With a similar effort stymied in the state House, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee has proposed his own constitutional amendment that would restore the state's power to approve charter schools.
Senate Resolution 853 comes a week after House Republicans fell 10 votes short of passing their own proposed constitutional amendment on charter schools. They vowed to bring the bill back for another vote, but Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, has essentially doubled down on their efforts: His proposal is virtually identical to the one defeated last week.
Charter and school choice supporters have pushed for a constitutional amendment since May. The state Supreme Court, in a 4-3 opinion, declared that the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, created by lawmakers in 2008, did not have the authority to create or fund charter schools over the objections of local school boards.
School superintendents and school boards say it is taxation without representation for money to be diverted from local school systems to support charter schools that aren't locally approved. House leaders as well as Millar have tried to allay those concerns, so far to little effect.
Millar's proposal does not require local boards to pay for "special" state charter schools, but it does assert that the state has the right to create them. Any proposed constitutional amendment must pass each chamber of the General Assembly with a two-thirds majority. If it does, the question would then be put to voters.
Tim Callahan, a spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, said his group would review Millar’s resolution, but he remained concerned about the amendment's effect -- unintentional or not -- on public school funding.
Callahan said his group, the state's largest educator advocacy group with 82,000 members, supports charter schools, even state-approved charter schools, provided local boards are not forced to pay for them.
"Despite the smoke screens, this is not about naming an alternative authorizer -- such as the now defunct Charter School Commission -- for startup charters," Callahan said. "It is about tapping into local funds without the local board having approved the charter school."
Senate Democratic Whip Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, voiced additional concerns an amendment would allow the state to increase its support of private schools. The state currently allows students with special needs to attend private school on publicly financed scholarships.
"If you take away local control for public schools, if you take away control of what local schools exist in a local district, if you take away local control of how to allocate local funds, you are not talking about public schools anymore," Fort said. "What you are talking about is a path toward vouchers."
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