When Ember Reichgott Junge, a Democratic state senator from Minnesota, sponsored the country’s first charter school law in 1991, she envisioned a new kind of public school.
Republicans tended to be for school vouchers, which help families pay for private school, including religious education.
Fellow Democrats often wanted more funding for traditional public schools.
“It was always public — always,” Ms. Reichgott Junge, now 69, said in an interview.
Now, three decades later, the very idea that charters are public schools is being challenged in Oklahoma, which just approved the first religious charter school in the nation.
Persons:
Ember Reichgott Junge, Ms, Reichgott Junge
Organizations:
Democratic
Locations:
Minnesota, Oklahoma
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