Washington State Supreme Court agrees to hear constitutional challenge to I‑1240

It looks like with­in a year or two, we should final­ly have an answer to the ques­tion, Does the Con­sti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton State allow for char­ter schools?

That’s because the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court says it has agreed to take up a legal chal­lenge to Ini­tia­tive 1240, the char­ter schools mea­sure nar­row­ly approved by Wash­ing­ton vot­ers in Novem­ber of 2012.

The chal­lenge is being brought by a coali­tion that includes par­ents, school admin­is­tra­tions, com­mu­ni­ty activists, teach­ers, and the League of Women Vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton. They’re ably rep­re­sent­ed by Paul Lawrence of Paci­fi­ca Law Group, the attor­ney who suc­cess­ful­ly argued League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers v. State. (In LEV, the Court struck down the two-thirds for rev­enue require­ment at the heart of Tim Eyman’s three I‑601 clones, as well as I‑601 itself).

Oral argu­ments have been sched­uled for Octo­ber 28th and will be shown on TVW. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office will be defend­ing I‑1240, as required by law.

In an inter­est­ing twist, the plain­tiffs and the state will be argu­ing over whether char­ter schools fall under the def­i­n­i­tion of pub­lic schools, as opposed to whether pub­lic mon­ey can be used to oper­ate schools out­side of the purview of a school dis­trict, which was the focus of argu­ments at the Supe­ri­or Court level.

King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Jean Rietschel par­tial­ly inval­i­dat­ed I‑1240 in a rul­ing last year, but left it large­ly intact, allow­ing imple­men­ta­tion to go for­ward. Seems the Supreme Court has agreed to look at the ini­tia­tive under a dif­fer­ent lens. Usu­al­ly appel­late courts only con­sid­er issues raised at the tri­al court level.

The plain­tiffs in the suit are look­ing for a deci­sion that results in a deter­mi­na­tion that I‑1240 does­n’t pass con­sti­tu­tion­al muster, which would pre­vent any more char­ter schools from open­ing and cut off any that have from pub­lic funds. That would be the best pos­si­ble out­come. We at NPI strong­ly sup­port this law­suit and will be fol­low­ing the case through­out the next few months and beyond.

There are sev­er­al pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion that refer to the man­age­ment and fund­ing of the state’s pub­lic schools, which include com­mon schools. Among them are Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 28 and sev­er­al pro­vi­sions of Arti­cle IX.

Arti­cle IX, Sec­tion 2 states:

SECTION 2 PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. The leg­is­la­ture shall pro­vide for a gen­er­al and uni­form sys­tem of pub­lic schools. The pub­lic school sys­tem shall include com­mon schools, and such high schools, nor­mal schools, and tech­ni­cal schools as may here­after be estab­lished. But the entire rev­enue derived from the com­mon school fund and the state tax for com­mon schools shall be exclu­sive­ly applied to the sup­port of the com­mon schools.

Because char­ter schools are oper­at­ed by pri­vate insti­tu­tions and not sub­ject to the author­i­ty of a school dis­trict, they arguably can­not be con­sid­ered part of the “gen­er­al and uni­form sys­tem of pub­lic schools” the Con­sti­tu­tion requires.

Pri­or to the approval of I‑1240 in 2012, Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers had reject­ed char­ter school bal­lot mea­sures by large mar­gins. I‑1240 was pro­pelled by a slick, extreme­ly well-fund­ed adver­tis­ing cam­paign, while the oppo­si­tion did not receive the ener­gy and resources of past cam­paigns opposed to char­ter schools.

If I‑1240 is struck down, it would set an impor­tant prece­dent that would pro­tect Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools from future attempts to siphon their fund­ing. That would be a big win for Wash­ing­ton’s youth, their par­ents, and teachers.