A North Carolina charter school has a rule requiring girls to wear skirts, as they did in the good old days. The courts said that if they are a public school, they can’t impose such a discriminatory rule. The school insisted it was “not a state actor” and not public. As matters stand, the school can’t force girls to wear skirts.
This is a dilemma. The national charter lobby has made a point of claiming that charters are public schools and are entitled to full public funding. They call themselves “public charter schools” to make the point. I have maintained for years that charter schools are not public schools because they don’t have an elected board, they are not accountable to anyone, they make up their own rules about admissions and discipline, etc.
But North Carolina legislators want to pass a law saying that charter schools are not public schools because the owner of the charter in question is a member of the rightwing elite. If he wants girls to wear skirts, they should wear skirts.
The Fayetteville (NC) Observer reported:
The courts told a charter school near Wilmington it is a public school, and it is unconstitutional for its dress code to make girls wear skirts instead of pants.
In short: If boys can wear pants, so can girls.
In response, North Carolina legislators are trying to pass a law that says taxpayer-funded charter schools are not “state actors” — and not subject to obeying the Constitution.
Following a court ruling that said it is unconstitutional for North Carolina’s taxpayer-funded charter schools to make girls wear skirts in school instead of pants, some North Carolina lawmakers want to exempt charter schools from respecting the Constitutional rights of their students.
They seek to pass a law that says, “Actions of a charter school shall be considered as actions of private nonprofit and not of a state actor.” This is despite laws and policies that since the 1990s have said charter schools are public schools.
The legislators’ effort follows court decisions in 2022 and 2023 in Peltier v. Charter Day School, Inc., a case from the Wilmington area that made international headlines. Judges said Charter Day School’s skirts-for-girls, pants-for-boys dress code violated the female students’ Constitutional right under the 14th Amendment to be treated the same as the male students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If they get taxpayer money they sure better follow the constitution.
Why? Our last president and our Supreme Court don’t.
Good grief.
I wonder WHY “Girls must wear skirts?” Hmmm…I have my suspicions and they are not good.
Charters may not be state actors.
But they are certainly bad actors
Not sure I like where this is headed, particularly in voucher states, and it’s way beyond just a student dress code. What better way to shift even more money away from public schools than to declare that all your charters are now considered private, with even less accountability than before. Everyone in line for a voucher. We all know that the end game is universal vouchers, and charters are the gateway. And here we are.
I’ve often pointed out where it’s headed, where the corporate sector is pushing it, to wit, or not, the Defense Industry Model (DIM). Teachers as quasi-slave labor infantry grunts, big bucks tax dollars funnelled straight from Congress to corporate coffers with token jokin’ excuse for accountsbility to the taxpaying, service-consuming suckers.
It’s been obvious or should have been obvious from the get-go that charter schools are private business enterprises and that being nonprofit or for-profit makes no essential difference. There is no such thing as a “public charter school.” Nor “traditional public school.” There are public schools and there are charter schools.
Hmmm, passing a law like this may be another step in the goals of our domestic fascist enemies of the U.S. Constitution — Walton, Koch, ALEC, DeVos, et al. I would have added Gates to that list but I’m not sure he is a fascist. He might be. Still, I don’t have enough evidence.
We already know what kind of government those fascists want in the U.S.
Their end goal is to take away our Constitutional rights to make personal decisions like what we wear, how we worship or not, what we read, even what we eat, the choice to join a labor union, et al. If they succeed, the ruling fascist elite will make most of the major decisions our lives to the point if a woman or girl of any age is raped, it will be her fault. If you don’t go to the anointed fascist church very Sunday t o listen to their BS, you will be suspected of being a anti fascist.
The public school I taught in did have dress codes but those codes did not mandate girls were only allowed to wear skirts because they were girls. Those dress codes focused on two things:
Rules requiring girls to wear enough clothes so they didn’t become a distraction for boys living with raging hormones. I have not forgot how distracting it was for me as an adolescent in middle and high school when a girl with great legs, wearing a skirt, walked into sight. In class, that type of distraction made it almost impossible to work or pay attention to the teacher.
Where I taught, the dress code also focused on clothing items known to be a walking advertisement for the local violent, multi-generational street gangs.
Even the brand of shoes or the color of shoelaces could be the uniform of a specific gang and cause a riot on campus when a rival gang started a fight because of shoes and shoe laces. The high school where I taught had rival gangs on campus and the danger of riots was extreme. That’s why the local police sent officers to show up right before lunch everyday. They drove on campus and parked in the grass overlooking the area where students ate lunch. When lunch ended, the squad car with its two officers left.
So, fascist rules requiring girls to wear skirts might be a distraction for most hormonal boys. Still, what does tjat say about the wealthy fascist that owns/controls that publicly funded charter school. Is he like Trump who bought the Ms. America beauty pageant, so he could walk into their dressing rooms to see the beauties undressed.
Profit or non-profit, charter
or public, the money lands in
private pockets, just the same.
Beyond “mission statements”
are the obvious results.
When the statements don’t
map onto reality, repeating
the statements doesn’t change
reality.
If this so called of/by/for,
was all that, why do you think
we need UNIONS?
Absolutely not. Public school expenditures go to a) teachers and b) to pay off facilities and c) to pay vendors providing services to teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Expenditures on Charter Schools go into the pockets of the owners of CMOs that run them, to an enormous extent. Everything they don’t spend on kids, they get to pocket, and that’s what they do–keep the school expenses low and their salaries and perks high.
Internal Colonization
+
Taxation Without Representation
yup
You know how to say a lot in very few words, Jon.
Charters are private companies taking money from public institutions via chartered contracts, like mercenaries. Government should not tell private businesses to wear pants and should not give them any more money. Same goes for mercenaries. If Blackwater wanted to stay off the Iraqi battlefield and/or wear skirts, more power to them.
like mercenaries
yup
Actually not clear to me that a legislature can simply declare, ipse dixit, that an entity is or is not a state actor.
At least two federal appeals courts and the NLRB have ruled that charters are not state actors. Charters like to have it both ways. They think of themselves as “public schools” that are “not state actors.”
ProPublica has an upcoming live virtual event, “How Protests at School Board Meetings are Changing Public Education” – 7-25-2023, 12:00
StateBad ActorsThe charter is an actor
But never for the state
A mega bucks attractor
An actor for rebate