OPINION: Charter school amendment bad for state, devastating for rural Ga.

By Tom Cox

Voters living outside metro Atlanta or larger Georgia school districts might mistakenly believe that the proposed constitutional Amendment 1 on the November ballot has little relevance to the their own children's education. After all, charter schools are virtually non-existent in rural and small-town Georgia, largely because charter operators find it economically impractical to open charter schools in areas without sufficient numbers of "consumers" (that is, students).

In truth, Amendment 1 will have very real and very damaging consequences for public schools throughout the state – especially those in the least populous and least wealthy school districts. By creating a new state government agency that will establish a new system of state-funded charter schools, hundreds of millions of dollars will be re-directed to those state schools and away from local public schools.