North Carolina passes charter school law that critics say is intended to promote segregation
The North Carolina legislature has passed a controversial measure permitting four towns with mostly white populations to create their own charter schools, a move that critics say is intended to promote segregation.
The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP is threatening to sue the state over the law and over a proposed constitutional amendment requiring identification cards at the polls.
The charter school law will allow the mostly white towns of Cornelius, Huntersville, Matthews and Mint Hill outside Charlotte to create their own charter schools and limit the enrollment to families living within their borders. And state legislators agreed to allow municipalities across North Carolina to spend property taxes on local schools, a right that until now was reserved to counties and the state, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.
“Clearly, this is an effort to go back to the 1900s with Jim Crow where these enclaves for whites are being allowed to be set up,” Irv Joyner, a lawyer and the legal redress chair for the North Carolina NAACP, was quoted as saying by the Charlotte Post.
Supporters, including House bill sponsor Bill Brawley (R), say the charter school law gives flexibility to local communities that want to offer parents publicly funded education options. Critics say it is really a return to the days when some whites in the South resisted the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
The Brown decision declared as unconstitutional state laws allowing separate public schools for black and white students. Some whites in the South opened private schools or created white-only public school districts to skirt the law.
Still, progress was made toward school desegregation for decades after the ruling. But then some public schools began resegregating. One way, as explained in this Answer Sheet post, involves Continue Reading: North Carolina passes charter school law that critics say is intended to promote segregation - The Washington Post
