Terry McAuliffe as Governor Aggressively Denied Charter Schools to Poor Minority Children
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6 responses to “Terry McAuliffe as Governor Aggressively Denied Charter Schools to Poor Minority Children”
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Excellent data points to inform what one is voting for with her vote.
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‘My Child, My Choice’?…. guess not. The Dems will let you kill him/her, but not educate him/her as you see fit. Interesting dichotomy.
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A good summary of the obstacles, but with two notes: First, the Virginia State Board of Education is not empowered to “approve” a charter school. Or disapprove. It is empowered only to receive and review. Only a local school board can approve and charter a public charter school, which is why there are only seven — few or none of which operate as real charter schools running independently.
When I served on the State Board, we did review a number of applications and passed them forward with a recommendation to approve. We were ignored. There were also a number that were really poor applications, but part of the reason for this is that quality charters won’t come to Virginia because they aren’t afforded the independence available elsewhere.
And while Article VIII, Section 7 seems overly broad, the challenge is that it has gone to court (Parham decision) on a non-charter-related issue and the courts ruled that local school boards have absolute authority over budget, curriculum, personnel and buildings. While it may be challengeable, no one has yet done so successfully. No less an authority than the Institute for Justice (which successfully challenges school choice prohibitions all over the country) agreed that the constitutional restrictions would be incredibly difficult to overcome.
Finally — it should be noted that Terry McAuliffe vetoed the charter school legislation over the objections of noted Richmond-Petersburg civil rights pioneer Wyatt Tee Walker: When it came to helping struggling children or supporting adults in the teachers union, he chose adults.
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Thanks for these clarifications, Chris. So, McAuliffe was on sound ground when he said that the bill was in conflict with the state constitution.
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No, and I should have been clearer. That section and court case are why only local Boards can currently approve charter schools.
But the Constitution also empowers the State Board to “divide the Commonwealth into school divisions …. as will promote the realization of the prescribed standards of quality and … periodically review the adequacy of existing school divisions.” All of it subject to “such criteria and conditions as the General Assembly may prescribe.”
The bill in question outlined the conditions under which the State Board could create “charter school districts” for those schools that were not educating children, in existing school divisions that had multiple unaccredited schools for multiple years.” — the “criteria and conditions”.
The new school board created in those charter school districts (which would cover only the repeatedly unacccredited schools) could then authorize public charter schools — and likely would have.
So, no: The bill was not unconstitutional and instead followed the constitution to the letter. It did not empower the state board and merely opened a new pathway to help children.
And it would have only affected schools that were not educating children and were repeatedly unaccredited.
But McAuliffe took care of that. He gutted the state accreditation system.
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Children are lack luster contributors to campaign coffers.
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