UNDATED - Minnesota is considered to be the birthplace of Charter schools, but are they constitutional?  Last month the Washington state Supreme Court outlawed Charter schools in that state. Their reasoning is that you can't use public tax dollars to fund a private school - their boards are usually made-up of parents and are not elected by the voters.

Marshall Tanick is a Twin Cities attorney that specializes in education law. He says the language in Minnesota's constitution is very similar to Washington's.Tanick says someone in Minnesota would first have to challenge the state's Charter school system.

In Washington State they only hav nine Charter schools, and they've only been in existence for three years. Charter schools began in Minnesota in 1992, and we currently have about 157 schools enrolling over 40,000 K-12 students.

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