AnnMarie Smith, principal of Clemente Charter, which is split onto two campuses.

The number of charter schools that will be located on multiple campuses in LA Unified next year will be down from 24 to 22, and the number of schools located on three different campuses will go from eight to four.

But that’s not enough and co-located campuses continue to be disruptive to the communities and the students at the schools, parents said at Tuesday’s LA Unified School Board meeting. The split campuses also hurt enrollment at the charters, charter school officials say.

“This will divide our close school community, and I would not have time for breakfast with my children,” said Nancy Peters, who said that the school district’s solution to divide Clemente Charter School between two campuses adds four miles to her commute. The school will have 12 classrooms and an office at Holmes Elementary School and seven classrooms and an office at Heliotrope Elementary School in Maywood, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. “Please do not break up our school,” she told the board.

Nancy Peters, a parent at Clemente Charter, speaks to the school board.

Bernice Rodriguez, who has two children at Clemente Charter, said she doesn’t have a car to get to the two school sites.

“If this school moves to a different site and is split this way, it will have an important impact on our lives,” Rodriguez said. “Many of us don’t have cars, and those of us who do have cars would have to spend more money on gasoline and additional time to take our children to school.”

Proposition 39 allows charter schools to use district facilities not being used for instructional or administrative purposes, but in some cases schools cannot be located on a single campus. The district tries to find space at schools that are within one or two miles of each other.

Last year, 95 of the 211 charter schools under LA Unified jurisdiction asked for rooms on district campuses. At that time, 24 schools were offered two or more campuses and eight of those were on three campuses.

This year, 94 of the 228 charter schools in the district asked for 32,451 seats in district schools; 22 schools will be on multiple campuses, four of those on three locations.

Although the co-located sites are fewer than in the past, it’s still too many for the California Charter Schools Association, which sent a letter to the school board on Tuesday stating, “CCSA continues to be disappointed in the number of multi-site offers recommended by the LAUSD staff.” The letter claims that the district is not following state law and that the district has failed to explain why schools cannot be located on one site. CCSA said the district is also improperly identifying empty space.

The letter and a half dozen speakers asked the board to reject the sites being offered to the charter schools for the 2017-18 school year, but the sites were approved by the whole board under a consent vote.

The charter schools on two locations are: Ararat Charter School, Celerity Cardinal Charter School, Celerity Octavia Charter School, Celerity Rolas Charter School, Celerity Troika Charter School, Citizens of the World-Mar Vista, Citizens of the World-Hollywood, City Language Immersion Charter, Clemente Charter School, Equitas Academy, Equitas Academy #2, Equitas Academy #3, Extera Public School, Extera Public School #2, ICEF Vista Elementary Charter Academy, New Heights Charter School, Synergy Charter Academy and WISH Charter Middle School.

The schools on three campuses are: Celerity Himalia Charter School, Celerity Nascent Charter School, Citizens of the World-Silver Lake and Endeavor College Preparatory Charter School.

Six schools on last year’s co-located list are no longer on the list, while four are newly added to the list: City Language Immersion Charter, New Heights Charter School, Synergy Charter Academy and Citizens of the World-Hollywood.

At a District 4 candidate forum on Monday, school board President Steve Zimmer said the Prop. 39 system is broken. “There have been all kinds of problems with this on all sides, and I offer myself as someone who will make this a priority in terms of getting everyone to the table to address the facilities issue.”

Jon Host of Equitas cited the financial burdens of multiple sites.

Splitting up the schools causes the charter schools to suffer a decline in enrollment, said Clemente Charter Principal AnnMarie Smith, who said she previously saw a drop when the separate school sites were only one mile apart.

“We will have more students leave because of this,” Smith predicted now that her school will be separated by four miles on the campuses of Heliotrope and Holmes schools.

Jon Host, the chief operating officer of Equitas Academy, said the split sites of his schools in the MacArthur Park and Pico-Union areas mean extra costs. They have to double staff for safety officers, delivery crew, parking lots and administrative staff at the multiple sites.

“Having the school on multiple locations makes building a cohesive community very difficult,” Host said.

Cassy Horton, the regional advocacy director of CCSA, noted that the district leaves the schools in limbo each year and “a split site is a threat to students and families when navigating multiple sites.” She noted the problem of holding school-wide events and how the split campuses hurt low-income families.

