The non-profit organization Council for Better Education filed a lawsuit Friday against the Kentucky Board of Education in an attempt to overturn a state law that would fund two pilot charter school programs in Louisville and Northern Kentucky.
The lawsuit states the Kentucky General Assembly's House Bill 9 violates the state constitution by diverting funding intended for local public schools toward the creation of new charter schools.
Dayton Independent Schools and the state's largest district, Jefferson County Public Schools, joined the Council for Better Education in the lawsuit due to their vicinity to these new potential charter schools.
Although Northern Kentucky has been slated as a home for one of Kentucky's first charter schools, plans for the new school are up in the air after Northern Kentucky University opted out of becoming an authorizer for the potential school in December.
Still, a new charter school could be on its way to the area, and Tom Shelton from Council for Better Education says that has districts like Dayton Schools worried about losing funding.
"Someone else outside of the 11 school boards in those counties could establish a charter school, which would take funding away from those 11 school districts depending on where those students came from," Shelton said. "Dayton chose to be involved with us as a co-plaintiff because they're in the target area."
Jim Waters, president of the libertarian think tank Bluegrass Institute, says a successful lawsuit could end up being damaging to families in Kentucky seeking better education opportunities. He'd like to see school boards across the state give charter schools a chance before trying to shut down the whole operation.
"Giving us a couple of pilot programs would allow us to determine and give us empirical research on how they would do in Kentucky," Waters said. "We know how they're doing elsewhere so we would like to see how they do here and we think they would do well."
Waters says that he views charter schools as an overall positive for students because it offers lower-income families school choice and would incentivize local public schools to raise standards.
"We often are faced with this scenario of 'Well, what about children who are left in a failing school whose parents don't get them into a charter school?' What we found is they benefit from having charter schools in their district because the traditional schools tend to respond to that by improving their performance," Waters said.
Tom Shelton says the lawsuit isn't about attacking school choice or getting rid of non-traditional schools in Kentucky, but rather making sure funding for local schools stays intact.
"People like the Bluegrass Institute and others think that public educators in Kentucky oppose school choice and we do not oppose school choice," Shelton said. "We only oppose the privatization of public funds because they would be taking away from an already underfunded public school system."
Charter schools are typically publicly funded, tuition-free schools that are privately managed.
The Council for Better Education says depending on the result of this lawsuit it expects the state legislator to make another attempt at funding charter schools at the expense of local districts. In that case, the council may consider legal action again.
