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Charter schools are public schools — except, apparently, when they aren’t

In a recent Education Week blog post, author and education reformer Sam Chaltain asked a question that, until recently, seemed beyond doubt: Do students in charter schools have First Amendment rights?The answer is in some doubt as a result of a pair of court rulings absolving charter schools of violating the rights of students or employees.Unlike truly private schools, charter schools derive their funding and their legal existence from local school districts (that's where the "charter" comes from). School boards hold life-and-death authority over these schools, and state laws generally require that (unlike truly private schools) they accept all qualified applicants.Charter schools do enjoy a measure of separation from the government because they are statutorily exempted from certain state oversight requirements that apply to traditional public schools.

Relief for records requestors? Schools ordered to pay fines, attorney’s fees in open records lawsuits

Violating state open records laws could actually cost you a lot of money, officials in Washington and Iowa have learned this month.First, the University of Washington was ordered last week to pay more than $720,000 in fines for withholding 12,000 pages of public records from a former professor who wanted to see whether she was wrongfully denied tenure at the University of Washington's Tacoma campus because of her gender or heritage.

Why there’s not a student newspaper at Constitution High School anymore

"Have you met the girl from Constitution High School whose student newspaper was censored?"This was my introduction to Madeline Clapier, a senior at the school who was attending the Constitution Day celebrations Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.