Washington State Supreme Court ruling on charter schools and public funding

I started reading Washington State Supreme Court Ruling charters and the use of public funds and I started thinking about school districts and referendums here in Delaware. When we vote in a referendum, we vote to increase or not to increase our taxes. When we vote to increase our taxes, we are agreeing to give school districts an increase. Since our schools are funded by both the state and local taxes does the General Assembly have a right to establish laws allowing our local money to leave our local school districts? As an example, when the State Board of Education approves a new charter in a school district, where are the taxpayers voices? Taxpayers voted to raise their taxes to give more money to their school district, not to give their taxes to a new charter school. The state is approving charters to go into a school district using local funds paid by the residents of that school district to fund a school that neither the resident or the district approved. It will be interesting to see what happens over the few months. 

I provided two other cases that I found; 2011 Georgia Supreme Court ruling and June 2015 Arizona ruling.

2011 Georgia Supreme Court: Only local school boards can create charter schools

June 2015 Arizona high court lets stand ruling on charter school funding

Back in the Saddle Again

It is important for legislators to communicate with their constituents. I communicate with a monthly E Newsletter, email, I am very active on Facebook with a Representative Facebook Page, Twitter, a website, and robo calls when necessary. I do give my constituents my home phone number so they can reach me when necessary. I was thinking about my blogging days when I co-authored Fix Red Clay with Anne Lowry, we provided a ton of information about Red Clay; community members, parents, and teachers all read and posted on it. It gave us a lot of insight and really educated us on the issues that were going on in Red Clay but also all the great things as well. Blogs can be a wonderful tool to learn about what is going on and provide information that folks cannot always access. I will do my best to comment. All I ask, please do not come here and call folks out and submit inappropriate comments, I will not post any of them. You can have an opinion but I am asking for everyone to be respectful. I will continue over the next few weeks to add additional items to the blog. Excited to be back.