The AP reports that a King County Superior Court judge is scheduled to hear oral arguments today over the constitutionality of Washington’s new charter school law.
The case is being brought by the teachers unions acting with “coalition of parents, educators and community groups.” Whis is NOT represented .. parents who want to be able to control their children’s education without becoming Catholics. Jews, or evangelicals so they can send their kids to those school. These parents also lack the dollars for the elite private schools so may of Seattle’s middle class kids attend.
This “coalition of parents, educators and community groups.” say that charters violate the state Constitution by diverting public school dollars to private organizations that are not subject to voter control. Somehow, they see this as s way of the state’s constitutional obligation to pay for public schools. Of course this is nonsense. Schools …e sp the more successful schools .. are often led by a local coalitions of PA and teacher activists. Even Seattle, a rare American system without an elite central high school, has offered programs that are as parent specific as the African American Academy and the Individual Progress Program. The image these parents, and the unions, back is frighteningly close to the image of a schools system run centrally by the unions themselves.
This srot of action is the left’s equivalent of Tea Party selfishness. Outlawing the use of public funds to support schools run by parent groups … always following district wide criteria for what must e taught and always open to all children, is way of saying that the ruling class can send ITS kids to Lakeside but poor folk have to make do with whatever the school board decries.