As a public school teacher for over 30 years, I urge you to support your local schools by voting no on charter schools, I-1240. Charter schools have already been voted down in 1996, 2000 and 2004. A few wealthy supporters, predominately Bill Gates and Alice Walton (Wal-Mart family), have now contributed over $8 million to buy support for charter schools in Washington state. Do not be fooled by all of the ads on TV. What you are not being told is that charter schools in other states only perform better 17 percent of the time, and actually perform worse 37 percent of the time, according to a Stanford University study of 2,400 charter schools in 16 states. Are you willing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on experimental charter schools that have such a small success rate?

Your local educators, families and communities have the ability to provide their children with the opportunity to succeed when public schools are fully funded locally, enabling all children access to a quality education, instead of diverting millions of local public school dollars towards 40 costly state charter schools.

Please join me and the long list of other public school teachers, support staff, principals, administrators, school boards, state PTA and others by voting no on charters, I-1240.

Mary Lindsey

Bellingham