COMMENTARY
Bloom & Buell's

CHARTER SCHOOLS ON A ROLL

If your are a charter school founder, teacher, board member or friend, you may have been concerned about legal challenges to charter schools.  In Michigan, a legal challenge closed the first school to receive a charter.  This draconian act has caused more than a few sleepless nights.  Michigan has amended the law after it had been found unconstitutional and 38 schools are up and running.

Many in Massachusetts have been watching the Goodman case closely, because it has raised a legal challenge to Massachusetts' charter school statute based on the "anti-aid" amendment to the Massachusetts constitution and on the issue of whether charter schools are valid public agents.

Happily, a recent case involving Boston University's management of the Chelsea Public Schools, while not a charter school case, per se, may serve as a soporific to those who have been up late worrying.  Assuming that this case represents the view of our Supreme Judicial Court on the issues raised by the Goodman plaintiffs, we may expect that the Massachusetts charter school law will be found valid.

Attorney Barbara Buell of this office recently attended a conference in California in which a Legal Task force was assembled.  She is a member of this task force which has established a network of charter school lawyers and policy makers to monitor legal challenges to statutes in the 21 states which now authorize these independent public schools.  We are happy to report to you from this conference that no state appellate court has issued an opinion which the Task Force members think will invalidate that state's law.  Whatever other problems may exist as potential impediments to establishing charter schools, it does not appear that direct confrontation of the enabling law will be one of them.