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Common Dreams reports
The Seattle Times reports that
The ruling--believed to be one of the first of its kind in the country--overturns the law [I-1240] voters narrowly approved in 2012 allowing publicly funded, but privately operated, schools.
Teacher and author Mercedes Schneider offers more on the Act:
As is true of charter schools nationwide, the charters in Washington State (up to the current ruling) were eligible for public funding diverted from traditional public schools. Charter schools were approved via a November 2012 ballot initiative (I-1240, the Charter Schools Act) in which charters were declared to be "common schools" despite their not being subject to local control and local accountability. And also like America's charters in general, Washington's charters are not under the authority of elected school boards.
Thus, Washington voters had approved to give public money to private entities--a one-way street that provided no means for such funds to overseen by the public.
[...] The new ruling (pdf)[1] states that charters, "devoid of local control from their inception to their daily operation", cannot be classified as "common schools," nor have "access to restricted common school funding."
[...] "The Supreme Court has affirmed what we've said all along--charter schools steal money from our existing classrooms, and voters have no say in how these charter schools spend taxpayer funding," said Kim Mead, president of the [Washington Education Association], in a statement.
"Instead of diverting taxpayer dollars to unaccountable charter schools, it's time for the Legislature to fully fund K-12 public schools so that all of Washington's children get the quality education the Constitution guarantees them," Mead continued.
The Associated Press reports that the state had one charter school last year, and eight more have opened in the past few weeks.
I pity Ms. Schneider's students if she routinely starts sentences with conjunctions--especially consecutive, redundant conjunctions.
[1] I had trouble with the connection.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 07 2015, @11:05AM
Think again.
Firing Day at a Charter School [wordpress.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Informative) by albert on Monday September 07 2015, @05:06PM
OK, I read it.
That sounds kind of typical for education. Schools seems to attract small-minded paper pushers. It's just like how police departments attract bullies who love having power over others. What else is new, hmmm?
Nobody is forced to work there. This isn't slavery. Evidently, some people find the employment at that school to be a better deal than the employment at other places (school and otherwise) that they could get. Some people change their minds, as the author did. This isn't France you know. Employment-at-will has an obvious downside to go with all the upsides, the big upside being that employers are less hesitant to hire.
All of her complaints are pretty normal for unionized public schools as well, except that really old teachers would be more secure than the newest teachers. This is without regard to teaching quality. Due to union rules, she herself would be virtually guaranteed to be laid off if she worked at a public school because it is normal to lay off all the new teachers at the end of the year. This is because the union requires that new teachers be laid off first and requires that notice be given early, but the school doesn't actually know the next year's budget yet. Thus a public school lays off all the new teachers each spring, then usually hires many of them back later.