Should the question make its way to the Supreme Court, Preston Green, a professor at the University of Connecticut who studies educational law, believes that the court’s conservative majority would be likely to embrace charter schools as “private actors,” opening the door to religious charters.

“I just can’t see them saying ‘no’ to this, if they get a chance,” he said.

re charter schools public or private? A case speeding towards the Supreme Court is likely to settle this age-old dispute once and for all by declaring charters as “non-state actors.” Peltier vs. Charter Day School Inc. is nominally about dress codes, chivalry and “fragile vessels.” But as special guests Bruce Baker and Preston Green explain, the real question here is whether students attending charter schools have the same civil rights and Constitutional protections as their public school peers.

“These decisions can have major implications for them, because you’re going to see religious churches and other entities saying that they want to run charter schools, and they want to run religious charter schools,” Preston Green said.

In a recent article, Preston C. Green III of the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education, Bruce D. Baker of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and Joseph O. Oluwole of Montclair State University argue that school finance litigation incompletely remedies the harms imposed upon schools serving Black communities. Green, Baker, and Oluwole instead call for a reparations program for Black Americans that includes a school finance reform agenda. They argue that this agenda should be enacted through state-level legislation and subsequently supported and regulated by federal actors.

“Things that public schools focus on, in terms of teaching students about various issues and making sure students are protected, all of those hallmarks of public education are being attacked,” said Preston Green, an education leadership and law professor at the University of Connecticut. “Depending on how the Republicans do, you may see more of it.”

The latest installment of the Graduate School of Education’s (GSE) annual “Barbara Jackson, Ed.D. Lecture” invited Preston Green III, a professor of urban education at the University of Connecticut and educational law scholar. The lecture, “Developing a Model Civil Rights Statute in the Age of School Choice,” included discussions about the impact of public education funds on lower-income school districts and community resources

n a lecture on Oct. 19, a leading scholar of education and law warned that allowing parents to choose to send their students to charter schools that operate without sufficient oversight will actually threaten the student’s civil rights.

“I’ve heard people make arguments about the real need for school choice,” said Preston Green III, Ed.D. He acknowledged that charter schools—a key element of school choice—can provide needed opportunities for families, but said that local governments must regulate them.

Preston Green, a professor of Education Leadership and Law at the University of Connecticut, said deals such as this one could end up with bad results for communities. “We should be very concerned about what those implications are for poor communities and find ways that they can maintain their property control,” Green said.

According to Preston Green III, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, the fact that public funding for private schools has to include religious schools could be interpreted to allow for funding religious charter schools.

“The logic in this case, if extended, could be applied to [religious] charter schools, and many of us see that as the next domino to fall,” says Preston Green, a professor of educational leadership, law, and urban education at the University of Connecticut.