Georgia Schools Superintendent John Barge has stepped in offering state help to campuses potentially disbanded by a Supreme Court ruling overturning the charter schools commission.
Barge offered the assistance after the Georgia Supreme Court, in a ruling issued Monday, determined that local boards of education have the sole power to fund and open public charter schools, an opinion that could derail the education of thousands of students. The Supreme Court of Georgia ruled 4-to-3 to strike down as unconstitutional a 2008 Act that authorized creation of a new kind of state charter school called “commission charter schools.”
Georgia has 17 commission charter schools, several of which were anticipating opening their doors in August.
The charter schools could apply for status as state-chartered special schools and keep their doors open. The deadline to open schools in August under that designation has passed, but the state could rush through applications if the state Board of Education agreed to it.
"With today's Supreme Court ruling against the legality of the Charter Schools Commission, the state stands ready to help in whatever way necessary to ensure that the education of the students in these schools is not compromised," said Superintendent Barge. "I will be working closely with the State Board of Education to see what flexibility can be offered for these schools."
Commission charter schools are fully funded like other public schools with federal, state and a matching share of local education dollars carved from the state allocations of the districts students leave. Opening as a state chartered special school would take away the approximate local share the campuses receive as commission charter schools. That local share, which accounts for about half of a commission charter school's funding, was being withheld from the state allocations of the districts that charter students leave. As state special schools, the charters would only receive state and federal dollars. For some schools, the money may not be enough to open the doors and offer the programs they intended.
Lawyers for the seven school districts that launched the lawsuit have said the local share allocation is "illegal" because it was not approved by the voters. The case pit Gwinnett, Bulloch, Candler, DeKalb, Griffin-Spalding and Henry county schools and Atlanta Public Schools against the commission and the state school board.
The high court decided that the charter schools did not fit the definition of “special schools” as envisioned in the state Constitution and should not receive funding. The landmark case is the first to rule on the constitutionality of an alternate authorizer of charter schools that has already opened campuses that are educating students.
Under the current Constitution, which voters approved in 1983, local school boards have exclusive authority to create and maintain K-12 public education, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein writes for the majority. The Constitution only allows the state government to create “special schools.” Yet in the 2008 Act, the State authorized the “Georgia Charter Schools Commission,” whose members are appointed by state officials, to approve petitions for a new type of general K-12 public school known as a “commission charter school.”
“Because our constitution embodies the fundamental principle of exclusive local control of general primary and secondary (“K-12”) public education, and the Act clearly and palpably violates Art. VIII, Sec. V, Par. VII (a) by authorizing a State commission to establish competing State-created general K-12 schools under the guise of being ‘special schools,’ we reverse,” the 24-page majority opinion states.
A similar constitutional challenge in Florida disbanded the alternate authorizing agency, the Florida Schools of Excellence.
Bruce Brown, attorney for the commission charter schools, said that the commission may ask the high court for a rare reconsideration in the case. Legislators also may step in.
"The dissent appears to be inviting the charter schools to file a motion for reconsideration," Brown said. "We will be in the next few days considering that option carefully."
Legislators also may step in. "It is not clear whether additional legislation or a constitutional amendment would be required."
Calls to the commission's executive director Mark Peevy went unanswered early Monday.
The two-year legal battle launched by seven local districts began in 2009 when the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, a state board, got into the business of approving and funding neighborhood schools that were denied by local school boards.
Legal briefs supporting the arguments of the local school districts were filed by the Georgia School Superintendents Association and the Georgia School Boards Association. The Georgia Charter Schools Association filed a dissenting brief supporting the authority of the charter commission and a family's right to school choice.
Georgia's charter school law, which allows the state to give rejected charter petitions a second look, has been viewed as among the country's most progressive. It helped Georgia to win $400 million in federal Race to the Top grant funds promoting innovation in education.
Legal briefs supporting the arguments of the local school districts were filed by the Georgia School Superintendents Association and the Georgia School Boards Association. The Georgia Charter Schools Association filed a dissenting brief supporting the authority of the charter commission and a family's right to school choice.
Georgia's charter school law, which allows the state to give rejected charter petitions a second look, has been viewed as among the country's most progressive. It helped Georgia to win $400 million in federal Race to the Top grant funds promoting innovation in education and it made the state a national leader in school choice.
But leaders of some of the state's largest school systems maintained the 2008 Georgia law creating the charter commission is unconstitutional. Georgia is one of only a handful of states with a constitution that gives school boards franchise authority to "establish and maintain" schools. The Georgia Constitution does allow the Legislature to create "special schools."
The commission has approved 17 schools -- nine of which currently serve students and anticipate a combined enrollment of more than 15,000 students in the fall. They operate as school systems.
The state's 121 charter schools -- most approved by local boards -- educate more than 62,300 students, about 4 percent of all Georgia students. The public school campuses promise the state they'll produce results in student achievement in exchange for flexibility from certain state education mandates. Charter students take state standardized tests and do not pay tuition.
During the legal battle in Fulton Superior Court, lawyers for the state and commission schools argued that charter schools are by definition "special" because they must receive permission to act outside the realm of traditional schools to boost student achievement. Some offer programs targeting the arts, math and science and leadership development. The nation's first charter school opened in 1992.
But Mike Bowers, attorney for Gwinnett Schools, argued that only schools for disabled students were considered as "special schools" in 1983 when that provision was written in the state constitution.
Ivy Preparatory Academy of Norcross, for example, receives about $1 million from the local school districts its students left. Enrollment at the girls' school is expected to climb to more than 600 next fall when a ninth grade is added. It will be the school's fourth year open.
Ivy Prep held a lottery to select a new class of sixth graders and has submitted a plan for two more locations even as a the case threatened to shut down the school. The school petitioned Gwinnett County Public Schools to open two more locations -- a K-12 campus for girls and a school for boys. That petition will be considered at Thursday's school board meeting.
“As long as parents want their children to attend Ivy Prep, we will be here,” Gilbert said in the weeks before the opinion was released. “Every year we have over 100 students on a waitlist. The demand continues to increase each year.”
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