Parents spammed by charter school texts fight back

School choice doesn’t include the option of unlimited text messages, and it could end up costing one charter school operator in Tennessee upward of $12 million. 

A U.S. District Court judge in Tennessee has granted class action status in a lawsuit against a Nashville charter school accused of inundating parents with cell-phone text messages to help with recruitment.

The class action status allows the Nashville, Tennessee-based law firm Branstetter, Stranch & Jennings P.L.L.C. to represent those who received messages from charter school company RePublic Schools Nashville to promote enrollment at their schools, according to Friday’s USA Today. 

News reports state that parents were sent text messages by the charter school in the 2015-16 school year. Attorneys told the press that more than 8,000 parents received texts from the school to help with recruitment. The lawsuit seeks to recover $500 per text, or $1,500 per person, according to media reports.

The class action status order says the lawsuit will represent “all individuals who were sent and received a text to their cellular telephones by RePublic Schools Nashville ... during the time period August 17, 2015, through January 15, 2016, and whose cellular phone number was obtained by (the charter) from the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools database.”