Slog
News & ArtsWednesday, February 27, 2013
Education / Olympia Coalition Asks Attorney General Bob Ferguson to Challenge Charter Schools Initiative on Constitutional Grounds
Posted by Goldy on Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 3:04 PM
A coalition including the League of Women Voters, the Washington Education Association, and El Centro de la Raza, sent a letter to Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson today, requesting that he institute legal proceedings to remedy constitutional violations that arise from I-1240, the charter schools initiative:
Specifically, the Charter School Act improperly diverts public school funds to private non-profits in violation of the Washington Constitution and is otherwise unconstitutional on multiple grounds...
The letter, drafted by attorneys at the Pacifica Law Group, enunciates at least seven areas in which the Charter School Act violates the state constitution. I've yet to read through the cited case law, so I'm not yet in a position to evaluate the strength of these arguments, but on the surface several of them sound fairly compelling. More later, after I've had a chance to read this through.
I've got a request into the AG's office to talk to Ferguson about the prospects of challenging the initiative, but the request certainly puts him in a difficult place. Part of his job as AG is to defend to state law, and the Charter Schools Act is now state law. Considering what's at stake, if there are strong arguments it's hard to imagine that somebody doesn't sue, but it will be curious to see how this ultimately plays out.
3
Didn't we know it was going to be unconstitutional before all this? The state constitution seems clear but I'm no lawyer.
4
Finally!
Otherwise we'd be seeing something like this on Slog soon..
http://www.azcentral.com/insiders/ejmont…
Charter schools help line the pockets of many legislators and their buddies in both AZ and Utah. AZ has had charter schools for 20 years and they still don't have any control over where the money goes, how it is spent, etc. Same with Utah. 1240 had even less accountability, despite what the "proponents" claimed.
Then there's Florida, where charter schools are pretty much fly-by-night operations. Open a school, get the money and run like hell, leaving students and teachers in a lurch. Even criminals can open charter schools or start tutoring services (another privatization ploy Bush put into NCLB) in Florida. What a fucking joke.
Otherwise we'd be seeing something like this on Slog soon..
http://www.azcentral.com/insiders/ejmont…
Charter schools help line the pockets of many legislators and their buddies in both AZ and Utah. AZ has had charter schools for 20 years and they still don't have any control over where the money goes, how it is spent, etc. Same with Utah. 1240 had even less accountability, despite what the "proponents" claimed.
Then there's Florida, where charter schools are pretty much fly-by-night operations. Open a school, get the money and run like hell, leaving students and teachers in a lurch. Even criminals can open charter schools or start tutoring services (another privatization ploy Bush put into NCLB) in Florida. What a fucking joke.
5
@3 - Seems pretty clear to me:
"The legislature shall provide for a general and uniform system of public schools...the entire revenue derived from the common school fund and the state tax for common schools shall be exclusively applied to the support of the common schools."
"The legislature shall provide for a general and uniform system of public schools...the entire revenue derived from the common school fund and the state tax for common schools shall be exclusively applied to the support of the common schools."
6
But are charter schools "common schools"? That's one issue.
As The Slog previously presented a UW law professor (specialty: Washington state law) who explained at least three ways the law appears unconstitutional, it would seem this initiative is problematic.
Good for them; I support this effort. Ferguson wants to sit on his hands, fine. See you in court.
As The Slog previously presented a UW law professor (specialty: Washington state law) who explained at least three ways the law appears unconstitutional, it would seem this initiative is problematic.
Good for them; I support this effort. Ferguson wants to sit on his hands, fine. See you in court.
7
Charter schools claim to be public schools when they want money. When they have to account for the money, then they claim to be separate from the public system and aren't subject to the same rules and regulations, like publishing the salaries of teachers and administrators paid with PUBLIC TAX DOLLARS the way public schools and state universities have to. They can't have it both ways.
10
@8 you are confusing capitalism with democracy. Charter schools are all about capitalism. Free market, neoliberal ideology, not democracy.
