The legality of charter schools in Washington State is resurfacing for the fourth time since 1996 awakening the ongoing debate between public and charter schools.

A charter school is similar to a public school in that it receives public money, however it does not have to follow the rules and regulations belonging to a public school district.

Charter schools are created when an organization obtains a charter from a state-authorized agency. The charter gives the organization a set period of years to meet its performance goals in exchange for autonomy.

In a legislative assembly held on October 14th and 15th members of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) voted in favor of supporting the initiation of charter schools in Washington.

In their 2011 proposed statement on charter schools the PTA said, “The Washington State PTA shall initiate and/or support legislation or policies that drive innovation and accountability in public education by allowing the operation of public charter schools in the state of Washington.”

While they have recently joined forces with the charter movement, the PTA claims they will not be helping to initiate legislation because it is not a priority issue nor will they be supporting any and all issues regarding charters.

“We aren’t going to support anything that comes down the pipe that has the word charter schools in it,” Bill Williams Executive Director of Wash. PTA said. “In general, the PTA is an advocate for what is good for the kids.”

According to Ballard PTSA President John Verduin there are 18 teachers who joined PTSA this year. Membership decreased from 55 last year.

Author Diane Ravitch discusses in her book, ‘The Death and Life of the Great American School System’, a national study in 2009 that concluded students in most charter schools performed no better than those in traditional public schools.

Researchers at Stanford University did the study with data from 2,403 charter schools in 15 states.

Regardless of the amount of endorsement, teachers and advocates of the public school system are frustrated and continue to emphasize several cons to the charter structure.

“Overall people seem to treat [charter schools] as an amazing solution to all the problems of public education, but in fact the research shows the results are sometimes better sometimes worse and on average all your doing is moving sideways with the charter school system,” science teacher Eric Muhs said. “There is no overall improvement. If you want to improve education, if you want to improve student outcome, fight poverty.”

Along with the argued lack of scalability of the charter makeup the instigation of charters in Washington, specifically Seattle, may also be detrimental to the Seattle Public Schools capital.

“This is a pretty terrible time to ask voters, or ask our legislators, to enact charter legislation,” education activist Melissa Westbrook said. “If a family decides to send their child to a charter school, their district loses the money.”

Potentially, charter schools could be taking money from already struggling schools in an already suffering economic climate.

However, loss of public school wealth is just one of the several controversial aspects of the Charter system. Along with specific “performance goals” charter schools may also charge tuition as a private school would, and may pick and choose whom they enroll. Many public school promoters see this as a hefty fault.

“Kids who go to public schools have rights, like kids with learning disabilities can take special education classes and get special support,” Noam Gundle science teacher and Seattle Education Association (SEA) board member said. “Charter schools don’t have to accept kids with special needs, they don’t have to accept kids who are lower achievers, and they also don’t have to accept English language learners.”

Since charter schools have turned away special education students and English language learners, their level of responsibility is disputed.

“The idea is that local communities can start a school, and do things they want to do and change some things but what happens is it takes away their accountability especially when they can make special rules for themselves,” Gundle said.ww

Even if charter schools are inaugurated in Wash. there is no guarantee they will be lucrative.

“Some of that stuff might work in Seattle for a few hundred kids, but if you are talking about all the kids at Rainier Beach, Cleveland, Sealth, Ingraham, Ballard, Garfield and Nathan Hale, you are talking about a lot of kids and a lot of different kinds of kids. They aren’t all going to be able to [work with the charter system],” Gundle said.

Some fear that in addition to failure in Seattle, charters will also cause increased inequality in a city that already faces segregation issues.

“What it comes down to is there is one kind of education that is good for poor kids and a different kind of education that is good for more affluent kids,” Muhs said.

As Gundle and Muhs explained, this causes schools to become exclusive places, giving students special privileges.

“This creates inequality, I am against inequality. I am for every student having a positive experience,” Gundle said.