State-level charter school commissions dealt blow

Georgia Supreme Court finds in favor of local school boards:

In a 4-to-3 decision, the Georgia court struck down a law empowering a special statewide commission to approve and finance charter schools even over the objections of local school boards.

If you're wondering how NC's proposed Charter School legislation approaches the issue of local school board control, pay attention to what has been struck out:

A charter school that is approved by the State shall be a public school within the local school administrative unit in which it is located. It shall be accountable to the local board of education if it applied for and received preliminary approval from that local board for purposes of ensuring compliance with applicable laws and the provisions of its charter. All other charter schools located, and shall be accountable to the State Board for ensuring compliance with applicable laws and the provisions of their charters, except that any of these charter schools may agree to be accountable to the local board of the school administrative unit in which the charter school is located rather than to the State Board. charters.

Other passages in the bill appear to authorize local school boards to fund charters, but (unless I missed it) there doesn't appear to be any wording giving them authority to reject/exclude a charter school from local (taxpayer) funding.

More from Georgia:

In a 24-page ruling, Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein said that only local boards of education were empowered by Georgia’s Constitution to open and finance public schools. As a result, Justice Hunstein wrote, the 2008 law granting those powers to the statewide commission was unlawful. A 74-page dissenting opinion argued that the ruling “wiped away a small but important effort to improve public education in Georgia.”

Over the past decade and a half, school boards across Georgia have authorized more than 150 charter schools to operate; those were unaffected by the court’s ruling. But some local boards had repeatedly refused to authorize charter schools, and the 2008 law was intended to give charter sponsors another path to state authorization.

Seven school districts sued in 2009, arguing that the commission was using local tax dollars to finance the new schools without consulting taxpayers.

Recent developments have demonstrated that Republicans in the General Assembly have no desire for respecting the authority of local (elected) governmental bodies, so the courts may end up being forced to intervene here, as well.