Good morning, CharterFolk.
Today we are happy to present a Contributor Column from Tony Roberts, the Principal at Higher Level Consulting.
We provide a bio for Tony below.
For many years, Tony Roberts has been a leading advocate and thought leader for the Public Charter School movement especially in the State of Georgia. He is currently the Principal of Higher Level Consulting LLC, a practice he established in 2024 to strengthen the leadership of nonprofit organizations and associations to operate more effectively and reach strategic targets. Previously, he served as President and CEO of the Georgia Charter Schools Association (GCSA) from 2007-2024. Under his leadership, the Association established a broad-based coalition and led the campaign for the successful passage of the Georgia Charter School Amendment to Georgia’s Constitution in November 2012. This was the first instance of a successful ballot initiative supporting charter schools in the United States. Prior to his work with GCSA, he served as an Executive in the following organizations: Texans CAN! Charter Academies (Texas), Campfire USA (Texas), and Evergreen Foundation (Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas). He is a Past President of the State Leaders Council and former Member of the Board of Directors of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington, DC. He is also a long-time, former Member of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Tony received his BA degree at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, TN. He also earned the Master of Divinity, Master of Theology and Ph.D. degrees in Ethics from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. His doctoral dissertation was on the subject of “The Ethics of Advocacy.” Tony is married to Cindy Dearmon Roberts. Cindy and Tony have six adult children and 11 grandchildren who all reside in Tennessee and Texas.
The Urgent Need to Prepare for More Ballot Initiatives
The impending Supreme Court case about public funding of a religious charter school is concerning on many levels. We are not just talking about using public funds for a religious charter school in Oklahoma. With an approval, there are highly probable nationwide consequences.
As Michael Petrelli has rightly pointed out, with a positive Supreme Court outcome “Religious charter schools will be legal overnight in every one of the forty-six states with charter school laws on the books.”
Such a measure could severely erode enrollment and funding for traditional public schools, including public charter schools in every state. It could also threaten public charter schools that are now secular, open, and accessible to all. The long-held nightmare accusation by opponents that charter schools were created to fund private schools for certain select segments of our population, in large measure, becomes a reality overnight.
What is happening in Oklahoma is not an isolated case. There is a growing movement in the United States to use public funds to support religion-based and operated schools—especially private ones—through funding by vouchers.
This trend was strongly exemplified in the recent campaign for Kentucky’s Amendment Two effort in 2024. I was privileged to work as a Strategic Consultant with the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools as they advocated for passage of the Amendment. If Amendment Two had passed, Kentucky’s legislature would have finally been empowered to fund public charter schools in Kentucky. The Alliance was successful in advocating for passage of a charter school law in Kentucky in 2017. But no charter schools have opened there to date due to a claimed prohibition of funding anything but existing public schools in the Kentucky Constitution.
However, the failure of Kentucky Amendment Two had little to nothing to do with possible funding for public charter schools in Kentucky. What doomed that Amendment was the fact that the legislative provision, as designed and written, would also allow the legislature to fund vouchers. This factor was not even in the language of Amendment Two, but the possibility fueled opponents with an arsenal to arouse the public to vote “no.”
Several proxies of the Catholic Church in Kentucky, funded by millions of dollars, campaigned for the Amendment so that vouchers could fund private, parochial schools. A full 60% of the voters eventually said “no” to the proposition of sharing public school funds with Catholic schools and the Amendment failed by a large margin.
From my observation and monitoring of paid and earned media in Kentucky, the “no” voters had little to no thought they were voting against funding public charter schools. The usual opposition (teachers unions and local school districts) jack-hammered the message that vouchers would take much-needed support from existing public schools and damage them irreparably.
I bring this discussion to our attention because it is important that we understand that this impending Supreme Court ruling might require State constitutions to change across the country to ensure public funding continues to flow to charter schools. Are you ready to lead a ballot initiative in your State for that possibility?
We all know that ballot measure advocacy has been extremely challenging for charter schools in the past. The first statewide ballot measure for charter schools passed in 2012 in the state of Georgia. The second successful measure was passed on its fourth attempt in Washington State after the Georgia passage. More recently, a ballot measure to lift the cap for charters in Massachusetts (2016) failed to pass.
