Charter school bill now excludes LGBT protections, makes charter school (but not contractors’) salaries public

A bill that would address some sticky points in governance of the state’s 127 public charter schools is calendared for a Senate vote today.

(Note: The bill passed out of the Senate and went to the House floor Thursday afternoon. That discussion can be heard here.)

The charter school modification bill, Senate Bill 793, coming out of conference committee would prevent the public schools from discriminating on the basis of “ethnicity, national origin, gender, or disability.”

Missing are specific protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, and gone is House language that would have kept the discrimination protections in line with various federal laws that include LGBT protections.

It also would only make public the salaries of charter school staff directly employed by the non-profit board of directors.

That gives an out to set-ups like the Roger Bacon Academy chain of public charter schools run by Baker Mitchell., a charter school founder who now owns a management company that has a contract to run the four schools in the Wilmington area. (Click here for a Wilmington Star-News article that digs deep into the school’s profits.)

Mitchell, who has contributed to the campaigns of several Senate Republican’s campaigns, has been vocal about his resistance to releasing the salary data of administrators on his payroll as well as teachers.

Charter School Mod by NC Policy Watch