Charter Division chief José Cole-Gutiérrez, who helps allocate the Prop. 39 classrooms to the charter schools, said he does the best he can to keep the schools together on one campus. He said if space is not available on one campus, they will try to keep the next available space within a mile or so if possible.

District officials stated in their Prop. 39 report that this school year, 154,653 students were enrolled in charter schools, which is 5,956 students more than last year. That’s more than any in the nation, and about 1.5 times the charter school students in New York, the nation’s largest school district, the report states.

It also states that difficulties in placing the schools together include the sheer size of the district, the second-largest in the nation, which spans 710 square miles and 27 cities. Schools are also allowed to shield from charter use rooms not used for classrooms such as Small Learning Community sites, space for district police, regional special educational testing centers, health center clinics, food service and Beyond the Bell programs.

Nevertheless, LA Unified “ensured that every eligible in-district charter student was offered a seat,” according to the report.

A record number of charter schools, all outperforming nearby district schools, have been recommended for denial by LA Unified staff when their petitions come before Tuesday’s school board meeting.

More than 15,000 students could be affected by board decisions involving charter schools that are up for renewal or revision.

Seven schools that have 6,730 students are recommended to have their charters revoked, including LA’s top-ranked charter high school, while three other schools asking for revisions affecting 2,060 students are also recommended for denial by staff.

One revision, for WISH Middle School, was resolved over the weekend and their petition has been pulled from Tuesday’s agenda.

“This is unprecedented,” said Jason Mandell, spokesman for the California Charter Schools Association. “Last year 100 percent of the charter renewals and material revisions were approved.”

In the past five years, 155 out of 159 charter school renewals were approved and 42 out of 43 material revisions of a charter school were approved by the school board, according to CCSA.

“The standards have been the same and the schools have improved in academic achievement,” Mandell said. “These schools have all been blindsided by the district recommendations.”

LA Unified oversees the charter schools, which must petition for renewal every five years. Many of the independent charter schools up for renewal are co-located on traditional public school campuses.

The charter school division makes recommendations to the school board for approval or denial. The elected school board members have on multiple occasions rejected the staff findings.

Meanwhile, five charter schools up for renewal and revisions are recommended for approval and are slated to be added to a consent agenda without comment by the board members. Those schools, affecting more than 1,400 students, will be decided on at a morning meeting at 9 a.m. during about an hour of discussion. Then the school board will go into closed session at 10 a.m. and at noon will reconvene with their main agenda.

The nine schools that face rejection from the school board have their hearings scheduled for a 5 p.m. meeting on Tuesday. School board President Steve Zimmer has tried to schedule meetings in a more compact manner to make it easier for faculty and parents to attend and speak about the issues involving their schools without having to wait for hours.

Among the most controversial proposed rejections is El Camino Real High School, which has 3,900 students and has won academic awards. The district is recommending the second step toward revoking its independent charter school status and turning it back into a traditional public school, following an investigation into financial mismanagement first reported in the Los Angeles Daily News. The district staff said that their concerns have not been adequately answered.

MAGNOLIA SCHOOLS

Three Magnolia Science Academy schools are recommended to have their charter renewals denied, two of which were ranked in April by U.S. News & World Report in the top 100 high schools in California. Magnolia Science Academy 2 in Van Nuys was the top-ranked charter high school in Los Angeles Unified, and along with Magnolia Science Academy Reseda made the top 3 percent of all U.S. high schools.

According to the staff reports, all three schools outperform neighboring district schools on this year’s state tests in both math and English, with the exception of Magnolia Science Academy 2, where students meeting or exceeding English standards fell 12 percentage points below the average at nearby resident schools. However, the report shows that the school’s reclassification rate of English language learners was twice that at resident schools, while its percent of EL students nearly matched resident schools’.

The reclassification rate at Magnolia Academy 2 was 30 percent, and 51 percent at Magnolia Academy 3, about twice the rate of neighboring district schools.

The reclassification rate Magnolia Science Academy in Reseda, located in Board District 6, was 33 percent, according to the LA Unified staff report. That is triple the rate of nearby Reseda High School (11 percent) and more than four times the rate at Canoga High (7 percent). Magnolia’s rate was nearly three times the district’s rate last year, and the report shows Magnolia’s reclassifications rose 3.6 percent from the previous year while the district’s as a whole fell 4.5 percent.

