A county court in Florida threw out a challenge to a new state law allowing the state to locate charters over local objections and to draw on local revenues.
Charter industry advocates were elated.
“After a nearly five-hour hearing, Leon County Judge John Cooper wasted little time Wednesday in throwing out several school districts’ challenge of HB 7069, the controversial 2017 education legislation that created a new class of charter schools, among several other measures.
“Cooper found the law constitutional.
“He issued his ruling of summary judgment for the defendants — the Florida Board of Education, Department of Education, and intervening parents and charter schools — from the bench without boiling it down to writing. Lawyers for the two sides will submit suggestions for a written order within a week…
“The Florida Legislature created the Schools of Hope charter school system outside the control of districts. It directed local tax revenue away from the districts without school board approval. It changed the rules of the game for improving low-performing schools, in some cases taking operations away from the districts.
“It was really just a pure question of law,” Arnold said.
“Attorneys for the districts argued that the Legislature overstepped its constitutional authority. They pointed to the section of the state constitution that gives school boards the power to establish, maintain and operate schools within their political boundaries.”
Florida Republicans proved yet again that they don’t care about local control, only about the profits of the charter industry with which so many are financially connected.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article208035184.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can this ruling be appealed to a higher court?
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Some in elected officials are hell bent on privatizing education. They will stop at nothing. Isn’t it ironic that people who get elected find democracy to be inconvenient.
Don’t let the government take away your democracy. Vote them out!!
Privatization: Education Eggs in the Wrong Basket: https://goo.gl/aAsPiz
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Thanks for the post. Public schools are the best hope we have for providing some measure of equity to all our young people. DeVos does not care about trying to level the playing field. “Choice” in her view is more important than quality, democracy or equity.
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“Isn’t it ironic that people who get elected find democracy to be inconvenient.” And isn’t it overwhelming that so many who get PAID notably high salaries/full health care on the public dime never stop whining about public employee expectations.
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The Koch brothers, and their allies through ALEC, don’t like democracy and it’s clear that they all do not like the U.S. Constitution. Trump has also demonstrated with his toilet mouth and twitching twitter fingers that he hates how the U.S. Constitution keeps getting in his way to rule the country like Putin rules Russia.
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The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report which warns that, because of their lack of financial accountability to the public “CHARTER SCHOOLS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS POSE A POTENTIAL RISK TO FEDERAL FUNDS, EVEN AS THEY FALL SHORT OF MEETING GOALS” because of financial fraud and the artful skimming of tax money into private pockets, especially hedge fund pockets.
If nothing else is required of charter schools, one thing must be required so that charter schools are accountable to taxpayers and inform taxpayers as to how taxpayer money is actually being spent; that one key thing is: Charter schools must be required to file the SAME detailed, public domain financial reports under penalty of perjury that public schools file.
Charter schools will cry that this is “too burdensome” — yet public schools file such reports. What would the outcry be if public schools were “freed” of this “burden”? Why, the outcry would rattle the very heavens! So, why is it that private charter schools are allowed to get away with taking public tax money and not have to tell the public on an annual basis how those public tax dollars are spent?
Charter schools bill themselves as “public schools”, but Supreme Courts in states like New York, Washington and elsewhere are catching on to the scam and have ruled that charter schools are really private schools because they aren’t accountable to the public because they are run by private boards that aren’t elected by voters and don’t even have to file detailed reports to the public about what they’re doing with the public’s tax money.
The taxpaying American public has a right to know in detail how its money is being spent by private charter schools.
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“The taxpaying American public has a right to know in detail how its money is being spent by private charter schools.”
Exacto.
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I am not sure I got the drift of the problems from the article in the newspaper. I do know there is a national move to create districts that resemble a collage made up those rigged district voter maps, with the “new district” pulling in schools that once had autonomous governance. Bill Gates new initiatives in education are working this turf, and he especially likes the CORE district model in California created among some of the largest districts just by the signatures of superintendents, no school board or public discussion needed. CORE is a privately funded non-governmental reform agency. That deal included a host of practices that removed teachers, parents, and citizens from decision-making.
Click to access CORE-Cross-District-Collaboration-Report-August-2015.pdf
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