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Union-Led Group Calls For Challenge To Washington Charter School Law

A group that includes Washington’s largest teachers’ union has formally askedstate Attorney General Bob Ferguson to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s new charter school law.

Lawyers representing the Washington Education Association, the League of Women Voters and the Latino community organization El Centro de la Raza list seven elements of the charter school law they say violate the state constitution, including the diversion of state funds and local levy dollars from existing public school districts to charter schools. The group holds that doing so is unconstitutional because charter schools would answer to private boards of directors, not elected school boards, and because when voters approved levies to fund public schools in years past, they didn’t know charters may end up with some of the money.

If the attorney general doesn’t challenge the charter law, the union-led group says it will file its own lawsuit.

Year started with KUOW: 2008