11
@8: I don't know which way I feel about charter schools overall. I see valid arguments for both sides. That's not the question on my mind right now. What's bugging me is that they seems prima facie unconstitutional in WA. Since we do live in a constitutional republic with certain democratic processes, that means the law as a whole needs to meet the standard of the constitution. This one does not appear to do so.
12
I'm a liberal and I find it so funny how liberals are as reflexively anti-choice in education as conservatives are in reproduction.
The idea that charters are operated by people who are demonstrably more or less self-interested than the people who operate public schools is as reality based as young-earth creationism and the notion of a zygote that deserves full civil rights.
Parents and kids deserve choices in education. Many low and middle income families across the nation are profoundly grateful for their local charter schools, because they give them alternatives to the unsatisfactory schools they would otherwise be forced to use.
Those are objective facts. You can ignore them in your prejudiced devotion to your ideology, but that makes you conservatives, not liberals at all.
The idea that charters are operated by people who are demonstrably more or less self-interested than the people who operate public schools is as reality based as young-earth creationism and the notion of a zygote that deserves full civil rights.
Parents and kids deserve choices in education. Many low and middle income families across the nation are profoundly grateful for their local charter schools, because they give them alternatives to the unsatisfactory schools they would otherwise be forced to use.
Those are objective facts. You can ignore them in your prejudiced devotion to your ideology, but that makes you conservatives, not liberals at all.
13
The "choice" argument is a red herring.
The truth is that charter schools may have been a good idea at one time. As originally conceived, they were meant to be a part of the public system, functioning much as magnet schools do, catering to a type of student that might do well in a less traditional type of setting. Unfortunately the capitalists got ahold of the charter school idea and twisted it with their free market ideology, and now you have charter schools competing against public schools, with the charter schools having an unfair advantage, mainly that they don't have to play by the rules.
Choice? Choice in Florida means public money is being spent on advertising for charter schools, where they promise enrolling students an Xbox or a laptop or an iPad to enroll. Then the school closes 3 months after it opens, the administrator takes the money and runs, and the kids end up back in the public school system having missed several months of instructional time, meaning when it comes to test time, they're not going to make it, and the public school gets sanctioned AGAIN (plus the kids are returned to the public system without funds following them, so the public school - already strapped for cash, now has to try to cover the increased enrollment and make up for the missing instruction. Choice in Lousiana means public money is used to send kids to charters where creationism is taught. Choice in Arizona is used to line the pockets of crooked operators, who get their sports teams and rich society people to give loads of private money (for a tax write-off, no less), then use as little of both the public and private funds to educate kids (only the ones they've recruited - the ones who are already good at school and test-taking so they can have an inexperienced teacher who is cheap and it won't matter) and pocket the rest so they can build themselves $28 million dollar mansions in Florida. Oh wait - the mansion was the charter operator out of Pennsylvania, who is making tons of money bilking the public system.
You did not present any objective facts, @12. You simply repeated what the DFER and Students First/Last proclaim as the reason they want to destroy the public system (only they leave out that last little part). So YOU can ignore your prejudiced devotion to a lack of knowledge about charter schools.
Want proof that what I say is based on fact? Try Google. Charter school scandals, charter school fraud, Gulen charter schools, misuse of funds, charter school abruptly closes - all of those will return a myriad of news stories on past and current charter school fiascos.
Want true peer-reviewed research (not the ideological think tank bullshit that the Ed Deformers like to trumpet out on Friday afternoons)? Try AERA, EPAA, NEPC - all of whom have produced peer reviewed studies on charter schools. NEPC even will go through the fallacies in the think-tank "research", pointing out statistical errors, conclusions that are falsely drawn from the data reported, cherry-picked data, even falsified data. When you've read some of those, then we can talk about where the true ideology of "choice" comes from.
More...
The truth is that charter schools may have been a good idea at one time. As originally conceived, they were meant to be a part of the public system, functioning much as magnet schools do, catering to a type of student that might do well in a less traditional type of setting. Unfortunately the capitalists got ahold of the charter school idea and twisted it with their free market ideology, and now you have charter schools competing against public schools, with the charter schools having an unfair advantage, mainly that they don't have to play by the rules.
