Proponents of the state-forced charter school constitutional amendment


on the November ballot have a

website
that is full of bait and switch.
Most of it is about what they claim are the benefits of charter schools.
But that’s not what the referendum is about.
Local school boards can already authorize charter schools,
and many of them have.
The referendum would change the Georgia Constitution to authorize
an appointed state board to force charter schools on local elected school
boards that don’t want them,

granting more money per student than in public schools,
with

the difference to be made up from local property and sales taxes.
The most substantive thing I have found on the proponents’ website
says that last is not so, but unconvincingly.

Tony Roberts, President of Georgia Charter Schools Association wrote
to All Charter School Leaders and Board Members
7 August 2012,

Response to Letter from Herb Garrett of Georgia Superintendents Association,

One final, but important point, local school superintendents and
board members were adamantly against any local dollars going to
charter schools that were denied by a local school board. The final
version of HB 797 was negotiated to ensure that was the case —
the language is written right there into the law. So, to recap, they
insist on no local money going to state-approved charters, and then
get upset about the state money going to charters.

Curiously, he doesn’t cite that purported language.
The closest thing I can find in

HB 797
is

a paragraph I already quoted:

2A(5) No deduction shall be made to any state funding which a local school
system is otherwise authorized to receive pursuant to this chapter
as a direct result or consequence of the enrollment in a state
charter school of a specific student or students who reside in the
geographical area of the local school system.

Local sales taxes are not state funding.
So your ESPLOST dollars that you voted on to go to local public education
can be diverted to support a charter school dictated by a state-appointed
board and run by a private company.

Now maybe I missed the magic wording that Tony Roberts
couldn’t be bothered to quote from the bill.
If so, somebody enlighten me.

Until then, I say this referendum is bait and switch:
the bait is saying it’s about charter schools.
The switch is it’s really about taking local sales taxes
that were approved by local voters for local public education
and funnelling them through an appointed state committee
to private schools that the constitutional amendment would dub “public”.
If you want your local tax dollars you approved for local public
education to go to local public education, vote No on the
charter school referendum in November.

-jsq