Georgia Supreme Court Attacks Children and Private Profit?
By now it’s old news, but the Georgia Supreme Court recently struck down, in a 4-to-3 decision, a law allowing a special statewide commission to approve and finance charter schools, even over the objections of local school boards. Charter advocates, corporate education vultures, and astroturf parent power groups have all got their panties in a bunch claiming this is an attack on kids and families and their right to a quality alternative to the dysfunctional public schools (and an unfair intrusion on entrepreneurs’ right to earn a profit selling educational services).
Charter schools are not just big money for for-profit educational management organizations and they are more than just a way to weaken teachers unions. They also reduce community control over local school systems. In many states, including Georgia, state law grants local school boards the authority to open and finance schools. When states impose charter schools on districts, regardless of whether those schools are profit-driven, they supercede the authority of local school boards. They also divert local tax dollars that had been earmarked for the