“Because our students are successfully gaining English proficiency, the EL students are not the same students from year to year. They test out,” Caprice Young, CEO and superintendent of Magnolia Public Schools, said in a statement. “If we held them back to game the system, our scores would be much higher.”

Between 2011 and 2015, the three Magnolia schools sent 92 percent of its graduates to college and 95 percent of its seniors completed A-G college readiness standards, according to the staff report. More than 65 percent of graduates each year are the first in their families to go on to college, Magnolia data show. Since its first graduating class in 2008, Magnolia has graduated more than 700 students and sent them to college. 

The average AP participation rate of all three schools is 30 percent higher than surrounding residential high schools, Magnolia reported.

The Reseda school, which serves grades 6-12, also far outstrips district schools in graduation and A-G completion rates; 98 percent graduate, with 100 percent passing A-G courses, meaning they are eligible for University of California and Cal State University acceptance. At Reseda High, 84 percent graduate with 42 percent UC/CSU ready. At Canoga High, 75 percent graduate with 29 percent UC/CSU ready. The district as a whole is predicting a 75 percent graduation rate this year, a record, while its A-G completion rate is 42 percent.

The school has 91 percent of students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch; 12 percent were English-language learners and 84 percent were Latino.

The district staff report also shows that the school’s special education enrollment (16 percent, with 89 percent high-incidence, 11 percent low-incidence) exceeded the district’s at similar schools (9 percent). Special education students made up 20 percent of enrollment last year at Reseda High and 15 percent at Canoga High.

“When our students graduate, their diploma means admission into a four-year university,” Young said. “Some may choose to start at a community college and transfer, but almost all of our students go directly to a major college or university. The bottom line is that if these schools close, 150 to 200 students per year will not go to college. How does that make sense?”

Young added, “I hope the board will see the operational progress we’ve made during the last year. Magnolia has produced the highest performing charter high schools in Los Angeles. Our immigrant students quickly learn English and compete successfully in mainstream classrooms. More than 90 percent of our students graduate college ready, twice the rate of surrounding schools.”

CELERITY SCHOOLS

Renewals of Celerity Dyad Charter School, on its own campus south of downtown LA, and Celerity Troika Charter School, co-located in Eagle Rock in Northeast LA, have also been recommended for denial.

Celerity Educational Group started in Los Angeles in 2005 and now has eight schools in Los Angeles County (six authorized by LA Unified) and has expanded to Ohio, Louisiana and Florida.

The report states that Celerity Troika outperformed the nearby district schools as well as the district as a whole. It also reclassifies EL students at a higher rate than the district, 19 percent last year compared to 12 percent for the district, with Latino and disadvantaged students increasing their performance in both English and math this year.

Celerity Troika, located in Board District 5 and co-located on two campuses, Luther Burbank Middle School and Garvanza Elementary School, enrolled 609 students as of last October, with 68 percent qualifying for free or reduce-price lunch, 24 percent English language learners, 77 percent Latino and 4 percent African-American.

On the state English language arts test, 68 percent of Celerity Troika students met or exceeded standards, compared to 38 percent of district schools in its area, according to the district staff report. In math, those figures were 67 percent for Celerity and 28 percent for area district schools.

While the report “recognizes subgroup academic gains achieved by the school,” it says the recommendation of denial is based on “a pattern of insufficient responses to inquiries, … lack of transparency, and the potential for significant conflicts of interest posed by its governance structure.”

“The district’s own report clearly shows that students at Celerity’s schools are knocking it out of the park compared to students attending neighboring district schools,” said the CCSA’s Mandell. “If the district were to close the Celerity schools, it would force their students to attend schools that are, quite simply, worse.”

In its written response to the report, Celerity states that the issues brought up are old, do not represent the current organization and have been addressed. It also notes that the state Board of Education recently recommended approval of two new Celerity schools.

It also states that the district’s staff findings “fail to explain how denial of the renewals, as CEG currently operates today, could possibly be the best result for the students at our charter schools. The reality is: if the charters for Dyad and Troika are not renewed, our students will attend schools that perform significantly worse based on accountability.”

It adds that Celerity “has cooperated and been transparent, and will continue to cooperate and be transparent.”