Choice? Choice in Florida means public money is being spent on advertising for charter schools, where they promise enrolling students an Xbox or a laptop or an iPad to enroll. Then the school closes 3 months after it opens, the administrator takes the money and runs, and the kids end up back in the public school system having missed several months of instructional time, meaning when it comes to test time, they're not going to make it, and the public school gets sanctioned AGAIN (plus the kids are returned to the public system without funds following them, so the public school - already strapped for cash, now has to try to cover the increased enrollment and make up for the missing instruction. Choice in Lousiana means public money is used to send kids to charters where creationism is taught. Choice in Arizona is used to line the pockets of crooked operators, who get their sports teams and rich society people to give loads of private money (for a tax write-off, no less), then use as little of both the public and private funds to educate kids (only the ones they've recruited - the ones who are already good at school and test-taking so they can have an inexperienced teacher who is cheap and it won't matter) and pocket the rest so they can build themselves $28 million dollar mansions in Florida. Oh wait - the mansion was the charter operator out of Pennsylvania, who is making tons of money bilking the public system.
You did not present any objective facts, @12. You simply repeated what the DFER and Students First/Last proclaim as the reason they want to destroy the public system (only they leave out that last little part). So YOU can ignore your prejudiced devotion to a lack of knowledge about charter schools.
Want proof that what I say is based on fact? Try Google. Charter school scandals, charter school fraud, Gulen charter schools, misuse of funds, charter school abruptly closes - all of those will return a myriad of news stories on past and current charter school fiascos.
Want true peer-reviewed research (not the ideological think tank bullshit that the Ed Deformers like to trumpet out on Friday afternoons)? Try AERA, EPAA, NEPC - all of whom have produced peer reviewed studies on charter schools. NEPC even will go through the fallacies in the think-tank "research", pointing out statistical errors, conclusions that are falsely drawn from the data reported, cherry-picked data, even falsified data. When you've read some of those, then we can talk about where the true ideology of "choice" comes from.
14
Just a little taste of the fun:
The Gaddie family reflects how family ties can run deep at charter schools.
Happy Valley School in Peoria has a three-member non-profit board made up entirely of Gaddie family members, according to the most recent federal tax return. Ernest Gaddie is president. His wife, Delite Gaddie, is secretary, and their son, Glen Gaddie, is a board member. Glen also serves on the school’s governing board along with three other people.
For several years, the school has contracted with Gaddie Curriculum & Education Consulting, a business owned by Ernest and Delite Gaddie. The company provides business consulting, maintenance and operations services and licenses curriculum to the school, according to tax returns and audits. Ernest and Delite created the curriculum while at a private, back-to-basics school they ran in Mesa in the 1970s. They own the copyrights and update the materials from time to time, according to an audit.
From fiscal 2007 through 2011, Gaddie Curriculum was paid $475,433 for various services, tax returns say. In 2011, the non-profit also began contracting with a landscaping service owned by the son and grandson of the board members, paying $21,600 that year.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2…
The Gaddie family reflects how family ties can run deep at charter schools.
Happy Valley School in Peoria has a three-member non-profit board made up entirely of Gaddie family members, according to the most recent federal tax return. Ernest Gaddie is president. His wife, Delite Gaddie, is secretary, and their son, Glen Gaddie, is a board member. Glen also serves on the school’s governing board along with three other people.
For several years, the school has contracted with Gaddie Curriculum & Education Consulting, a business owned by Ernest and Delite Gaddie. The company provides business consulting, maintenance and operations services and licenses curriculum to the school, according to tax returns and audits. Ernest and Delite created the curriculum while at a private, back-to-basics school they ran in Mesa in the 1970s. They own the copyrights and update the materials from time to time, according to an audit.
From fiscal 2007 through 2011, Gaddie Curriculum was paid $475,433 for various services, tax returns say. In 2011, the non-profit also began contracting with a landscaping service owned by the son and grandson of the board members, paying $21,600 that year.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2…
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