Once again, the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court has rid­den to the res­cue of Wash­ing­ton’s belea­guered pub­lic schools system.

In a mon­u­men­tal­ly impor­tant 6–3 deci­sion released late this after­noon, the Court struck down Ini­tia­tive 1240, a char­ter schools mea­sure vot­ers nar­row­ly passed in 2012, as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in its entire­ty. The deci­sion means that Wash­ing­ton’s exper­i­ment with char­ter schools is essen­tial­ly over, as the law that allowed the schools to be set up is now com­plete­ly unenforceable.

Six jus­tices (Bar­bara Mad­sen, Charles John­son, Susan Owens, Debra Stephens, Char­lie Wig­gins, Mary Yu) signed the major­i­ty opin­ion. Three jus­tices (Mary Fairhurst, Steven González, Sheryl Gor­don McCloud) dis­sent­ed in part.

A King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge had pre­vi­ous­ly inval­i­dat­ed one pro­vi­sion of the ini­tia­tive, but upheld the remain­ing pro­vi­sions. A major­i­ty of the Supreme Court has now reversed that deci­sion, result­ing in I‑1240’s total demise.

The Court reasoned:

Our con­sti­tu­tion directs the leg­is­la­ture to estab­lish and fund com­mon schools and restricts the leg­is­la­ture’s pow­er to divert funds com­mit­ted to com­mon schools for oth­er pur­pos­es even if relat­ed to edu­ca­tion… The Char­ter School Act’s diver­sion of basic edu­ca­tion funds allo­cat­ed to the sup­port of the com­mon schools and com­mon school con­struc­tion funds is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and void.

And con­trary to what the Supe­ri­or Court ruled, I‑1240’s pro­vi­sions aren’t severable:

The Act iden­ti­fies char­ter schools as com­mon schools and is express­ly reliant on com­mon school fund­ing to sup­port such char­ter schools. That a fund­ing source is required for the exis­tence of char­ter schools is self-evi­dent. As dis­cussed above, the Act specif­i­cal­ly intends to use com­mon school fund­ing allo­ca­tions as that source. With­out a valid fund­ing source the char­ter schools envi­sioned in 1–1240 are not viable. More­over, I‑1240’s vot­ers’ pam­phlet stressed that the fund­ing for char­ter schools will come from exist­ing fund­ing sources in the form of a “shift [in] rev­enues” from “local pub­lic school dis­tricts to char­ter schools.” In sum, with­out fund­ing, char­ter schools are not viable. Nor can it be believed that vot­ers would have approved the Char­ter School Act with­out its fund­ing mechanism.

In con­clu­sion:

The por­tions of 1–1240 des­ig­nat­ing char­ter schools as com­mon schools vio­late arti­cle IX, sec­tion 2 of the Wash­ing­ton Con­sti­tu­tion and are invalid. For the same rea­son, the por­tions of 1–1240 pro­vid­ing access to restrict­ed com­mon school fund­ing are also invalid. These pro­vi­sions are not sev­er­able and ren­der the entire Act uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. We affirm in part and reverse in part and remand for an appro­pri­ate order.

This is a huge vic­to­ry for pub­lic edu­ca­tion that is worth cel­e­brat­ing. We con­grat­u­late our friends at the League of Women Vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton, the Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, El Cen­tro de la Raza, and the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of School Admin­is­tra­tors for hav­ing pre­vailed in this land­mark case.

We extend our thanks to Paul Lawrence and Paci­fi­ca Law Group for their fine rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the plain­tiffs as well.

I‑1240 was backed by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Alice Wal­ton (a Wal-Mart heiress), Nick Hanauer, Con­nie Ballmer, and sev­er­al oth­er incred­i­bly wealthy indi­vid­u­als, who col­lec­tive­ly gave $11 mil­lion to fund a slick, aggres­sive cam­paign to per­suade a slim major­i­ty of vot­ers to exper­i­ment with char­ter schools.

Pro­gres­sives raised less than $1 mil­lion to wage an oppo­si­tion cam­paign, with most of that mon­ey com­ing in late (in Octo­ber, just as bal­lots were being mailed). Despite the resource dis­par­i­ty, the vote was very close. After the ini­tia­tive went into affect, the afore­men­tioned plain­tiffs sued to have it invalidated.

Pri­or to I‑1240’s pas­sage, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans had deci­sive­ly vot­ed three times to reject char­ter schools, with the last vote hav­ing tak­en place in 2004.

“The Supreme Court has affirmed what we’ve said all along – char­ter schools steal mon­ey from our exist­ing class­rooms, and vot­ers have no say in how these char­ter schools spend tax­pay­er fund­ing,” said Kim Mead, pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, in a state­ment laud­ing the decision.

“Instead of divert­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars to unac­count­able char­ter schools, it’s time for the Leg­is­la­ture to ful­ly fund K‑12 pub­lic schools so that all of Washington’s chil­dren get the qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion the Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees them,” she added.

What will hap­pen to the state’s nine char­ter schools (eight of which just opened only recent­ly) is unclear but pre­sum­ably, they’ll have no choice but to become pri­vate schools. The Leg­is­la­ture is out of ses­sion and not like­ly to recon­vene until Jan­u­ary, so it will not be able to bail out the char­ter school operators.

Even when it does recon­vene, House Democ­rats and Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee are unlike­ly to be inter­est­ed in rein­stat­ing the char­ter schools exper­i­ment, which siphons pub­lic funds away from the state’s pub­lic schools. I‑1240’s back­ers had tried to char­ac­ter­ize the char­ter schools autho­rized by their ini­tia­tive as com­mon schools, think­ing that this would ensure I‑1240 would pass con­sti­tu­tion­al muster.

The Supreme Court did­n’t buy it, ruling:

[B]ecause char­ter schools under 1–1240 are run by an appoint­ed board or non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion and thus are not sub­ject to local vot­er con­trol, they can­not qual­i­fy as “com­mon schools” with­in the mean­ing of Arti­cle IX.

The Court relied on its hold­ing in School Dis­trict No. 20 v. Bryan, a case dat­ing back to 1909. In that case, the Supreme Court defined com­mon schools as follows:

[A] com­mon school, with­in the mean­ing of our Con­sti­tu­tion, is one that is com­mon to all chil­dren of prop­er age and capac­i­ty, free, and sub­ject to and under the con­trol of the qual­i­fied vot­ers of the school dis­trict. The com­plete con­trol of the schools is a most impor­tant fea­ture, for it car­ries with it the right of the vot­ers, through their cho­sen agents, to select qual­i­fied teach­ers, with pow­ers to dis­charge them if they are incompetent.

Empha­sis is ours.

Noth­ing in the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits the estab­lish­ment of pri­vate schools, so the schools that have been set up under I‑1240 don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have to shut down. But as a result of this deci­sion, they will no longer be able to siphon mon­ey away from the state’s pub­licly admin­is­tered com­mon schools.

They will need to find pri­vate sources of funding.

Maybe they can get it from the wealthy indi­vid­u­als who financed I‑1240. Those folks cer­tain­ly have the mon­ey to sup­port the oper­a­tion of a few dis­tin­guished pri­vate schools. If they were will­ing to open their check­books for a cam­paign, sure­ly they’ll do so again now to help these char­ter schools flour­ish as pri­vate schools.