“Lawsuit: School districts used students to promote anti-amendment stance”
by Mike Paluska
CBS Atlanta
October 8, 2012
In a lawsuit filed with the Fulton County Superior Court on Monday, five people part of a class action lawsuit allege that the Fulton and Gwinnett School Districts used tax payer money and students to strike down Amendment One on the Nov. 6 ballot.
Amendment One will be voted on by the public on whether to amend the Georgia Constitution to grant the state more power to create charter schools.
“The defendants are using tax dollars to fund a campaign to defeat the amendment in order to retain their current monopoly of power of public education in Georgia,” according to the suit filed by Allen Hughes, Rich Thompson, Rae Anne Harkness, Kelley O’ Bryan Gary and Kara Martin, on behalf of themselves and all taxpayers in Georgia.
On Monday, CBS Atlanta News spoke to Thompson and Harkness.
“I support school choice, and I support the ability for parents to have more options for their children. The unfortunate part is we have a bureaucracy that has decided they don’t want parents to have that option,” Thompson said. “And they are using our tax dollars against us to limit us from receiving accurate information so parents can make informed decisions on Election Day.”
According to the lawsuit, “Defendant Fulton, Defendant Gwinnett and the districts and the entire Education Empire have used public sources and funds to prepare anti-amendment documents, distributed the material electronically, given anti-amendment speeches while on official business, adopted resolutions opposing the amendment, allowed representatives of the teachers union to appear at staff meetings and advocate against the amendment, held staff meetings on public property in which teachers were warned that, unless they voted ‘No,’ they could lose their jobs and allowed the Georgia PTA to use students to carry the anti-amendment information home in backpacks.”
A representative with Fulton County Schools told CBS Atlanta News they don’t have a position on the proposed amendment and only have information from a question and answer session posted on their website.
“I want to see all the school districts take the material down,” Harkness said. “They were wrong that they should not have been advocating for it, we want them to return the tax dollars they have used to promote it so far.”
According to both Thompson and Harkness, they just want the vote on Nov. 6 to be fair.
“The lawsuit isn’t about how to vote or telling people how to vote – it’s about having a fair election,” Harkness said.
A hearing on the lawsuit has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday.