On the question of if charters are public...

...the National Labor Relations Board has just decided "no":

In its recent decisions, both issued Aug. 24, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Hyde Leadership Charter School in Brooklyn and the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School are — like other government contractors — private corporations that receive taxpayer dollars. 

In the New York case, for example, the board found that even though state law describes charter schools as existing “within the public school system,” the schools were not directly established by a government entity and the people who administer them are not accountable to public officials or to voters. “Hyde was not established by a state or local government, and is not itself a public school,” reads the board’s majority opinion, signed by Democrats Kent Hirozawa and Lauren McFerran. 

The decisions mean that the schools’ employees must organize under the National Labor Relations Act, which applies to private-sector employees, rather than under state laws that apply to public-sector employees.

Management/ Union relations in Rhode Island

...or lack thereof.
I'd missed until today this letter from Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist to state school districts:

PROVIDENCE -- In a harshly worded letter, Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist has alerted Rhode Island's school superintendents that she will take severe action against any district that is using seniority, job fairs or bumping to assign, keep or lay off teachers.
In a four-page letter dated Jan. 31 and released late Friday, Gist threatens to impose sanctions "up to and including loss of certification;" taking districts to court; or withholding state education aid unless they comply with her interpretation of a key education regulation called the Basic Education Program.

(h/t Edushyster)
This is of course part of Rhode Island's compliance with the conditions under which it received Race to the Top funding. It isn't supposed to supplant labor law; such changes are supposed to be negotiated. T
he state was lauded last week by Secretary Duncan as being among a few states making great progress in their compliance to Race to the Top's requirements...
...while test scores, that by which such progress is generally recognized, show "scant improvement" for the second year in a row.

School Law 201

again, from the MASC/MASS conference in Hyannis
Non-renewal of non-tenured teachers

Bump says ed collaboratives "a broken system"

Speaking at the central Mass Labor Day breakfast this morning, Auditor Suzanne Bump called the special education collaboratives "a broken system."