In an email over the weekend, Celerity CEO Grace Canada said the organization was “blindsided” by the denial recommendation.

“It is a disservice to our students, families, and community that after receiving a score of ‘Accomplished’ (the highest positive score any charter school can receive) in ‘Student Achievement and Educational Performance’ and ‘Governance’ and a score of ‘Proficient’ in ‘Organizational Management, Programs, and Operations’ we are blindsided with a recommendation for non-renewal,” Canada said. “At no point was there any indication or conversation with Celerity about being in danger of not being recommended for renewal. Learning this at the last minute comes as a shock to our board, our students, and our community.”

CITIZENS OF THE WORLD

District staff are recommending denials for two Citizens of the World schools in Board District 4: one for a new charter, called Citizens of the World Westside, and the other for an expansion of Citizens of the World 3, a K-5 on two sites with 470 students. It is petitioning to add grades 6-8.

Citizens of the World Los Angeles operates three charters in LA Unified that enroll about 1,600 students. They had about five applications for every open seat this past year.

The schools rank in the top 10 percent of all district schools in both English and math.

The Westside school would serve 740 students in transitional kindergarten through 6th grade and expand to 1,020 students and add 7th and 8th grades by the fifth year.

More than 5,000 family and community members from every local board district signed a petition asking the board to approve CWC Mar Vista’s expansion through 8th grade, according to the organization.

Citizens of the World 3, as of last October, enrolled 368 students, 33 percent receiving free or reduced-price lunch, 11 percent were English language learners, 51 percent white and 32 percent Latino or African-American.

In its recommendation for denial, district staff noted that there are 578 unfilled seats in the three Citizens of the World schools, which “has not demonstrated its capacity to fulfill its existing commitments in its charters.” It also cited a “lack of capacity to prevent and systematically resolve operational difficulties.” It said a “pattern of facilities-related challenges that have included incomplete Prop. 39 applications.”

Another reason for the denial recommendation was the number of material revisions, one of which was to add a preference for low-income families.

The district staff wrote: “In the past thirteen months alone, CWC submitted eight (8) material revision requests to the Charter Schools Division, ranging from instructional program changes to admissions preferences and changes in facilities. This record demonstrates a lack of capacity for strategic planning by the governing board and organization’s leadership, and raises concerns about successful implementation of expansion and further changes.”

The district staff report acknowledges that the school is outperforming area district schools, by 16 percentage points in English and 23 percentage points in math. Special education students make up 7 percent of enrollment, compared to 13 percent at neighboring district schools.

“We don’t agree with the analysis and conclusions in the staff report, which do not accurately reflect the true state of our organization,” Mark Kleger-Heine, executive director of Citizens of the World Los Angeles, said in an email late Sunday. “We are confident the board will recognize the high-quality education we provide our diverse community of families.”

WISH

The staff also recommended that the school board reject the Westside Innovative School House Charter Middle School’s request to add transitional kindergarten through 6th-grade classes, also in Board District 4.

WISH Academy Executive Director Shawna Draxton, in a letter to families, explained why the district was wrong in its recommendation for rejection and noted that the district “once again mischaracterizes WISH’s financial position, just as it did in its recommended rejection of WISH Academy High School earlier this year. WISH’s financial position continues to grow strong.”

The letter noted that the charter division staff’s recommendation for denial did not relate to “WISH’s sound educational program, student achievement or educational performance,” but instead was based its assessment of the school’s ability to successfully implement the proposed changes. 

A follow-up letter over the weekend then stated that “all items have been remedied to our satisfaction” and that school leadership has agreed to postpone the material revision vote until November, when “we expect to receive approval from LAUSD for our TK-8 merger.”

NEW CHARTERS’ PUBLIC HEARINGS

Also Tuesday, the school board will hold public hearings for petitions to open nine new charter schools from Maywood to Sherman Oaks that could hold more than 5,000 students.

The school board in the same meeting is considering establishing the Horace Mann UCLA Community School, which doesn’t have a number of students associated with it but has a mission to recruit from charter schools and private schools.

According to the district’s documents, “The mission of Mann UCLA is to create an innovative K-12 learning environment in South Los Angeles, thereby restoring the faith in an historic public school, by recruiting neighborhood students currently attending charter, magnet and private schools back to their community.”

