State Rep. Lorena Garcia is on the ropes defending her indefensible bill to kneecap charter schools and cripple them with regulations intended to put those non-union teachers out of business.
The socialist Democrat who represents Adams County childishly taunted parents and supporters of alternatives to the public school system on social media this week.
Conservative Activists Oppose Charter School Accountability. Why? What are they afraid of? Don’t parents and community want accountability and transparency in the public education systems? #HB1263 #charterschoolaccountability #coleg https://t.co/0a9jExDvc3
— Lorena Garcia (@RepLorenaGarcia) March 14, 2024
Garcia made the ridiculous claim that her legislation only seeks transparency and accountability, yet a Gazette editorial shines a light on what Garcia’s bill actually hides.
House Bill 24-1363 that is also sponsored by Democrat state Rep. Tammy Story of Evergreen seeks to deliver death to charter schools by a thousand cuts, The Gazette writes.
The very opposite of transparency and accountability is the bill’s proposed elimination of requirements that school districts provide charter schools with lists of vacant buildings or unused land that charter schools could use to operate.
A few of HB24-1363’s provisions are straightforward enough to expose the bill’s underlying intent outright — like its repeal of a charter school applicant’s right to appeal to the state when a local, anti-charter school board rejects a charter application a second time. But most of the dirty work in the legislation consists of obscure, arcane policy twists that do their damage while flying under the radar. The net effect is to create a broad array of hurdles.
More egregiously, it would let a school district hostile to charters charge them rent for a district building. And it sets up phony, gratuitous checks, like “a process for community members” — i.e., union ringers — to appeal a school board’s approval of a charter application.
For a true look at transparency, a peek inside the bill reveals its insidious intent.
Here’s the “if too many families pick charter schools, we need to be able to shut them down” provision of the bill.
It’s time to put school choice in our state constitution. #copolitics #coleg https://t.co/1qsT7RfPpt pic.twitter.com/Fp11M9fbbO
— Michael Fields (@MichaelCLFields) March 11, 2024
Yup. That’s the stuff.
The saving grace is that the bill has splintered Democrats, and Gov. Polis is a supporter of charter schools, having founded two of his own.
The bill is deserving of its own death by just one cut, by the Democrat-controlled State House.