to the audience by describing the kinds of situations it intervenes in, mostly having to do with hate crimes and rioting. He said in no uncertain terms, “We are not here to do an investigation,” and even asked for the audience members to repeat the sentence with him. He then went on to ask for people to respect the confidentiality of those raising issues, and laid out the structure of the meeting: 30 minutes for listing problems relating to the achievement gap and 45 minutes generating solutions.

I will respect the confidentiality of the content of the meeting by not repeating it. However, I will say that what was said in that room was no different that what has been said at countless other open, public meetings with the School District and in community groups on the same topic, the only difference being that there were far fewer parents in the room and few if any teachers.

It turned out that the Department of Justice secretive meeting was a convenient way to pack the house with a captive audience for yet another infomercial about Madison Prep. Kaleem Caire adjourned the one meeting and immediately convened an Urban League meeting where he gave his Madison Prep sales pitch yet again. About 1/3 of the audience left at that point.

The Madison Metropolitan School Board has called a special meeting this afternoon to discuss the new Urban League proposal to start a girls’ school in tandem with the original project. Nobody from the Urban League will be able to attend that meeting, however, due to a previously scheduled “major fundraising event” for Madison Prep. Oh, hubris!

Rebecca Kemble is an Anthropologist who studied decolonization in Kenya. She serves on the Board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and as the President of the Dane County TimeBank.