FL DOE ordered county to open charter school against its wishes. County is going to court.

[madfloridian]

I say good for them. The state has made a habit of overturning the county's decisions on charter schools. This means doing away with local control.

This time a county is fighting back by taking the state to court over being forced to open another Renaissance Charter School.

From the Orlando Sentinel:

School Board appeals state decision to let charter open in Seminole

SANFORD — The Seminole County School Board is going to court to prevent a charter school from opening because, the district says, the school does not meet its standards.

The board has asked the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach to overturn a May decision by the State Board of Education ordering it to allow Renaissance Charter School to open in Seminole.

Renaissance has a growing string of taxpayer-financed but independently operated charters across Florida and hoped to open the Seminole school under state provisions permitting successful charters to replicate elsewhere. The Polk County School Board has filed a similar appeal regarding Renaissance with the Second District Court of Appeal in Lakeland.

..."Seminole also questioned Renaissance's plans for financing the school and pointed out that its proposed goals for student achievement were below what the average Seminole County public school achieves. The board also objected because Renaissance would give control of the school to Charter Schools USA, a management company that runs Renaissance's other schools."

That's true in many cases...that a charter school is no better and often worse than public schools.

Bob Sikes covered this at his blog called Scathing Purple Musings recently....this taking away of local school district control.

Local Control of Charter Schools is Over in Florida

The Florida State Board of Education on Wednesday overruled the decisions of local school boards in deciding that five charter schools rejected by Central Florida districts should be allowed to open.

The decisions were a rebuff for officials in Orange, Seminole, Volusia, Polk and Brevard counties, who had said the charters, proposed to open in the fall, fell short of their standards.

During an appeals hearing in Tampa, the state board also sided with two charters in Broward County that had been rejected by the school board there.

The decisions came during National Charter School Week, when state board members have been visiting charter schools and openly advocating the taxpayer-financed alternatives to traditional public schools.

All of this is going on just as two Lee County charter high schools are in the news for charging the state half a million for non-existent students.

There's not a single major Democratic forum that makes it comfortable for people to post the truth about this massive steamrolling over public education. That's rather sad. If we don't talk about it now, it will be too late.