Circuit court should strike Amendment 8 from ballot
Supporters of charter schools have pulled a fast one in getting a ballot question before voters in November that’s meant to ease the creation of charter schools without mentioning the words “charter schools.”
Now comes the Florida League of Women Voters to perform the public service of asking a court to kill it.
The proposed Amendment 8 was concocted by Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission (CRC), which meets every 20 years and has the power to place amendments directly onto the general election ballot. If the proposition gets 60 percent of the vote in November, it becomes part of the state’s main governing document.
This amendment, one of several advanced by the CRC, is a mash-up of three proposals with little in common except having something or other to do with education. You have to vote for all three or none at all.
Voters are apt to like two of the elements: a requirement that “civic literacy” be promoted in public schools, and an eight-year limit for service on a school board.
It’s the third piece that’s the problem: It would allow charter schools to be authorized by entities other than local school boards, which now make those decisions.
And good luck if you can figure out that’s what the amendment is about because the ballot language doesn’t say.
The ballot summary, blandly titled, “School Board Term Limits and Duties; Public Schools,” does say one thing clearly: that local school boards currently “have a constitutional duty to operate, control and supervise all public schools.”
Then comes the blather: “The amendment maintains a school board’s duties to public schools it establishes, but permits the state to operate, control, and supervise public schools not established by the school board.”
That makes no sense. How can a public school be established except by a school board?
Well, that’s the sneaky part.
What the amendment is implying — without coming out and saying it — is that local school boards would no longer have the exclusive authority to establish schools. Suddenly, the Legislature could allow any person or group or corporation, public or private, to set up charter schools or the like. And those schools would be free of oversight by the school board.
For local taxpayers, this is a terrible idea. If anything, charter schools require more accountability. The problems at Eagle Arts Academy in Wellington makes that point. What is proposed is so open-ended that no one can say where accountability for future charters would lie.
This proposal is also particularly galling for the Palm Beach County School Board. Our School Board has been at the forefront of the battle to maintain local control over who is allowed to open and operate what charter schools in local districts.
Passing such an inane, potentially disastrous proposal would essentially remove that authority from local taxpayers and residents. It’s unconscionable.
The proposal’s sponsor, Erika Donaldson, is the founder of a charter school outside Naples. During deliberations of the Constitution Review Commission, she said she wanted an amendment to overrule a 2008 court decision that struck down a statewide commission that had been created to authorize charter schools. That commission, said the court, violated the Florida Constitution, which states: “The school board shall operate, control and supervise all free public schools within the school district.”
Donaldson said her revision would “allow the Legislature flexibility to create alternate processes to authorize the establishment of public schools in our state.”
She disclosed that when she “first brought the proposal it had the word ‘charter,’ ” but then she changed it to “‘public schools’ because we don’t know what innovations are to occur in education over the next 20 years or over the next generation.”
You may or may not like the idea of the Legislature allowing a university, a nonprofit or a corporation — or a bunch of political cronies — to create, operate and supervise charter schools, leaving the local school district out of it. But from reading the ballot, you can’t divine that this is the question at stake.
Worse, because it’s bundled with proposals you will certainly understand and might absolutely love — the requirement for civics literacy, the eight-year limit for school board members — you could vote for this greenlighting of charter schools without even knowing it.
This is so misleading you have to wonder if the deception was deliberate. The Leon County Circuit Court should quickly rule to strike this insult to voters from the November ballot.
This proposal is also particularly galling for the Palm Beach County School Board.