Actually in Georgia minimum admission standards for the charter schools were forbidden by law, from what I've read. They also had mechanisms in place to admit a certain number of out-of-district students, so I assume they had busing as well.

The legal objection was that the local school boards didn't literally control the funding - the money for the charters was funneled through the boards, but the law that created the charters determined how much state money they actually got. That doesn't seem insurmountable, but as padna said at the top, if there are political interests looking to kill the whole charter system there may not be a lot of give and take between the state and the local boards.

On the other hand, if SCOTUS hears the case there's approximately a zero percent chance the Roberts court would side with the boards, so Georgia has that going for it. But that doesn't do much for padna's kids the next few semesters. 

That was in response to Mike... I stand corrected on the buses.

Posted by antonsirius on 6/2/2011 11:58:00 AM (view original):
Actually in Georgia minimum admission standards for the charter schools were forbidden by law, from what I've read. They also had mechanisms in place to admit a certain number of out-of-district students, so I assume they had busing as well.

The legal objection was that the local school boards didn't literally control the funding - the money for the charters was funneled through the boards, but the law that created the charters determined how much state money they actually got. That doesn't seem insurmountable, but as padna said at the top, if there are political interests looking to kill the whole charter system there may not be a lot of give and take between the state and the local boards.

On the other hand, if SCOTUS hears the case there's approximately a zero percent chance the Roberts court would side with the boards, so Georgia has that going for it. But that doesn't do much for padna's kids the next few semesters. 

You could conceivably (sp?) argue that the uniform cost, required parent volunteer time, and transportation challenges are a "back door" way having admission standards by creating challenges that poorer families may not be able to meet.  I wouldn't buy into that, but I can see that as a possibility.  That's not what the court's opinion was based on - not that I've read huge amount of the actual opinion.  As near as I can tell, the funding issue is the primary objection, along with local control.  And, though this is my opinion, I do think the public school teachers - especially those heavily involved in teacher unions are against charter schools and would do whatever it takes to limit or eliminate them.  It would not surprise to see that argument made.

Oh, for sure. There are all kinds of ways to keep underprivileged kids out if you want to. But since the law creating the charters expressly indicated no minimum admission standards, a charter school would seem to be opening itself wide open to a 14th Amendment challenge if it went overboard in that direction (full IANAL caveats apply there).

Whenever you're trying to make big changes in a system, the system's going to resist. That applies on every side of the political aisle.

Posted by silentpadna on 6/1/2011 11:16:00 AM (view original):
On an education note, I found it interesting after my son was accepted into the new charter school being started in our county, that the state supreme court ruled the state charter school comission unconstitutional.  The local school boards, with the backing of the teachers unions in a couple of counties sued because they would not have control of the funding, citing (ironically enough) a law that had been put in place to promote segregation back in 1877 or thereabouts.

Power and union control trumps school choice...again.

This is the main problem I have with the unholy marriage of unions (teachers / police) and local governments.  And for those who do not recall from WAY BACK when I was a regular contributor here, I am a teacher in an urban school district.

Generally what happens, from what I can see, is the unions only side with politicians (council, school board, etc.) who will view them favorably when their contract is next up.

So, the unions send money to the politicians, who then kick it back to the unions, who then work for their re-election, and so on.

The next time my union publicly supports a non-Democrat will be the first time in my 17 years of working here.  Very frustrating for a growing number of us, who do not always agree with those choices.

Well, yeah. Unions support politicians who support (or serve, depending on your perspective) the union's interest. So do corporations -- same cycle. They give money to pols, who kick it back to the corporations in tax breaks, earmarks, contracts etc., who then work for their re-election etc. That must be equally frustrating for employees of those corporations who don't always agree with those choices.

If you're suggesting neither unions nor corporations should be allowed to make political contributions or spend on ads, I'd be all for that. SCOTUS disagrees with that though, and their opinion carries a little more weight than mine/ours.

Corporations donate to both parties, I will admit an edge to Republicans, but not a huge one.

The difference is that employees dont pay for a Corporation to run ads. Unions give money to their Union Bosses who donate to the people who keep them in power, and it isnt always in the best interest of the union.

And the more voices we have the more freedom we have.

Posted by antonsirius on 6/5/2011 10:36:00 PM (view original):
Well, yeah. Unions support politicians who support (or serve, depending on your perspective) the union's interest. So do corporations -- same cycle. They give money to pols, who kick it back to the corporations in tax breaks, earmarks, contracts etc., who then work for their re-election etc. That must be equally frustrating for employees of those corporations who don't always agree with those choices.

If you're suggesting neither unions nor corporations should be allowed to make political contributions or spend on ads, I'd be all for that. SCOTUS disagrees with that though, and their opinion carries a little more weight than mine/ours.

There is a not-so-subtle difference.  The union representing the teachers is fighting for direct tax dollars.  How successful they are directly affects the taxpayers' wallets.  The corporations are fighting for some of that, but mostly for legislation favorable to their interests.  This is not to say that the corporations don't also affect the taxpayers' wallets, but in that case, favorable legislation can cause the profits, tax base, and jobs to increase...meaning there is a chance that this kind of thing can pay for itself.  Obviously this is not always the case, but there the possibility.  In each case it's an example of lobbying for a special interest.

