From Dave Collins, AP:
Connecticut officials on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the state’s restrictions on magnet schools, charter schools and school choice programs.
The state attorney general’s office filed a motion in federal court in Hartford saying the lawsuit is not allowed under a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bars federal courts from interfering with states’ sovereign right to determine public education policy.
A group of parents sued state officials in August, aided by the nonprofit group Student Matters, of Menlo Park, California. They argue the restrictions are unconstitutional and have forced thousands of low-income and minority students to attend low-performing schools.
… The plaintiffs include a Hartford mother, a Bridgeport mother, a Bridgeport father and their children, and a Bridgeport woman and her granddaughter. They’re suing Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and other state officials.
Full story here.
Well, the State Department of Education states Connecticut offers High Quality Education. Say no more. I can see young couples flocking to Bridgeport not only because we offer high quality education but we also have an amazing BOE overseeing it. The thing that is interesting is the plaintiffs have until December 12th to file a motion. The way things are happening these days, perhaps the statute instituted in 1973 is obsolete and with a supportive President, things will change. 🙂
The State of Connecticut offers high quality education in the suburbs. The losers/castoffs are pushed through socioeconomic forces into the urban areas with underfunded, poorly performing, low-quality education.
But because they are black and brown poor students they have no choice but to stay put in failing public schools. With a Board Of Education fighting with each other, is this process going to help educate the students in Bridgeport?
FIX THE SCHOOLS.
Frank, ask your heroine Maria Pereira what has she been doing to FIX THE SCHOOLS, where is the vision for education in Bridgeport? The Bridgeport Board Of Education members can’t even have a regular board meeting so when can they FIX THE SCHOOLS?
Frank, what proposal does your heroine Maria Pereira have to FIX THE SCHOOLS?
Frank, you are 100% on point.
Steve, Jessica Martinez is the lead plaintiff in this lawsuit, which is being funded by a California Silicon Valley billionaire. He recently funded a lawsuit in California challenging teacher tenure. He won in the lower court, but the teacher unions prevailed in the appellate court, and the California Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
Now this is when you need to make sure Jessica Martinez is paying attention.
President-elect Donald Trump intends to name Betsy DeVos, a conservative activist and billionaire philanthropist who has pushed forcefully for private school voucher programs nationwide, as his nominee for Education Secretary, according to a person close to DeVos.
Trump’s pick underlines his promises on the campaign trail to put “school choice”–the expansion of taxpayer-funded charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools–at the center of his efforts on education.
His embrace of DeVos, a Michigan power broker and major donor to the GOP and its candidates around the country, shows a willingness to look outside his circle of loyalists. DeVos donated money to Republican primary contenders Carly Fiorina and Jeb Bush before throwing her support behind Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). She was never an enthusiastic Trump supporter, telling the Washington Examiner in March that she considered him an “interloper” who “does not represent the Republican Party.”
Teachers unions and other proponents of public schools are likely to decry DeVos’s nomination as catastrophic attack on public education.