{"id":5201,"date":"2018-04-24T16:06:01","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T16:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawyerscom.org\/?p=5201"},"modified":"2019-05-14T23:48:35","modified_gmt":"2019-05-14T23:48:35","slug":"civil-rights-groups-on-charter-cap-lawsuit-dismissal-stop-pitting-schools-against-each-other-improve-opportunities-for-our-most-vulnerable-youth-in-all-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/our-impact\/education\/civil-rights-groups-on-charter-cap-lawsuit-dismissal-stop-pitting-schools-against-each-other-improve-opportunities-for-our-most-vulnerable-youth-in-all-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Civil Rights Groups on Charter Cap Lawsuit Dismissal: Stop Pitting Schools Against Each Other"},"content":{"rendered":"

Civil Rights Groups\u2019 Statement on Supreme Judicial Court\u2019s Dismissal of Doe v. Peyser<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is time for Massachusetts to stop pitting schools against each other and improve the educations of our most vulnerable youth in all schools.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) affirmed the dismissal of Doe v. Peyser<\/em>, a lawsuit that sought to have the Court declare the cap on charter schools unconstitutional. As the organizations and students who raised the adverse civil rights implications of the plaintiffs\u2019 claims in briefs and oral argument before the SJC, we applaud the Court\u2019s decision.\u00a0 We hope our Commonwealth\u2019s attention can now be properly turned to improving education in every school, particularly for students of color and our most vulnerable youth. Along with the voters\u2019 rejection of Question Two \u2013 a 2016 ballot initiative intended to remove the charter school cap \u2013 today\u2019s decision puts to rest another battle between traditional public schools and charter schools in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

The Commonwealth\u2019s energy is better spent identifying solutions that benefit students in all schools rather than pitting one type of school against another.\u00a0 Indeed, this kind of zero-sum game is particularly harmful to the students represented by our civil rights organizations in this case: students of color, English language learners, and students with disabilities who are disproportionately under-enrolled in charter schools or over-disciplined out of them.\u00a0 The education of these students would have been harmed by eliminating the cap as funds would have been removed from their traditional public schools \u2013 which are required to serve all students \u2013 diminishing the support, instruction, and enrichment they receive in the process.<\/p>\n

The New England Area Conference of the NAACP, the NAACP \u2013 Boston Branch, and the Boston Education Justice Alliance, together with individual students of color, students with disabilities, and English language learners, served as \u201cfriends of the court\u201d in opposing the lawsuit and arguing for its dismissal, both in the trial court and before the SJC. Collectively, they were represented by the Lawyers\u2019 Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, the Center for Law and Education, Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy, Inc. (META, Inc.), and pro bono <\/em>partners at Anderson & Kreiger LLP.\u00a0 Doe v. Peyser <\/em>was dismissed in Suffolk Superior Court in 2016 – a month before Massachusetts voters rejected Question 2 – and was before the Supreme Judicial Court on appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Civil Rights Groups\u2019 Statement on Supreme Judicial Court\u2019s Dismissal of Doe v. Peyser It is time for Massachusetts to stop pitting schools against each other and improve the educations of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[40,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6922,"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5201\/revisions\/6922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawyersforcivilrights.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}