Backers of a constitutional amendment supporting charter schools outspent opponents more than 10 to 1 last fall, with most of the money coming from out-of-state advocates and businesses that make money off of such schools, year-end records show.
Amendment One – which set up another pathway to create charter schools – was approved 59 percent to 41 percent in November after a months-long campaign that pitted the governor, Republican legislative leaders and national school choice advocates and businesses against public school officials, some black Democrats and Republican State School Superintendent John Barge.
Final campaign reports filed this month show pro-amendment groups, including national school-choice advocates and for-profit charter school operators, raised and spent more than $2.7 million through such groups as “Families for Better Public Schools,” “Georgia Public School Families for Amendment One” and “Committee for Educational Freedom.”
Opponents of the amendment reported spending $262,822, about half of it raised in the final days of the campaign.
Supporters of the amendment argue that it would have passed with or without the big money from outside groups.
“I don’t think it made a difference,” said Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, former Senate education committee chairman. “The charter school vote message was people are not happy with the status quo.”
Angela Palm, lobbyist for the Georgia School Boards Association, disagreed.
“I think money definitely played a part,” Palm said. “This was a complex topic which was under the radar for most people. Educating the public in a broad way was necessary and is expensive. They were fortunate to have plenty of money to buy ads and a broad team of professionals to put their perspective out there.”
The charter debate was among the hottest campaigns of the fall season, with mailers, billboards, television and radio ads touting and hammering the amendment.
There are more than 100 charter schools in Georgia and, before the amendment, two routes to establish them. Applicants first applied to their local school board. If turned down, they could appeal to the state Board of Education, which could overrule the local officials. The amendment created a third route for approval, an appointed state commission like the one that existed before a Georgia Supreme Court decision killed it in 2011.
The fight involves a huge pot of public money, with state and local governments spending $13 billion a year on K-12 education. Charter schools – long a favorite of “choice” advocates — are independent public schools that operate free of some rules and regulations as long as they meet performance goals.
Most of the money from opponents came from public school groups – including local superintendents – and companies that do business with schools.
Shortly before the election, the Georgia School Boards Association put $74,000 into the campaign, while the Georgia School Superintendents Association contributed $12,500, and the Federation of Teachers, a teacher’s group, put in $20,000.
Backing the amendment were deep-pocketed school choice advocates from around the country, including Walmart heiress Alice Walton ($600,000) and StudentsFirst ($380,000) of Sacramento, Calif. K12, Inc., a Herndon, Va.-based company that managers cyber charter schools around the country, gave $300,000, and Charter Schools USA, a Fort Lauderdale company that is one of the largest for-profit operators of charter schools, contributed $100,000.
The American Federation for Children, a leading national advocate of charter and private schools, spent about $250,000, but some of the money was through an independent committee so it’s unclear if it all went for the amendment.
The Georgia Public School Families for Amendment One political action committee was funded by another national charter school advocate, the Arlington,Va. -based PublicSchoolsOptions.org.
Bert Brantley, spokesman for Families for Better Public Schools, one of the groups that backed the amendment, said the money enabled supporters to blanket much of the state with television ads. Brantley said there was a lot of out-of-state money because it was a nationally important campaign for the charter/choice movement.
He said he doesn’t believe that the money made the difference because internal polling always showed the amendment would pass.
“We never felt like things were falling off and we had to rescue it,” Brantley said. “It was really more about maintaining the support level that we had.”
Georgia Senate Minority Whip Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, who opposed the amendment, said he wasn’t surprised his side was outspent by groups from outside of Georgia with a financial stake in charter schools.
“Georgians ought to be outraged that the policies they are going to have to live with are being largely determined by people who may have never been to Georgia,” he said. “It’s the remote-control short-circuiting of democracy.”
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