Georgia Court Decision Puts Future of 17 Charter Schools in Doubt

NYT:

In a 24-page ruling, Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein said that only local boards of education were empowered by Georgia’s Constitution to open and finance public schools. As a result, Justice Hunstein wrote, the 2008 law granting those powers to the statewide commission was unlawful. A 74-page dissenting opinion argued that the ruling “wiped away a small but important effort to improve public education in Georgia.”

Over the past decade and a half, school boards across Georgia have authorized more than 150 charter schools to operate; those were unaffected by the court’s ruling. But some local boards had repeatedly refused to authorize charter schools, and the 2008 law was intended to give charter sponsors another path to state authorization.

Seven school districts sued in 2009, arguing that the commission was using local tax dollars to finance the new schools without consulting taxpayers.

Todd Ziebarth, a vice president at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said that a half-dozen states and the District of Columbia had set up charters authorizing commissions like Georgia’s, and that similar efforts were under way in four others.

Because states’ charter school laws differ, the Georgia ruling would not have a direct bearing, he said.

“But if people who aren’t big fans of charter schools are looking for a way to stop their growth, they may think, ‘Hey, if we can’t kill them in the Legislature, we can try to kill them in the courtroom,’ ” he said.