Yanking control away from local school boards

This op-ed from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution voices outrage at a proposed Georgia bill that would allow the state to approve charter schools and force them into districts where local school boards had previously rejected them.

The interesting thing is that this is already the case in California and many other states, and few eyebrows other than mine are raised over it — in fact, my impression is that Georgia must be a rarity in not already allowing it.

The editorial writer has it right when she points out:

HB 881 represents a frontal assault on the constitutional powers of school boards and a shift of critical decision-making to a political commission that will have no firsthand knowledge of the district's needs, the local system's own development plans or whether the charter applicants have any credibility or relationships in the community.

Nor will the commission have any accountability to local voters, who, if angry over their school board member's resistance to charters, could always vote the rascal out of office. Those voters will have no recourse against the actions of this commission, which will operate in de facto anonymity, most likely in a nice suite of state offices in Atlanta.

It's unclear whether the editorialist knows that this is the norm in other states. Her outrage is absolutely warranted; the question is why nobody else seems to share it. The whole editorial is here.