From my own experience working to pass the 2012 Georgia Charter Amendment, I can attest that such an endeavor brings its own challenges and the opponents always make it seem like a David vs Goliath battle.
I have long reflected upon how we succeeded in Georgia’s ballot measure (now 12 years ago), even as we have witnessed repeated failures at the ballot since 2012 to support charter school funding and growth around the country. Some lessons have been learned from our success in Georgia as well as the failures we have seen across the country (including the Kentucky amendment). Ballot measures are very tough, not just challenging, but verging on impossible and we need to be wide-eyed as we engage in such fights.
- As a movement, we are generally not well-versed in the political realm. We lack experience in ballot-measure advocacy because it has not been necessary. As mentioned above, only three states have experience conducting ballot issue attempts for charter schools.
- We are also not realistic enough. We mistakenly think positive data or surveys and polling results will dictate ballot wins. We feel good about how our schools are doing and we can show opponents that they should support charters because of our good (and often superior) academic and other enriching work with students. Surprisingly, that data tends not have much positive effect in ballot issues. Existing high approval ratings for charters will also not fuel a win after the teacher unions launch their well-funded and relentless attacks. As noble as it sounds, “providing more educational options” will not get “yes” votes once every school superintendent in the State convinces the public that their beloved public schools, sports, bands, and even students’ health will be jeopardized if a ballot initiative succeeds (as they claimed repeatedly in Kentucky).
- What we have experienced and currently feel about charter schools has tended to make us overconfident about our chances at the public ballot box. In Kentucky, the legislature passed enabling the Amendment ballot measure with the strength that allowed them to override their Governor’s veto with a 2/3 vote. We were so encouraged! How could we lose? However, in this case, the voices of most legislators who enabled the Amendment in Kentucky were largely muted after the voices of teacher unions, local school superintendents, and Governor began to rally against the measure. No doubt those who supported the measure were threatened or feared primary challenges among other things. Otherwise, why were they so silent during the campaign?
- The importance of messaging cannot be overstated. Messaging has the power to win or defeat ballot measures. When charter schools haven’t thought through in advance how their narrative will prevail in the public realm once the other side is attacking, we end up seeing surprising numbers of people who you would think would support charter schools begin to change their thinking. In the Kentucky context, this wasn’t even a message contest about charter schools. Little to nothing was said about charter schools. It was more about vouchers and private school choice, and how those things are a threat to public schools. In Massachusetts, the election wasn’t about vouchers or private schools, but the opponents were again able to say it was about protecting existing district schools. Due to the volatility caused by vouchers, in Georgia we made the conscious decision not to identify with the “school choice” movement as it threatened our core values as “public schools” and put us in the crosshairs of enemies we did not need. As unholy as it may sound, we did not promote observance of “School Choice Week,” but we happily promoted “Charter Schools Week.”
- We need to be scared as hell! I can tell you we were not overconfident in the 2012 ballot measure in Georgia! We were strongly fueled by the fear of failure. Our backs were up against the wall. We were extremely motivated by the reality that 10 existing charter schools with hundreds of students would be closed if the Amendment failed. Even more significantly, there would be no alternate authorizer for charters in Georgia to alleviate the stalemate created by school districts refusal to approve any new charters. We were fully convinced that the charter movement in Georgia would be dead if we lost. Working with that level of urgency, we did not have the option to fail. But often we don’t find that urgency coming in. Indeed, sometimes there is excessive confidence, and that can often start us off on the wrong foot altogether and lead to failure.
- We cannot fight for ballot issues as a solitary community. In Georgia, the entire charter school community was all in, a strong coalition of partners formed and worked in unison. We were working in virtually every town and city across the state. The Governor and Members of the General Assembly were also scared as hell, as were the community leaders, funders and above all else students and their families. They raised their voices of advocacy throughout the campaign in favor of the Amendment.
If we find ourselves needing to win a bunch of ballot measures to keep our movement alive, the time for us to start thinking about these challenges is now. We will need to a) perfect the ballot language we will need to win in our own State; b) establish strong grassroots and grass tops strategies; c) muster the financial and other resources we will need to win; d) secure experienced, successful campaign strategists from the political world, e) form coalitions that span beyond those focused on K-12 education e) and perhaps most importantly, develop and implement effective messaging.