Bad GA Charter School Bill

HB 441 Charter System Flexibility at 80

We are so pleased that this did not pass before crossover day in 2015 out of the House of Representatives in Georgia.  There is something we need to know about this bill if we are considering becoming a charter system or an IE2 system.  Since the cutoff on the CCRPI score is 80 in this legislation, that means that the state could eliminate your locally elected representatives if any given school in your system scores below 80.  Look at the CCRPI scores from last year.  You will see that there are most likely several, if not many schools with less than an 80.  Because the CCRPI system is not academically accurate, it is probable that many schools will fall below the 80 point minimum.  When they write about "flexibility", they do not really mean flexibility from any of the federal mandates involving common core or the accompanying assessments.  They mean not having the follow the class size maximums or the 65 percent rule where at least 65 percent of the budget of the school system needs to pay for instruction.  Those are both important rules that parents and local communities wholeheartedly support for the benefit of the students.  We will keep this bill in mind and watch that this does not come back as an attachment to another bill this year.  In the meantime, choose "status quo" before June 15, 2015 so that you will be able to keep authority over all your local schools.

Source: Educational Freedom Coalition