The Georgia Supreme Court holds the educational fate of nearly 15,000 public school students in its hands. As recently reported, the Supreme Court has decided to delay issuing an opinion in a lawsuit by seven local school districts to stop the state Charter Schools Commission from approving (and funding) charter schools that were not approved by a local district.
The legal issue is whether the Legislature overreached when it established a state-level charter school authorizer with the power to overrule local objections to a charter application. At base, however, the issue is over control of educational dollars and whether parents can affect the allocation of those dollars through their selection of a public school option.
While this delay is unusual, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given the significance of the case. In fact, the single most influential educational lawsuit in our country’s history —Brown vs. Board of Education — has a similar history. The U.S. Supreme Court originally heard Brown in the spring of 1953. Unable to decide the case, the court reheard the case in the fall of 1953 and ruled in 1954 that legally segregated public schools were inherently unequal under the Constitution. But it was not until 1955 that the court ordered Southern states to move “with all deliberate speed” to desegregate their public schools. Seeing an opportunity, most Southern states “deliberated” for years. This resistance achieved its intended aim: By 1964, a full 10 years after Brown, only 2 percent of black children in the South attended desegregated schools.
The significance of this history should not be lost on the state Supreme Court. The principal defendant in the lawsuit is Ivy Preparatory Academy, an all-girls charter in Gwinnett County. Ivy Prep is a high-performing open enrollment charter school serving a 94 percent minority population. Despite evidence that the achievement gap persists in Georgia, Ivy Prep is proving that demography is not destiny. All 306 students met or exceeded state standards on the state English/Language Arts exam in 2010, a rate that surpassed Gwinnett schools.
Of course, the commission lawsuit is not about academic achievement. It is about the allocation of school funding. The Georgia Charter Schools Act has permitted the establishment of charter schools not approved by a local school district since 2003. These so-called “State Chartered Special Schools” are approved by the state Board of Education over the objections of local districts. Local districts never complained about the existence of these schools. The reason is because state Chartered Special Schools created an effective subsidy for local districts. Though the schools enrolled local district students, they were funded based on state Quality Basic Education dollars only. This resulted in state Chartered Special Schools receiving approximately $3,500/per pupil annually in a state where the average expenditure is $8,761. This disparity was a driving factors behind the commission.
While the debate rages, one thing is clear. The court should rule, and soon. The delay signals that the justices are likely split on the outcome. If the court rules in favor of the commission, business will continue as it has for the past two years. If it rules against the commission, there will likely be an effort to amend the constitution to provide a funding mechanism.
In any event, thousands of parents and students are deciding right now whether to enroll in a commission charter school. Only the court can tell them if they can.
Andrew Broy is president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and a former associate state superintendent for the Georgia Department of Education.
About the Author