Mandell said the charter schools slated for their petitions to be rejected should have more of a chance to correct whatever problems the staff is finding.

“We call for closures of charters every year,” Mandell said. “So if these charters were not helping kids learn, we’d be calling for their closure too. But if academic success is there, then everything else should be given a chance to be corrected.”

* This article has been updated to add that Citizens of the World was being recommended for denial in part based on its number of material revisions, one of which was to add a preference for low-income families, which it now has. 

Students at Alliance Margaret M. Bloomfield High School in Huntington Park.

Alliance College-Ready Public Schools is the largest independent charter network in LA Unified, with 28 middle and high schools serving over 12,500 students. Ninety-four percent of Alliance’s students come from poverty, yet the charter management organization has a proven track record of outperforming the district and state schools when it comes to key factors like graduation rates and standardized test performance.

But how scalable is the Alliance model and that of other CMOs like it? Are there answers inside their halls to the big questions that have dogged the district for years? Or are charters actually the problem, not the solution, when it comes to the district’s woes, as some detractors like the LA teachers union, UTLA, have charged.

• Read more about charters: How charters went from a ‘novelty’ to dominate the conversation of LAUSD, and 9 questions and answers about LA’s charters.

These questions were raised to new levels of importance about a year ago when an early draft of what was to become the Great Public Schools Now funding plan for Los Angeles schools was leaked to the press and sent shockwaves through the educational world. The plan called for expanding independent charter schools at LA Unified to serve half of all its students.

The plan received significant backlash and has since been modified to include all kinds of successful models, including traditional district schools, but the early draft raised an interesting question: Could charter schools be scaled to size to overtake district schools?

Independent charters already serve 107,000 of the district’s 665,000 students, but there has yet to be a charter management organization that has proven ready and willing to declare itself a scalable, cookie cutter model that could replace district schools.

Alliance is certainly not ready to declare itself that. In fact, Alliance has no plans to add any new schools over the next four years, according to Dan Katzir, Alliance’s president and CEO, who has been in his role since March 2015. Katzir said in his interview for the job he floated the idea of pausing on adding new schools.

“The fact of the matter is even if we stop growing for four years, we need to catch up with our growth from a systems perspective, an infrastructure perspective and a behavior and cultural perspective,” Katzir said.

Katzir also added that even if Alliance doesn’t add new schools, it will continue to grow because six schools in the network are still adding grades in the coming years.

However, despite the pause on growth, Alliance does believe its model is replicable. On its About Us webpage, the title reads, “Proving exceptional at scale is possible.” And Katzir said, “We can scale. We are bigger than 75 percent of other districts in the state, so we can scale.”

ALLIANCE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Ninety-eight percent of Alliance students are African-American or Latino, 94 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, 9 percent have special needs and 17 percent are English learners. The district as a whole during the 2015-16 school year was 82 percent Latino and African-American, 77 percent qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, 12 percent have special needs and 22 percent are English learners.

In the 2014-15 school year, 95 percent of Alliance seniors graduated high school, compared to 72 percent at district schools. On the 2015 Smarter Balanced standardized tests, 57 percent of Alliance juniors met or exceeded the English language arts standards, compared to 48 percent for juniors at district schools, and 28 percent met or exceeded the math standards, compared to 20 percent at district schools. On the 2016 tests, 68 percent of Alliance juniors met or exceeded the ELA standard, compared to 54 percent of LA Unified juniors, and 31 percent of Alliance juniors met or exceeded the math standard, compared to 25 percent for the district. Alliance schools stack up even better compared to neighborhood schools located near them on the 2016 tests. According to Alliance data, its schools performed 82 percent higher in math and 48 percent higher in ELA than neighboring district schools.

Alliance also says that 95 percent of its seniors are accepted into college and 100 percent graduate with the requirements to apply to UC and CSU colleges — known as the A-G standards. During the 2013-14 school year, 28 percent of district seniors graduated having completed all A-G courses, although that number is set to significantly jump this year due to a $15-million credit recovery program.

A MODEL THAT VALUES AUTONOMY

One thing that Alliance leaders stress is that their model isn’t really an exact model, because autonomy and freedom to innovate form a cornerstone of the belief system. Each Alliance principal has the power to hire and fire the staff and has full control over the school’s budget. Katzir said 90 percent of every dollar Alliance receives goes directly to the school, and the home office takes 10 percent for administrative costs.

