FOR DECADES, MASSACHUSETTS charter schools have had a single rallying cry when under fire from teachers unions and advocacy groups that say they draw resources that could otherwise go to public schools: Charter schools, they say, are public schools.  

Introduced through the state’s 1993 Education Reform Act, charter schools operate independently of traditional public school districts, but are publicly funded and open to all students – a point charter leaders often make. 

All of which made the argument a Malden charter school brought to the Supreme Judicial Court on Monday a striking departure from years of effort by charters to be treated the same as their district school counterparts.  

The Mystic Valley Regional Charter School, in rebuffing at least 10 public records requests for information on various aspects of its operations, insists that it is not covered by the sweeping statute guaranteeing public access to the records of government entities.  

In court filings in the case, Mystic Valley said that, unlike district-run schools, “as a Commonwealth charter school, it does not fall under the category of entities handling public documents” and is not subject to the state public records law. 

While charter schools do have to track and provide vast reams of data to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Mystic Valley argues it has no obligation to provide that same information to members of the public. Charter schools, in their view, are public schools that are structured and treated in some ways more like corporations. 

Justices did not seem convinced by that argument. By almost every measure, they noted, charter schools are treated like ordinary public schools. And public schools must abide by the public records law. 

“You’re in real trouble,” Justice Scott Kafker told Mystic Valley attorney Charles Waters, invoking a time-honored test of reasoning to the question at hand. “It quacks like a duck, it waddles like a duck, it paddles like a duck.”  

Mystic Valley, a K-12 school that boasts high achievement scores among its 1,700 students, has long been an outlier among the state’s roughly 80 charter schools. While U.S. News and World Report this fall ranked it the sixth best high school in the state, it has faced criticism over allegations of pervasive racial bias.  

Officials including then-attorney general Maura Healey have taken aim at Mystic Valley policies that they say discriminated against minority students, including a hairstyle rule that disciplined students for wearing “drastic or unnatural hairstyles,” which included common styles worn by Black women like box braids. The school only relented after Healey got involved. The Legislature later passed the CROWN Act banning rules that discriminate based on natural hairstyles.  

Mystic Valley is one of only three charter schools that are not members of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, a statewide advocacy organization.

The association, in a statement after Monday’s SJC arguments, said it “fundamentally disagrees” with Mystic Valley’s claims about the nature of charter schools. 

“As public entities, the law requires that charter public schools operate in a manner that embraces and upholds transparency and accountability – not only to the state, but also to students, families, and local communities,” said Tim Nicolette, executive director of the charter school association. “For that reason, responding to public records requests in accordance with the law is a requirement of all public schools, including charter public schools.” 

Mystic Valley received at least 10 public records requests between January and November 2022 from the Malden News Network, Commonwealth Transparency, and mayoral candidate Lissette Alvarado. They requested information including corporate statements, contracts, ledgers, lease records, conflict of interest disclosures filed by board members, payments made to employees or professional services, and confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements.  

The school refused on the grounds that charter schools do not have to obey public records law.  

According to the secretary of state’s office, which oversees the public records law, “every government record in Massachusetts is presumed to be public unless it may be withheld under a specifically stated exemption.” 

Charter schools are not exempted as a category, but Mystic Valley argues that its documents do not actually count as government records. If the public wants its records, Mystic Valley’s attorney told the court, the public should go to the state and ask for them. 

After the supervisor of records in the secretary of state’s office issued multiple orders for the school to comply with the record requests, Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office filed suit in Suffolk Superior Court in July 2023 to force Mystic Valley to produce the records. The Superior Court sided with the AG’s office, declaring the school to be a government entity subject to the public records law. Mystic Valley appealed, and the SJC decided to take up the question, which has never before come before the court. 

Because the statute controlling charter schools created a “significant obligation” to keep, collect, maintain, and report “massive amounts” of information to state educational agencies, said Waters, the Mystic Valley attorney, that must mean the Legislature only expected that sort of information sharing. 

Lawmakers likely “didn’t want to then additionally burden charter schools, that already have this burden, with the burden of having to set up a structure for fielding public records requests,” he said. There is no carve-out for charters to comply with public records requests like there is for making sure they follow conflict of interest laws, he noted. 

Justices were openly skeptical. There seemed to be no conflict, based on their questions, between operating as a unique type of public school and being responsive to public records requests. 

“I understand charter schools were created to be independent in certain ways, to foster innovation in education and have the ability to do that in a way that the average public school does not,” Justice Dalila Wendlandt told Waters. “Good. But that doesn’t carry you to the argument that they’re not subject to the public record law.”  

The one thing that cut in Mystic Valley’s favor, the justices said, might be that charter schools are not specifically included in the public records statute as a type of agency, authority, or department covered by public records laws.  

Other cases around public records requests are more straightforward, like the MBTA clearly being a government authority, Kafker noted.  

Prior courts considering whether a state entity had to cooperate with public records laws barely even dwelled on whether the entity was covered, he noted, because it was so clear. They instead just moved to a five-factor test about how the entity was created, whether it performs some essentially governmental function, whether it receives or expends public funds, the involvement of private interests, and the extent to which it is controlled and supervised by other government authorities.  

Assistant Attorney General Kerry Kilcoyne said the court does not need to jump through definitional hoops. If Mystic Valley is a public school, which no one disputes, then the court can rely on previous case law where it specifically stated that records of public schools qualify as public records, she said.  

What’s more, many of these agency or political subdivision terms are used loosely, Kilcoyne said. It may be enough, she said, that charter schools are directed by the state to serve the government function of servicing the Commonwealth’s students in a public educational institution. 

“I concede that you win easily on the five-factor test,” Kafker told Kilcoyne. “I’m just trying to figure out if I have to get you into a category before you do that.” 

For its part, the state charter school association, which has led the fight to have charter schools regarded as simply another public school choice for families, made clear where it hopes the court lands.   

“We hope the Supreme Judicial Court affirms that charter public schools, as public schools, must adhere to the laws that govern government entities,” said Nicolette, the association’s executive director, “and as such must respond to public records requests, ensuring a critical means of ensuring transparency, accountability, and the maintenance of public trust.”