The lawsuit brought by teachers union aims to defund Type 2 charter public schoolsBATON ROUGE, La. – The Louisiana teachers union recently filed a motion with the Louisiana Supreme Court to not allow into the record data cited in an amicus brief from PublicSchoolOptions.org (PSO) and two Louisiana parents. The publicly-available data shows that, on average, 75 percent of students would be forced to return to lower-performing district schools than the Type 2 charter public schools they currently attend. The union lawsuit aims to defund Type 2 charter public schools, which would likely cause them to close. Currently, more than 13,000 students attend these schools.STATEMENT FROM CHRISTIN WHITE-KAISER, AMICI AND LOUISIANA PSO MEMBER:“The teachers union should be ashamed for asking the court to ignore the real-life impact on students who, because of their lawsuit, would be forced to go back to lower-performing schools that already failed to meet their learning needs. Not only does the union want to take away choices in education, they have no regard for what is best for students. Their motion to strike this compelling data, and quite literally kick any consideration for the children and families out of the courtroom, perfectly illustrates they don’t really care about students at all.”DATA ANALYSIS

To view the full analysis see pages 20-26.In 2015, a District Court judge ruled in favor of Louisiana parents and students with a clear message: charter schools are public schools and the current funding mechanism established by the state can continue. In spite of the judge’s decision, the teachers union and Iberville Parish School Board pushed forward with an appeal in their continued fight to diminish options in public education. The appeals court sided with the teachers union and Iberville Parish School Board and the case is now at the Supreme Court for finality. PublicSchoolOptions.org is a national alliance of over 60,000 parents that supports and defends parents’ rights to access the best public school options for their children. The Coalition supports the creation of public school options, including charter schools, online schools, magnet schools, open enrollment policies and other innovative education programs. Additionally, we advocate for equal access without restrictions to the school that best suits the individual student’s learning needs whether it is public, non-public or home-based.###