“What’s happening at one school is different than what is happening at another. So the school has some autonomy to figure out how to hit their markers, and we are trying to figure out what the trends are that can support the most number of people,” said Alliance Chief Development and Communications Officer Catherine Suitor. “There’s a level of autonomy at the school so the school can turn, and the teachers have a level of autonomy, so it goes all the way down. It’s like, how to do you make decisions close to students and look at students? I really would say that is probably the biggest difference.”

The Alliance home office sets the bar for achievement, the overall Alliance values, training and educational approach, but principals are given significant freedom in how they run the school day-to-day. Alliance leaders also credit the small size of their schools as key to their success. The average Alliance grade has around 150 students. The smaller scale allows for each student to receive personalized attention.

“There are small classrooms here. I know all the students, I know all the parents by name. I can tell you a story about every single child in this building,” said Ani Meymarian, principal of Alliance Margaret M. Bloomfield High School in Huntington Park.

Jennifer Dzul, a recent graduate of Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan High School, transferred to an Alliance middle school after going to a large LA Unified elementary school and said the small environment was key to her success. She is set to begin as a freshman at Brown University this month.

“It was very different in that I got to know everybody on a personal basis. The school was so small I was really able to get everybody’s name and learn where they came from, versus elementary school where I have my group of friends and that’s it,” Dzul said. “The academics were a little harder, but because the classes were so small, the teachers noticed when you didn’t do the homework or when you were struggling because they didn’t have to worry about a lot of people.”

Martin Alcarez recently graduated from Alliance Marc and Eva Stern Math Science High School and is off to Stanford this month. His older brother also attended the school, and although he was more interested in attending the larger Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet, his mother convinced him to go to Alliance.

“At Alliance, not only were the teachers communicating with the students, but they were communicating with the parents, and not just about bad things. Because oftentimes at other big high schools, teachers only communicate for bad things,” Alcarez said. “At Alliance, my mom noticed that they really cared for students. Oftentimes teachers would call and say, ‘Oh, your son is doing really well in school and we are giving him an award.’ All those things that don’t seem significant, but they played a huge part in my mom making me go to Alliance.”

Diana Tejeda, a Spanish teacher at Bloomfied, also said the small environment has helped her grow.

“My friends at other schools that are not specifically charters, they feel like there is no room for growth. ‘No one comes to visit my classroom very often. I don’t know who to ask for help, it’s just like a stagnant situation. I go to work, I do my work and I teach.’ Whereas here I receive constant visits from the counselor, from the principal, from the vice principals and from other students that tend to come and walk in,” she said.

CONTROVERSY IN BATTLE WITH UTLA

As the largest charter network in LA UnifIed, and as the issue of how big and how fast charters should grow has come to dominate much of the conversation around the district, Alliance has found itself a target of UTLA. In March 2015 a unionization effort was launched and Alliance has found itself embroiled in a legal battle.

UTLA took a number of complaints to the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB), claiming that Alliance leaders were illegally blocking unionization efforts, at Alliance has lost some rulings before PERB and a state judge, who issued a temporary restraining order against Alliance. State lawmakers also recently approved an audit of Alliance’s finances to see if it was using public funds in its battle with UTLA. For more, see these stories:

• UTLA files complaint against Alliance charters over unionization
• State lawmakers approve audit of Alliance schools’ use of funds in battle with UTLA
• JUST IN: Judge issues restraining order against Alliance in union battle

The situation is still playing out in the courts. Along with the significant backlash that the early draft of what became the Great Public Schools Now plan received, it proves that no charter network, regardless of how successful their students become, is going to quietly grow without finding itself embroiled in political controversy surrounding charters.

“This isn’t just any union. This is UTLA, which is on the record as wanting to destroy charter schools,” said Katzir when asked why Alliance leaders are opposed to unionizing. “And so if you, a parent who is a plumber and a union member, believe that you have made a choice to be here, we believe that one of our elements of success is the relationship between the administrators and the teachers, and the flexibility to be innovative and customize the work for the kids and communities that we serve. Given what we have seen from UTLA, we think a lot of what we have at Alliance would be at risk here.”

Performing arts teacher Sue Freitag of El Camino Real Charter High School.

