It sounds like an academic question. “Class, today we’re going to discuss whether or not charter schools are public schools.” You say “public school,” I say “publicly funded school.” Potato, po-tah-to. But recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board move the question into the realm of federal law. In two cases, the NLRB decided charter schools aren’t public schools. They’re private corporations.
In its recent decisions, both issued Aug. 24, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Hyde Leadership Charter School in Brooklyn and the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School are — like other government contractors — private corporations that receive taxpayer dollars.
The Democrats on the NLRB supported the ruling, and the only Republican dissented, but it’s not clear who will benefit from the wider implications of the decisions. Charters like to call themselves public schools when they want taxpayer funding, so being considered private corporations could put their funding in jeopardy, but they also like being able to act like private entities when it comes to financial and organizational transparency, so the ruling could help them maintain their privacy fire walls.
These two cases are about unionization efforts at the schools. Ironically, the decision could make it more difficult for the teachers to organize.
The decisions mean that the schools’ employees must organize under the National Labor Relations Act, which applies to private-sector employees, rather than under state laws that apply to public-sector employees.
That takes teachers unions out of having a direct role in the organizing process, which could mean the teachers will be on their own.
Nonetheless, organizations supporting charter schools are upset by the ruling, while teachers unions and others who advocate for district-based public school are applauding.
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2016.
Shaping the Future: Indoctrinating Youth
“These boys and girls enter our organizations [at] ten years of age, and often for the first time get a little fresh air; after four years of the Young Folk they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years . . . And even if they are still not complete National Socialists, they go to Labor Service and are smoothed out there for another six, seven months . . . And whatever class consciousness or social status might still be left . . . the Wehrmacht [German armed forces] will take care of that.”
—Adolf Hitler (1938)
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007820
nail on the head yet again.
The National Labor Relations Board? Isn’t that the same organization that could be called upon at this point to hold an election to de-certify TEA, the union whose membership has declined so steeply that it seems to be prostrate before TUSD’s central administration, unable to stand up effectively for the beleaguered teaching force in the district’s sad schools?
Yes, I think it is.
In the wake of the brouhaha over how TUSD applied 123 funds and accounts in the Star about what TEA was saying about how the funds were applied, I read the rules for union decertification on the National Labor Relations Board website. Once it became clear that unions with declining membership may be vulnerable to having a successful decertification petition filed against them and that the employer (not just a group of employees) is one of the parties able to file a decertification petition, I felt like all of a sudden I understood many of the things that happen in the district much better. Here’s a link to a graph that shows in every year FY06 through FY15, in cases where employers had filed decertification petitions that led to decertifications elections being held, the unions lost their right to operate more often than they retained it:
https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/graphs-data/petitions-and-elections/employer-filed-petitions-rm
And now NLRB has ruled that charters are unable to qualify as public institutions, making it harder for their teachers to unionize, and “organizations supporting charter schools are upset by the ruling, while teachers [sic] unions and others who advocate for district-based public school [sic] are applauding”?
Very interesting. Thanks, David.
As always, the question to ask yourself is: who benefits from this? But the answer to that question may be much more complicated and much less obvious than it might appear to be at first glance.
Charter schools are not public schools. Public means open to all students. Duh. Have a charter school tell you your child just doesn’t fit their criteria, means it is a business.
This post has inspired Ratt to pat Wrong, Again on the back.
Oh, the intelligence which these fools lack.
Dr. Seuss couldn’t have written it better.
(Actually, he probably could’ve!)
Charter schools have no characteristics of public school. It is true, they are private groups getting public, taxpayer money. There should never again be called public schools.
Nope. If the NLRB is truly an “independent US government agency with responsibilities for enforcing US labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices, ” then they are failing big time. If your AZ tax dollars go to some CEO who craps on employees and pockets huge profits, don’t count on them for nothing. .
How do you know it was on the back? You could have been wrong again.
Okay, maybe it went something like this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IU28GHMcYxM
Unlike Wrong, Again…at least you have a sense of humour and something positive to add sometimes. Thank you for that. DC
And they will close up and leave the students and employees with nothing (see ITT Tech) if their profit stream is threatened… they are only here for the money.
What an intellectually corrupt thread of conversation. A member of the public, a student, can get a public education at a district school, a charter school or a private school. We should wish them the best, there is not clear evidence that one or the other does a superior job. However, there is a plethora of evidence that one or the other might do a better job for a particular student and only the parent is in position to know best.
Since starting charter schools in Arizona, murders by juveniles have plunged from 70 per year to 7 per year. Teenage abortions have plunged from over 1,400 to less than 500. This is despite a doubling of the school population and a tripling of the at-risk population. These are breathtaking numbers, far greater reductions than the nation as a whole.
In the last four years, African American eighth grade math rankings rose from 6th in the nation to first, Hispanics rose from 35th to 11th and White students rose from 20th to 6th. (National Assessment of Educational Progress). Arizona’s combined reading and math gains from 2011 4th grade to 2015 8th grade were the highest in the nation.