I absolutely do not agree with the idea that organizations should not be allowed to spend money on ads.  As much as I hate most of them (because they count on swaying the uneducated - this from both the right and the left), I am not for restricting freedom to speak or advocate.  I think that is one of our most basic freedoms.  The idea that a group of people can assemble and petition for change - even pay to create persuasive ads - is one of the things that makes the US great.

Advocating for any particular interest, by the way, is by definition a "special interest".  I'm not sure why that term has become such a dirty word.  I would want to have the freedom to create a non-profit organization and advocate for the cause (special interest) of my choice.  Kill that from unions, corporations, and groups, and IMO you take a whack at basic freedom.

Much as I hate certain special interests, lobbyists, etc. (that don't agree with me) I can't agree with eliminating their ability to speak out.

Organizations are not people, and should not have any free speech rights.

Now that said, if like-minded individuals want to band together and pool their money to get more bang for their buck, I'm OK with that. But the idea that a corporate entity or union has any fundamental right to speech is, I think, anathema to what was intended by the First Amendment. Interpret Federalist 10 how you will, but Madison was clearly warning against the influence of focused minority interests and discussing how best to limit the damage they could do.

I suspect the idea of giving such groups equal rights as individual citizens would have made him weep.

This isnt a response to the free market, this is a response to massive regulations that tell people what they can say.

You can argue if Playboy was supposed to be covered by the 1st Amendment, but political speech is supposed to be almost sacred. It is supposed to be ok to say "Proposal 7 will cause a fire in a movie theatre".

So the Supreme Court just decided that everyone can make a political speech. And if the money to say it comes from a Corporation that is irrelevant.

Only the left in their "Us vs Them" attitude about business would see more free speech as a threat to Democracy.

More on the charter school issue I brought up earlier.  I actually attended the school board meeting here on 6/24 to see how the process was going to work.  During this meeting the school board was going to vote on whether to approve the school locally.  They moved the meeting to a high school auditorium to accomodate the attendees.  The meeting two weeks prior was scheduled to open doors to the public one hour before it started.  Ironically, it just happened to open 90 minutes ahead of time.  Somehow the place was crowed with teachers only and virtually no charter school supporters were allowed into the meeting, giving the impression that the charter school had little to no support, which is also  how the media portrayed it.  This time around, the charter school supporters showed up early and got in line outside the doors.  While waiting, there were many teachers who simply jumped the line and hopped in with their colleagues until some of the charter supporters asked police, who were on the scene, to help put a stop to it.  Ultimately the auditorium was large enough to handle the crowd.

Each time the charter had put in their request, it had been rejected by the board on technicalities.  (Strangely enough, of the 23 or so recent votes around the state for new charter schools, every single one of them had been voted down).  The board requested information on enrollees under the open records act.   They are allowed to find out how many students and from what grades and schools the enrollees would come from.  What they did instead was find out the exact names of each of the students that had enrolled, which (as I understand it) was not allowed due to privacy concerns.  To get an idea how those in power operate, this next piece takes the cake...

Under the open records act, the charter association requested copies of board emails related to the subject because there had been signs of inappropriate political type pressure.  The answer to this request came one night before the meeting.  It would supposedly cost the charter roughly $330,000 to obtain those records and 463 days (!!!!!) to complete the request.  Once they received a check, they would begin the search.  This is laughable on its face and to me (and others) shows exactly how much fair consideration is really going on.

During the actual meeting, teacher speakers outnumbered parent speakers by about 5-1 despite about a 60/40 audience split.  One of the highlights of the school board comments came when one of them basically said, "if you don't like this district, you can always move" - which of course, for most home owners these days, is not exactly true.

Bottom line is that the school board voted 4-3 against the charter school.  Since that time, the state education board has approved it and now I believe it's up to the governor or state (or private donors) to make up  the local money difference.  If that happens, it's a win for the district because they get to keep the revenue for the charter school kids and apply it to the other kids.  Meanwhile the state legislature is likely to consider a state consitutional amendment requiring educational funding dollars to follow the kids - IMO something close to a voucher system, but without the actual vouchers.

A great story.

The current education system is destroying our kids.

Well I'm not going to go that far.  Uninvolved parents are allowing the education to play a part in "destroying our kids", along with pop culture and other non-family influences.  Can you tell what my passion for this issue really is?  But yeah, it certainly doesn't help when there is a values war going on that is against what a lot of parents believe.

I meant our kids intelligence.

We have allowed the American education system to erode while everyone fights over how to fix it.

Posted by swamphawk22 on 7/1/2011 11:43:00 PM (view original):
A great story.

The current education system is destroying our kids.

That's not "the current education system", that's local bureaucrats clinging to their sad little slice of personal power. That ****'s been happening since we invented bureaucracy.