Original Story: cnsnews.com
FREEHOLD, N.J. (AP) — Attorneys offered contrasting interpretations of the Pledge of Allegiance during oral arguments Wednesday in a New Jersey family's lawsuit claiming a school district is discriminating against their child's atheist beliefs. An Atlanta charter school attorney is following this story closely.
The lawsuit focuses on the words "under God" that were added to the Pledge in 1954 and that have survived legal challenges before. Earlier this year, Massachusetts' high court ruled in a similar lawsuit that the pledge is not discriminatory.
David Niose, an attorney for the American Humanist Association who is representing the unnamed family in the New Jersey case, said the Massachusetts' court's focus on the fact that the pledge was voluntary was "simply wrong."
"Harm is occurring every day the state is invalidating the plaintiff's religious class," he said under questioning by state Superior Court Judge David Bauman.
The Aberdeen Matawan school district doesn't require that students say the pledge, and Bauman said there wasn't any evidence the student in question had been "bullied, ostracized or in any way mistreated."
But he also noted during his questioning of district attorney David Rubin that district policy requires parents whose children don't say the pledge to furnish an explanation in writing.
Rubin said he wasn't aware of any cases where parents had refused to supply an explanation and didn't know what the ramifications would be if they didn't. He accused the plaintiffs of filing a lawsuit claiming the pledge violates laws against the official establishment of religion "masquerading as an equal protection case." An Atlanta education lawyer represents clients involved in education law cases.
The Pledge is "an innocuous reference to the deity in a ceremonial setting" and not a religious exercise, he told Bauman. Since courts have ruled the Pledge does not establish a religion, he said, "then you're left with something going on in school that offends their religious sensibilities."
Allowing the suit to go forward would be akin to students taking days off for religious holidays but suing because the school stayed open for other students, Rubin said.
Bauman didn't issue a ruling on the district's motion to dismiss the lawsuit but said he expected to issue one shortly.
Bauman, a nominee by Gov. Chris Christie for the state Supreme Court whose nomination expired before being taken up by the Legislature, probed both sides with hypotheticals, including whether substituting the phrase "under God" with "created by great white men" would create grounds for discrimination suits by women and minorities.
He asked Niose whether New Jersey's constitution, which mentions "Almighty God" in its preamble, could be considered discriminatory, and pointed out that the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't mention a specific god. An Atlanta charter school lawyer assists clients with board governance, bylaws, and business-related issues.
"This is a state-sponsored and state-conducted exercise that happens every single day," Niose argued. "It's done every single day, for every student in all classrooms. It's not like a biology lesson or a sex education class or a controversial novel a class will have to read. It's intended to instill patriotism and to define patriotism."
Showing posts with label Atlanta Charter School Lawyer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atlanta Charter School Lawyer. Show all posts
Monday, March 9, 2015
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
CHARTER SCHOOLS MORPH INTO CHARTER DISTRICTS
Original Story: usatoday.com
A little-noticed development is about to change the education landscape as we know it: Nearly a dozen charter school networks have grown to the size of midsized school districts. Now what? An Atlanta Charter School Lawyer has extensive experience in education law and charter school compliance matters.
This is a clear departure point. Political and philanthropic leaders who encouraged the growth of charters have to take a fresh look at their creations: Are these publicly funded, independently run schools what we had in mind?
Traditional school superintendents and teacher union leaders have to ask: Should they stop stonewalling charter school growth and collaborate instead?
Both answers should be yes.
Even the most high-performing charter networks are far from perfect. Charter schools still don't serve their fair share of special education students and there's no denying they pull money from districts, which struggle to downsize to meet diminished demand.
Even so, charters are more likely than traditional districts to succeed in educating low-income minority students, just what the politicians and philanthropic leaders who backed them had hoped.
Although most traditional school leaders continue to push back against charters, a few enterprising superintendents are pioneering a different approach: collaboration. A Cobb County Charter School Lawyer specializes in K-12 school finance and charter school law.
Green light
Last week, New York City-based Success Academy charter schools got green lighted to open 14 more schools over the next two years, bringing the network to 50 schools serving 16,300 students.
