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Fit For Gold Cadets Graduate
Fit For Gold Cadets were recently honored by educators and civic leaders during a graduation ceremony conducted by the South Bay Workforce Investment Board at Rogers Park in Inglewood. Photo: SBWIB
Tighten the Rules for Launching
Charter Schools, Panel Suggests
By Rob McCarthy
An advisory panel to Gov. Gavin Newsom
has offered a compromise that could change
how charter schools are approved or denied,
starting next year. The governor’s task force
on June 6 issued a set of recommendations
that include giving charter school applicants
more time to complete the process to open
an independently run campus.
In return, a local school board’s decision
to deny a charter school application would
be harder to overturn. The compromise is
noteworthy because of the timing of the
report’s release and because charter school
organizations and public school districts
worked together to draft the recommendations.
Currently, the State Legislature is considering
several charter school reform bills.
It’s unclear whether any of the task force’s
recommendations will find their way into the
bills’ language. Newsom has demonstrated
he’s open to bringing charter schools, which
receive district funding yet operate free of
district control using non-union teachers,
more in line with the rules and requirements
the Legislature has placed on California’s
public schools.
The governor in early March signed into
law a Senate Bill 126, which holds all schools
that receive taxpayer funding to the same
standards for accountability and transparency.
“It’s common sense. Taxpayers, parents and
ultimately kids deserve to know how schools
are using their tax dollars,” the governor said
in a signing ceremony. He hinted of more
regulation coming for the charter school
movement, which is opposed by teachers
unions. SB 126 requires charter schools and
charter management organizations to adhere
to public records and open meeting laws,
and conflict of interest provisions. It takes
effect on Jan. 1 and supporters say the law is
long overdue and addresses the concerns of
teachers, parents and local school boards that
charter schools are becoming profit centers
for privately managed companies. The U.S.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been
a vocal advocate for charter schools, arguing
they offer parents more choice in selecting
a public school within their district that’s
right for a child.
Newsom in March asked the California
Schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond
for input into the debate over how charter
schools operate. Critics of them insist that
charter schools in the past have accepted the
most promising students in a district, and
rejected students who don’t perform as well
in the classroom and on achievement tests.
The California Charter School Policy Task
Force looked at the issues of funding and
management over a two-month period and
recommended at least changes that its members
unanimously agreed could be adopted.
Members of the task force were asked
to put aside their differences and look for
common ground for the good of California’s
school kids. The superintendent of schools
said in his report to the governor that it was
the task force’s hope that its suggestions to
lawmakers would serve the best interests of all
students in the state and make it possible for
traditional public schools and charter schools
to coexist and promote educational choice.
The first recommendation was to extend the
timeline for a charter school application to be
reviewed, approved or denied by an additional
30 days. Current law gives applications 60
days to complete the process and receive
either a yea or a nay from a local school
district. The panelists unanimously agreed
that 60 days isn’t sufficient time.
Under the current law, a school district
and a charter school applicant may agree to
extend the time to review and consider the
qualifications of the charter school organization
making the proposal and how it plans to
spend district money. The application process
includes a public hearing, responding to district
questions about concerns and drafting
and reaching a contract between the charter
school group and the district.
Both sides also agreed that the state needs
to create an authority to govern charter
schools. The new authority would create
standards to guide local school districts, the
County Board of Education and the State
Board of Education -- all of which have the
power to approve a charter school application.
There are dozens of charters schools
operating across the South Bay, yet the state
lacks any standards about oversight for local
school officials to follow. Without any clear
guidelines, some local districts have come
up with their own. “Clear standards for
authorizers (local districts) to follow would
standardize oversight practices in the state,”
the task force report says.
The task force members also lamented
the lack of training available to local school
superintendents and their staffs for dealing
with charter schools that open using district
money. Some charter schools also open outside
a district’s boundaries, and that scenario was
addressed in the recommendations too. They
called for a one-year moratorium on new
virtual charter schools, which offered students
coursework online instead in a classroom.
The growth of virtual charter schools has
raised new concerns about the academic
standards offered by the online educators and
whether anyone is monitoring the curriculum
and operations of these newcomers to the charter
school industry. The yearlong moratorium
was supported by a majority of the task force,
and virtual schools that demonstrate they are
providing an educational benefit wouldn’t be
affected by the temporary ban.
See Charter Schools, page 7
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The Weekly Newspaper of Inglewood
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 68, No. 24 - June 13, 2019