The charter wars in Washington State continue. You don’t think Bill Gates would permit his home state to go without charter schools.
The Supreme Court of Washington State ruled that charter schools are not public schools, but charter advocates were undeterred. After all, they have millions of dollars to throw around, but not to pay for the handful of charters they opened.
Allies of the charter industry introduced legislation to fund charters with lottery proceeds. Some Democratic legislators bowed to the Will of the Great Gates. It was left to Democratic Governor Jay Inslee to decide. He displayed a Profile of No-Courage by deciding not to sign the bill. Without his veto, the bill became law.
The legislature showed more concern for the 1,000 students in privately managed charters than for the one million children in public schools. The state’s highest court has ordered the legislature to fund the public schools and is fining that body $100,000 a day for its failure to do so.
Back to the courts.
This may get struck down. Lottery proceeds are still “public” or state income. Unless you pay out all the money less the expenses the income is effectively a tax. Half time score: lawyers 1, general public 0 in any case.
The numbers speak not to the 1%, but rather the 0.1%.
Bill should pay for it all from his lunch money! If he believes in the “cause” so much, the inability to use public money should not deter him.
Exactly right, retired teacher. Bill Gates will spend millions to keep public money flowing to charters, but not pay for them himself
The charters got plenty of private money to continue on for the year. Then our despicable Secretary of Public Instruction got them public money through a lovely money laundering scheme, and they took that too. They put the public money in their reserve accounts. They hid all this from the public and it came out in an FOIA/email exchange, after they tried to not comply with the public records act even though they were getting public funds.
http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2016/03/who-was-propping-up-washington-state.html
The state’s Supreme Court found the charter law (I 1240) unconstitutional. Shorty after the decision, public record request shows that charter schools received approximately $14M private funding from Gates, Nick Hanauer and others.
That didn’t stop charter supporters from asking the state’s Superintendent of public education for public funding. Randy Dorn- the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction- altered Alternative Learning Experience rules to allow the flow of public dollars to charter schools. He used a small school district of 500 students to do so and the district is located hundreds of miles from schools. The name of the school district is Mary Walker and the superintendent of the district’- Kevin Jacka- sat on the charter commission.
E-mails reveal that the Washington Charter Association and Gates Foundation were instrumental and provided a lot of support to the small school district of Mary Walker.
Charter schools- formed under an unconstitutional law- had private funding to stay open, but they felt it necessary to dip into the public trough at a time the state is under a court order to fund education.
Shameful.
Correction: That didn’t stop charter supporters from asking the state’s Superintendent of public education for public funding. Randy Dorn (SPI) altered Alternative Learning Experience rules to allow the flow of public dollars to charter schools. He used a small school district of 500 students to do so and the district is located hundreds of miles from schools. The name of the school district is Mary Walker and the superintendent of the district’- Kevin Jacka- sat on the charter commission.
Next step: Invite the rappers to buy some schools, call them public, and name the schools for the funders…
Laura, that is already done in Chicago. It is the Noble network of charters, which names its schools for its funders, the richest people in Chicago, like Bruce Rauner (now governor), and Penny Pritzker (now Secretary of Commerce).
Now the charter money will come from a fund that pays for preschool for low-income toddlers and college scholarships for low-income students.
Rep Pollet did some checking into the population of one charter school in S. Seattle, which is a very low-income area. All of the public schools in that area have very high levels of FRL. Funny thing though – this charter school, Summit Charter School, did not have a population that reflected the surrounding areas. Instead, lots of kids came from private schools, or areas in N. Seattle that are much, much wealthier. Sure hope those rich folks and private school families are proud of themselves. Not only are their privileged wants put in front of the needs of over 1 million public school children, they are also taking away money and opportunity from low-income preschoolers and college students. Definitely something to be proud of.
I may vote for Gov Inslee simply because the other candidate sucks worse, but I won’t be calling for him, or knocking on doors for him, or assisting his campaign in any way this time around. He and the 10 Democratic reps who voted for charter schools are either spineless cowards, clueless fools purchased by the 22 charter lobbyists, or really don’t care about public schools.
Gates, Broad, Walton and the others are comforted by the fact that in California the CTA and United Teachers Los Angeles will not oppose their rule and will do nothing to stop the charter school scam. Both groups love charter schools and the $2.6 million that the privateers donate to CTA. No matter that charter school scab-teachers take jobs from dues-paying credentialed teachers. Money is money and all of it spends the same so what difference does it make for the labor rulers to take money from young scabs in charter schools or real teachers?
Yes. Money is money, and apparently few people know how to say NO when it is offered. Through more than a decade bent to nonstop NCLB/R2T school invasions, I have seen the most amazing circus-like maneuvers put into play by those the top — all the way down to those at the bottom — simply to get the money. cieddieaech.wordpress.com/2015/10/11/when-big-money-speaks
http://housedemocrats.wa.gov/patty-kuderer/seattle-weekly-is-the-charter-school-fix-a-fix/
Thanks for this blog post, Diane.
I’ve attached a link from Representative Kuderer. She explains the reasons why Washington state’s new charter law will face additional legal challenges.
Pity Washington state residents are put through this mess.
I suspect the Supremes are going to grind up this charter funding bill like a Ronco Veg-O-Matic and deliver it after the Nov. election since three of them are up for re-election. Overall, it’s an interesting re-election strategy for the Governor….SB 6194 passes in GOP dominated Senate then suddenly it’s ripped out of the House Education committee where it flatlined and thrown onto the floor. Legislators had to take positions. 12 House Dems sided with the billionaires. As for the strategy, the Dem braintrust must feel very confident of the outcome? Once again, Supremes are charged with the heavy lifting even though the Governor has $2+ m in campaign cash and an opponent no one has heard of outside of King County and Seattle who has only raised something on the order of $600K. But with the billionaire barrels rolling toward you promising to mow you down and you can see it coming, you find a way to step out of the path. We’ve all known in one way or another it would come back to this. Those of us following it in terms of public funding think it likely we’re on a journey to a New Jersey 1976 outcome for public school funding. That is, if we retain and can count on three Supreme Court judges to keep their seats. We’re still fighting it hard.
I fully expect the privatizers to change the configuration of the Supreme Court.