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“Lawsuit: School districts used students to promote anti-amendment stance”
by Mike Paluska
CBS Atlanta
October 8, 2012

WATCH NEWS CLIP VIDEO HERE

In a lawsuit filed with the Fulton County Superior Court on Monday, five people part of a class action lawsuit allege that the Fulton and Gwinnett School Districts used tax payer money and students to strike down Amendment One on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Amendment One will be voted on by the public on whether to amend the Georgia Constitution to grant the state more power to create charter schools.

“The defendants are using tax dollars to fund a campaign to defeat the amendment in order to retain their current monopoly of power of public education in Georgia,” according to the suit filed by Allen Hughes, Rich Thompson, Rae Anne Harkness, Kelley O’ Bryan Gary and Kara Martin, on behalf of themselves and all taxpayers in Georgia.

On Monday, CBS Atlanta News spoke to Thompson and Harkness.

“I support school choice, and I support the ability for parents to have more options for their children. The unfortunate part is we have a bureaucracy that has decided they don’t want parents to have that option,” Thompson said. “And they are using our tax dollars against us to limit us from receiving accurate information so parents can make informed decisions on Election Day.”

According to the lawsuit, “Defendant Fulton, Defendant Gwinnett and the districts and the entire Education Empire have used public sources and funds to prepare anti-amendment documents, distributed the material electronically, given anti-amendment speeches while on official business, adopted resolutions opposing the amendment, allowed representatives of the teachers union to appear at staff meetings and advocate against the amendment, held staff meetings on public property in which teachers were warned that, unless they voted ‘No,’ they could lose their jobs and allowed the Georgia

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“Senate passes charter schools amendment resolution”
By Wayne Washington
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 19, 2012

The full-court press legislators endured during the charter schools battle in the General Assembly now moves to voters, who this fall will get their chance to determine how much authority the state should have to approve and fund charter schools.

Expect to hear about charter schools on television. Expect to hear about them on radio. And there probably will be fliers, too.

After the Senate passed a resolution sending the constitutional amendment to voters Monday, Tony Roberts, president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Charter Schools Association, noted that constitutional amendment campaigns in Georgia have cost anywhere from $5 million to $10 million.

But Roberts was quick to point out that his association is not likely to have that much money for a campaign. It won’t be for a lack of effort, though.

“We’re going to turn our attention to educating the public about how this will help students and parents,” said Roberts, adding that his association will be soliciting bids from firms that can help with the campaign.

Republicans in the General Assembly have made that argument for weeks, saying a constitutional amendment was needed to counter a decision from the Supreme Court, which ruled in May that the state could not force local school districts to pay for charter schools they did not authorize.

That ruling all but killed the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, which had approved applications for charter schools that were turned down by local school districts. Charter schools authorized by the commission had, before the court ruling, been eligible for local district money. It meant 16 schools attended by thousands of students were denied more than $8 million in funding.

Democrats and many traditional school supporters praised the ruling as a necessary re-affirmation of local control over public schools.

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