ADVOCATES SOUGHT INNOVATION WHEN MAKING UNIVERSITIES SCHOOL AUTHORIZERS

Original Story:  freep.com

As Michigan’s charter law was put together two decades ago, those drafting it faced a problem: Who should be responsible for authorizing charter schools and keeping an eye on them?

It could have been the Michigan Department of Education, but legislators, representatives from then-Gov. John Engler’s office and others working on the law didn’t want to tie up the schools in a traditional education bureaucracy.

That led to the state’s 13public universities. With 10 of the 13 boards running the schools featuring board members handpicked by Engler, the move was made to make those schools the backbone of the charter system.

Engler “knew he had appointed the board members, so he knew he would have influence,” said Jim Goenner, an early CMU hire who became the director of CMU’s charter school office. Goenner, now president/CEO of the National Charter Schools Institute, said he believes the universities are doing a good job running the charter school system.

Western Michigan University and Michigan Technological University are the only state universities with an appointed board that do not have charter schools.

In the late 1990s, a faculty committee looked at whether Western Michigan should start schools. The recommendation was that WMU become involved only in charter schools that had the support of existing traditional public schools, WMU spokeswoman Cheryl Roland said. The university did get involved in planning for one middle school, but it never opened — and the university has not pursued doing another one.

Michigan Technological University never pursued charters in part because it does not have a teaching college.

The three Michigan public universities with elected boards — University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University — don’t have any charters.

At U-M, the decision not to charter schools is simple, said longtime board member Andrea Fischer Newman.

“We’re not in the K-12 charter school business,” she said.

Longtime officials at MSU couldn’t remember any formal discussion of chartering schools by MSU’s board.

But Wayne State jumped in early — opening its own public school in 1993, even before the charter law took effect. It was turned over to Detroit Public Schools in 2002. WSU officials said at the time they wanted to partner with DPS, not compete with it for students. Today, Wayne State has no charters.

Twenty years after the law took effect, Dan DeGrow, former Republican Senate majority leader, said he still likes having universities involved. He believes the charter system is a mixed bag now and would like to see the law require more connection to the universities’ schools of education, which train teachers.

“I would require any charter authorizer to be heavily involved in setting curriculum, hiring staff and making decisions (for the charter school).

“If they had more involvement, then if things went wrong, it would be embarrassing for the universities and perhaps they would act sooner to fix or close the schools.”

State Supreme Court: Ticketed MSU Student Cannot be Charged

Story first reported from Detroit Free Press

LANSING -- A Michigan State University ordinance that led to the conviction of a student who confronted a parking employee over a ticket was ruled unconstitutional Friday by the state Supreme Court.

In the 5-2 decision, the court said that the ordinance "criminalizes a substantial amount of constitutionally protected speech."

The case stems from a 2008 incident in a campus parking ramp. Jared Rapp's Land Rover was ticketed for parking in a space with an expired meter, but Rapp said the meter hadn't yet expired.

Rapp, who has since graduated with a law degree and now is a practicing attorney in Illinois, approached the parking enforcement employee, Ricardo Rego, and demanded that Rego tell him his name, but Rego refused. Rego said he believed Rapp was acting in an aggressive manner, according to court documents. Rapp also stood outside Rego's pickup and took photographs of him with a cell phone.

The ticket eventually was dismissed. But a jury in 54B District Court convicted Rapp of violating a university ordinance that says, "No person shall disrupt the normal activity" of a university employee in completing an assigned task.

The high court's majority opinion said the ordinance's language allows it to be enforced against anyone.

"The MSU ordinance could be violated numerous times throughout any given day, given that there are seemingly infinite ways in which someone might 'disrupt' another who is engaged in an 'activity' for or with MSU," Justice Diane Hathaway said in writing for the majority.

Justices Brian Zahra and Stephen Markman dissented, saying they were not convinced that the ordinance presented "a realistic danger of significantly compromising First Amendment freedoms."

Rapp's attorney, Nick Bostic, has said that Rapp -- who had served on a committee that addressed parking issues -- knew that when tickets were challenged, the university would not necessarily send the employee who wrote the ticket to the hearing. The university, Bostic said, was not disclosing that practice. That's why Rapp was adamant about learning Rego's name

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