Wells

Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Christopher Ames, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Larry G. Raskin, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, Mark R. Soble, Deputy Attorney General for Real Party in Interest.

How to properly educate our children in the public schools is a complex question with no simple answer. Ultimately, the resolution of this question is for the parents of those children, their teachers, their school boards, and the Legislature, not the courts. (See Peter W. v. San Francisco Unified Sch. Dist. (1976) 60 Cal.App.3d 814, 824-825 , 131 Cal.Rptr. 854 ( Peter W. ).)

One way our Legislature has chosen to address concerns over the public education of our children is to enact the Charter Schools Act of 1992. [1] (Ed.Code, [2] § 47600 et seq.) The Charter Schools Act allows "teachers, parents, pupils, and community members to establish and maintain schools that operate independently from the existing school district structure." (§ 47601.) By enacting this statute, the Legislature hoped to improve pupil learning, increase learning opportunities, encourage innovation in our public schools, create professional opportunities for teachers, provide expanded choices…