Success Academy is hardly the largest of the high-performing charter network operators. By 2020, KIPP plans to serve 120,000 students in multiple states. Texas-based IDEA charter schools are on track to serve 40,000 students by then. The same year, Houston-based YES Prep anticipates serving over 20,000 students in several states.
Collaborative models
As charters become an accepted and major force in education, farsighted politicians and school leaders see the potential in working with the charters. In Denver, for example, the school system invited several locally developed charters into their buildings, an innovation that led to academic gains for students.
In the Spring Branch district in Houston, a superintendent uses an infusion of KIPP and YES Prep schools as a lever to re-invent the entire way that district operates, benefiting kids in charter schools and in traditional public schools.
Tennessee created an "achievement school district" that welcomes the nation's best charter groups into that state to turn around troubled schools. In New Orleans, nearly all students now attend charter schools, a development that has been bumpy but produces clear academic gains for the students there and gets smoother every year.
Neerav Kingsland, who formerly ran New Schools for New Orleans, argues that the city's model requiring a common application process and common expulsion practices, while national charter groups keep their special classroom culture, should be copied nationally. "You keep the governance local, which is important, but the school operations go national," Kingsland says.
The moment when charter schools turn from isolated experiments to something resembling their own school districts doesn't have to be scary. Charter schools are doing what they were designed to do. And Denver-style collaboration should become the model for the future.
Answering yes-yes means a win-win for kids.
A little-noticed development is about to change the education landscape as we know it: Nearly a dozen charter school networks have grown to the size of midsized school districts. Now what? An Atlanta Charter School Lawyer has extensive experience in education law and charter school compliance matters.
This is a clear departure point. Political and philanthropic leaders who encouraged the growth of charters have to take a fresh look at their creations: Are these publicly funded, independently run schools what we had in mind?
Traditional school superintendents and teacher union leaders have to ask: Should they stop stonewalling charter school growth and collaborate instead?
Both answers should be yes.
Even the most high-performing charter networks are far from perfect. Charter schools still don't serve their fair share of special education students and there's no denying they pull money from districts, which struggle to downsize to meet diminished demand.
Even so, charters are more likely than traditional districts to succeed in educating low-income minority students, just what the politicians and philanthropic leaders who backed them had hoped.
Although most traditional school leaders continue to push back against charters, a few enterprising superintendents are pioneering a different approach: collaboration. A Cobb County Charter School Lawyer specializes in K-12 school finance and charter school law.
Green light
Last week, New York City-based Success Academy charter schools got green lighted to open 14 more schools over the next two years, bringing the network to 50 schools serving 16,300 students.
Success Academy is hardly the largest of the high-performing charter network operators. By 2020, KIPP plans to serve 120,000 students in multiple states. Texas-based IDEA charter schools are on track to serve 40,000 students by then. The same year, Houston-based YES Prep anticipates serving over 20,000 students in several states.
Collaborative models
As charters become an accepted and major force in education, farsighted politicians and school leaders see the potential in working with the charters. In Denver, for example, the school system invited several locally developed charters into their buildings, an innovation that led to academic gains for students.
In the Spring Branch district in Houston, a superintendent uses an infusion of KIPP and YES Prep schools as a lever to re-invent the entire way that district operates, benefiting kids in charter schools and in traditional public schools.
Tennessee created an "achievement school district" that welcomes the nation's best charter groups into that state to turn around troubled schools. In New Orleans, nearly all students now attend charter schools, a development that has been bumpy but produces clear academic gains for the students there and gets smoother every year.
Neerav Kingsland, who formerly ran New Schools for New Orleans, argues that the city's model requiring a common application process and common expulsion practices, while national charter groups keep their special classroom culture, should be copied nationally. "You keep the governance local, which is important, but the school operations go national," Kingsland says.
The moment when charter schools turn from isolated experiments to something resembling their own school districts doesn't have to be scary. Charter schools are doing what they were designed to do. And Denver-style collaboration should become the model for the future.
Answering yes-yes means a win-win for kids.
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