Colo. Supreme Court rules against school vouchers.The Colorado Supreme Court The Colorado Supreme Court is the highest court in the U.S. state of Colorado. It consists of a Chief Justice and six Associate Justices. Powers and duties Appellate jurisdiction has ruled against a school voucher A school voucher, also called an education voucher, is a certificate by which parents are given the ability to pay for the education of their children at a school of their choice, rather than the public school (UK state school) to which they were assigned. program that would have funneled large sums of public funds See Fund, 3. See also: Public into religious and other private schools. In a 4-3 decision June 28, the state's high court said the school voucher law violates a section of the state constitution that requires local school boards to maintain significant control over funding of district schools. In spring 2003, Americans United, along with local branches of the ACLU ACLU: see American Civil Liberties Union. , the NAACP NAACP in full National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Oldest and largest U.S. civil rights organization. It was founded in 1909 to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality for African Americans; W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. and other public interest groups, brought suit against the voucher law on a number of state constitutional grounds. "This is a great victory for public schools and the taxpayers," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn Reverend Barry W. Lynn (born 1948 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) has been the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State since 1992.[1] , Americans United executive director. "Public funds should never be diverted to religious and other private schools that don't have to answer to the people. The decision strongly stands for the right of local school boards to direct funding and management of their schools." The majority of the Colorado Supreme Court in Owens v. Colorado Congress of Parents concluded that the Colorado Opportunity Contract Pilot Program subverted the state constitution's mandate for local control of public schools. "By denying local districts discretion to allocate their locally-raised funds, the program not only violates the clear mandates of our cases construing article IX, section 15, but also undermines the basic rationales of our state-wide school finance system: effectuating local control over schools," Judge Michael L. Bender wrote for the majority. Voucher advocates in the Colorado legislature have vowed to introduce new legislation designed to go around the court ruling. |
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