Does anyone expect public school establishment to get behind charter schools?

Charter schools ... another form of school choice. But will charter schools ever get anywhere in Virginia?

The Virginia Education Association, the Virginia School Board Association, and the Virginia Association of School Superintendents are all against them in one way or another.

Oh, sure, they said they weren't entirely opposed to the idea ... and then they had all the reasons why they were opposed to it:

First, they said, it comes at the wrong time. School divisions are already cash-strapped, and don’t need new start-ups coming along taking money away from public schools to serve a small percentage of the population.

Next, they don’t think an appeals process for charter school applicants that have been turned down by school boards is necessary. Even though Virginia currently has just three charter schools with a fourth on the way, school boards have actually approved 10 of the 16 applications that have been submitted over the past 12 years, they said. Some of the ideas for charters have been incorporated into existing school programs; others have started and closed down. Local school boards are the ones best positioned to decide what their communities need, they said.

Finally, they disputed the characterization of Virginia’s charter school law by charter advocacy groups as one of the weakest in the nation. It’s actually one of the strongest, they said – it protects communities from weak or poorly thought-out school proposals.

This group has traditionally been against school choice so this is no surprise.