At their regular monthly meeting, the Greene County Board of Education went on record as opposing Charter Schools in Alabama.

The term “charter school” can be applied to any school which is non-profit and non-religious-based.

The proposed Charter School Bill (HB5 541) would allow these schools to receive the same state and local funding now available only to public schools.

This would harm public schools in a number of ways, according to the resolution, for the following reasons:

1. Charter Schools would have no requirements for established standards, curricula or teacher certification;

2. Funds for Charter Schools would come from existing education funding,  which could drastically cut funding available to public schools;

3. Charter Schools would not be held liable to the bid law as are public schools. There is nothing in HB541 that prohibits the “non-profit” applicant from subcontracting the charter  responsibilities to a “for profit” company.

4. There are no statistics available which indicate that students in charter schools exceed students in public schools in academic success and achievement;

5. The existence of Charter Schools could create exclusivity and forced segregation;

6. The existence of Charter Schools could take students from public schools and therefore force lay-offs of tenured and trained teaching personnel.

Curtis Travis, UNISERVE Director with the Alabama Education Association, said, “We just don’t have enough money!” He explained that school funding was just not enough to allow schools that were not accredited nor governed by the state law to have an equal amount of funding as public schools. They would bring in no additional state funding but would benefit from the funding nevertheless.

He urged people attending the meeting to call their legislators and ask them to vote against HB541