Lisa deFaria, in her letter about charter schools, admits at the beginning that she has no experience or expertise on Washington state’s school system (“Reform, but don’t throw out, charter schools,” page A4, Sept. 25 Herald).

She also may not have read our state Constitution.

The state Supreme Court ruled, “The Charter School Act violates article IX, section 2 because charter schools are not common schools despite the Act’s attempt to so designate them.”

As the court ruled in the past, a common school must be “subject to and under the control of the qualified voters of the school district” in order to receive common school funding.

Charter schools are controlled by boards appointed by the corporation that runs the school instead of boards elected by voters to oversee the spending of their taxes. And in spite of what Ms. deFaria wrote, charter schools are exempt from the majority of the state statutes and rules applicable to public school districts and boards.

Perhaps Ms. deFaria needs to be educated on the history of charter school attempts in Washington. Charter school initiatives in 1996 and 2000 were defeated. The Legislature passed a charter school bill in 2004, and a referendum on the bill was soundly defeated in every county of the state. The charter school initiative under question barely passed in 2012 with 50.69 percent of the vote. Washington citizens like their public schools and work to make them better for all students.

Ms. deFaria makes the questionable statement that most public school systems nationwide failed to serve children in “underserved populations and individual learning styles.” She doesn’t know that students in Washington have the choice to attend school in any district they choose. This is shown by the hundreds of students living in North Kitsap School District who choose to attend schools in the Central Kitsap and Bainbridge Island school districts.

I hope she’ll look at all five of the districts in the county and see the broad range of programs offered: an Options program, alternative schools, language immersion schools, a STEM school, programs to assist parents of home-schooled students, Montessori programs and many more.

We’re proud of our schools.

Catherine Ahl
Poulsbo