Families without economic means can’t afford to access the same “public” schools as their wealthy neighbors a district over, leaving them with no choice but their district school.
Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, has called for a moratorium on charter-school funding. Fortunately, even if he were president, he’d have little to no control to effect such a thing. It’s an issue left to the states, and even the incumbent, Donald Trump, has called for collapsing the small amount of federal money allocated to charter schools into a block grant. Teachers’ unions, on the other hand, have deep political leverage in many states, and they have shown the ability to stop and even turn back charter-school growth in individual states.
Some of them do so based on the argument that charter schools are not real public schools. But what makes a school “public”? It’s a far fuzzier distinction than many politicians and union leaders would have you think.
