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Opting Out Law Suit takes unusual turn

August 19th, 2016 by Mike Vasilinda

Legal gymnastics played out in a Federal Court today in a lawsuit by parents whose kids opted out of state tests last spring and were held back.  As Mike Vasilinda tells us, a state court judge is on track to decide as early as next week if kids who dan’t take a standardized test can be held back.

The Opt Out Florida network has thousands of likes on it’s Facebook page, as well as this video featuring Jennifer Deuterwmann.

“It’s not okay that art music and research are being squeezed out by testing and test prep. It’s not okay to reduce social studies in a number of grades” she tells a crowded room.

Opt Out is also trying to raise money to fund it’s law suit. 13 Parents whose kids didn’t answer questions on state standardized tests last spring are in court after their children weren’t allowed to go from third to fourth grade.

A state judge was set to rule on the case as early as Monday. Then, late Thursday, the state as well as six school boards being sued asked a federal court to take the case over.

In an emergency hearing Judge Mark Walker questioned why the maneuvering was taking place.

“If someone was a conspiracy theorist, they’d think there was a design to secure a particular judge when the case was filed in Gainesville. Why was this case filed in Gainesville?”

Matthew Mears, FL Dept of Education General Counsel responded.

“We, we don’t know what happened. It was some kind of a technology glitch” Mears told the Judge.

The filing in Federal Court came after the state judge sent signals she was sympathetic to the kids who had opted out of the test.

But after more than an hour long phone hearing, Judge mark Walker decided to keep the case in state court.

Now the legal path is clear for the state judge who has a history of siding with kids to rule on whether they can be held back for not taking a test.

The state and six counties being sued argued that if the case goes back to state court, they would like each case to be heard individually in their respective home counties. That’s a issue they are likely to raise on Monday when they appear before a judge in Tallahassee.

 

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