Editor’s Note: Two weeks ago, Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed majori­ties in the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Sen­ate passed a bill restor­ing fund­ing for char­ter schools and allow­ing new char­ters to be autho­rized, in defi­ance of the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in League of Women Vot­ers v. State of Wash­ing­ton. NPI is ask­ing Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to veto this leg­is­la­tion and uphold our Con­sti­tu­tion. We laid out our rea­son­ing in the fol­low­ing mes­sage sent to the Gov­er­nor this after­noon, which we are releas­ing as an open letter. 

Dear Gov­er­nor Inslee:

On behalf of the team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, we write to respect­ful­ly urge you to veto E2SSB 6194 in its entire­ty and hon­or the State Supreme Court’s rul­ing that I‑1240 is unconstitutional.

NPI strong­ly believes in pub­lic schools and elect­ed pub­lic school gov­er­nance that all cit­i­zens can par­tic­i­pate in. Pub­lic schools are the cor­ner­stones of strong, vibrant com­mu­ni­ties. We have a mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty to each oth­er to ensure that our youth receive a well-round­ed edu­ca­tion. Our state’s founders con­sid­ered this to be so impor­tant that the Con­sti­tu­tion they hand­ed down to us calls this respon­si­bil­i­ty Wash­ing­ton’s para­mount duty. Our pub­lic schools are the only schools required to serve all chil­dren no mat­ter their back­ground or needs.

We also believe in the pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tors in our pub­lic schools. E2SSB 6194 pro­hibits employ­ee bar­gain­ing at a char­ter school from affil­i­at­ing with oth­er bar­gain­ing units. This is not a pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy in sup­port of work­er rights — it’s an inap­pro­pri­ate polit­i­cal statement.

Our pub­lic school dis­tricts and edu­ca­tors are work­ing hard to pro­vide inno­v­a­tive ser­vices that meet and exceed those claimed by char­ters even while they are chal­lenged with strained bud­gets due to under­fund­ing from the state.

The Supreme Court spoke clear­ly last year when it struck down I‑1240 and char­ters as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in League of Women Vot­ers v. State of Wash­ing­ton. We urge you to uphold the Supreme Court’s rul­ing and veto E2SSB 6194 in its entirety.

Although char­ter pro­po­nents cite the needs of dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren, the evi­dence from around the coun­try shows that char­ter schools aren’t help­ing those stu­dents — and may actu­al­ly be hurt­ing them. A report released last week by the Civ­il Rights Project at UCLA found that char­ter schools are four times as like­ly to sus­pend black stu­dents than white stu­dents. Char­ters have also been blamed for accel­er­at­ing the reseg­re­ga­tion of Amer­i­can schools. A recent study by Duke Uni­ver­si­ty found that char­ter schools were respon­si­ble for reseg­re­gat­ing North Car­oli­na schools. The ACLU filed a law­suit charg­ing that char­ters in Delaware were caus­ing resegregation.

The focus of Wash­ing­ton’s Leg­is­la­ture and exec­u­tive depart­ment should be com­ply­ing with the Supreme Court’s ear­li­er deci­sion in McCleary and pro­duc­ing a viable plan to raise the rev­enue required to ful­ly fund our pub­lic schools.

The Leg­is­la­ture must do more than sim­ply define basic edu­ca­tion. It must pro­vide pub­licly-gov­erned school dis­tricts with the resources they need to car­ry out their man­date. We have over a mil­lion chil­dren in our pub­lic schools, and they’re not get­ting the sup­port they need.

Sad­ly, at the same time the Leg­is­la­ture was bla­tant­ly ignor­ing the Supreme Court’s most recent McCleary order, which imposed sanc­tions on the state, majori­ties in both hous­es were intent­ly lis­ten­ing to the near­ly two dozen lob­by­ists who descend­ed on the Capi­tol Cam­pus to lob­by for E2SSB 6194.

The results of the just-con­clud­ed spe­cial ses­sion and reg­u­lar ses­sion that pre­ced­ed it once again demon­strate the pow­er of mon­ey in our state’s cap­i­tal. Those who already have for­tunes are well-posi­tioned to ask for (and get) mon­ey out of the Leg­is­la­ture for their pri­or­i­ties, while mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies are not.

Unlike the leg­is­la­tors who vot­ed for E2SSB 6194, you were elect­ed statewide to rep­re­sent all Washingtonians.

We urge you to be an advo­cate for the more than one mil­lion pub­lic school­child­ren who can­not afford dozens of lob­by­ists in Olympia work­ing on their behalf to ensure their schools are prop­er­ly fund­ed in a time­ly fash­ion. Veto E2SSB 6194, and let the well-off pro­po­nents of char­ters fund those schools, while keep­ing pub­lic mon­ey flow­ing sole­ly to pub­lic schools, as our founders intended.

Sin­cere­ly,