The dress code at the Charter Day School, a supposedly nonsectarian, publicly funded K-8 charter school in Leland, North Carolina, requires that female students wear skirts, jumpers, or “skorts.” The school’s founder justifies the dress code by explaining that girls are “fragile vessels.” The family of a kindergartner complained that the dress code violated their daughter’s civil liberties, and a federal appeals court, in the case of Charter Day School v. Peltier, had no trouble agreeing that the requirement was “based on blatant gender stereotypes” and a “clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause.” But the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether to hear the case; if so, the court’s right-wing majority may well compel the girls to expose their legs in the name of “religious liberty.”
This looks like standard culture-war fare. And it is that. But it is also part of a broader, often overlooked story about those on the right who are profiting from the dismantling of America’s public education system—and in some cases, as in North Carolina, they’re doing so by clearing the way for public funding for ideologically and religiously conservative charter schools.
Charter Day School is part of the Roger Bacon Academy, a four-school charter network in the state. It is the creation of Baker Mitchell Jr., a North Carolina businessman, friend of right-wing political funder Art Pope, and a staunch advocate of “free markets,” “deregulation,” and school privatization. Mitchell’s chain of charter schools has taken in tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding; Charter Day School receives 95 percent of its funding from federal, state, and local governmental authorities. As ProPublica has detailed, Mitchell also owns and operates the companies that supply these schools with just about everything they buy or lease: the buildings, the computers, the desks, the educational training programs, and more.
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