A $1,139 dinner at a steakhouse. A $95 bottle of fine Syrah wine. A $73 bill for flowers.

Those charges and others made by staff of a successful charter school were cited this week at an LA Unified School Board meeting and led the district to take the first steps to revoking the school’s charter.

El Camino Real Charter High School, which educates 3,600 students in the west San Fernando Valley, was given a Notice of Violations Tuesday that they must answer by Sept. 23, or the district could hold a public hearing to decide whether to revoke the school’s charter and return it to traditional district school status.

On Friday morning, all of the correspondence between the district and the school that was provided to the school board members was made public as per a request by board member Monica Ratliff.

While some of the school board members seemed outraged about the charges against the charter school in more than an hour of debate Tuesday, many teachers who spoke in support of the school said they felt that the district was being too harsh on the school. Some of them supported the expenses on lavish dinners, even though the district rules wouldn’t allow such practices for their own traditional schools.

“There are some things that need to be negotiated, and that may mean taking you out to dinner,” said teacher Sue Freitag. “I think the district is being unreasonable. Once again, it’s a huge bureaucracy trying to tell us all what to do. Charters are supposed to be independent.”

Marshall Mayotte, El Camino Real chief business officer

Freitag taught at the school for 14 years when it was a district school and after it became an independent charter school. She is also a member of the teachers union, UTLA, and notes that she is making 7 percent more than she did as a traditional school teacher. She said she has been part of the school family for 32 years, going back to being a student there.

“This school has had a pristine reputation in academics and the arts and it hurts me personally to see our reputation under scrutiny,” Freitag testified to the school board on Tuesday. “I question the charter school division as to why these issues were not brought up prior to the school year?” Freitag, who also is in charge of the theater program at the school, said, “I’m here for students, they deserve a safe school environment free of political interference.”

The teachers at El Camino Real will be meeting after school on Friday with UTLA members to discuss the issues with the school. The teachers have a separately negotiated UTLA contract that is different than the one for the overall district.

At Tuesday’s meeting, school board member Richard Vladovic said he sifted through the thousand of expenses of El Camino and asked, “Is it common to ask school funds to pay for a corkage fee? Can you use money meant for the students to pay the price of a bottle of wine? Can they purchase alcohol with school money? … If an LA principal did that, what would probably happen?”

Schools have done that, but they are told it’s against district policy, school officials said. Superintendent Michelle King shook her head and said, “There would be an investigation, and appropriate action would follow. No, we wouldn’t say it’s OK.”

Vladovic added that the school was asked months ago about the charges of “significant meals at restaurants and who attended the meetings and what they were for, and they did not respond.”

Jose Cole-Gutierrez, director of the district’s Charter Schools Division that brought the vote for the Notice of Violations to the school board, said his office noted the “seemingly exorbitant personal and improper expenses” including first-class travel and other expenses into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He said the school has “the opportunity to remedy concerns noted” including charges on credit cards charged to the school that includes unauthorized travel expense. Although charter schools run independently, they must still follow some overall district rules and procedures, and their charters are renewed by the school board every five years but can be revoked at any time.

“We noted credit card activity that is still problematic,” Cole-Gutierrez said. “It does not prohibit the use of personal expenses. It discourages it, but does not prohibit it.” He said the district’s charter division asked for clarifications for the past two years.

School board President Steve Zimmer noted that the Notices to Cure from the charter division are common requests, and that the school board doesn’t plan to revoke the school’s charter immediately. Other school board members expressed serious concerns.

“This does not reflect on a great school, I have major concerns,” Vladovic concluded. “Do we treat schools that are still LAUSD property, as opposed to charter schools on independent sites, differently? No, so they are all treated the same.”

Board member Scott Schmerelson, who represents the district where El Camino is located, pointed out that each of the teachers speaking for the school was passionate and said “the charter school is excellent and used to have a stellar reputation.” Schmerelson noted a media interview with a school representative who said there was a lot of money in the school’s treasury and the expenses weren’t of concern.

“You can’t use public money like that,” Schmerelson said. “What bothers me the most is the arrogance, the arrogance, on the news, as if we’re the bad guys. We like the school, I don’t want to revoke the charter, I think it’s a great school. But you have to play fair and have to be fair with public money.”

Schmerelson said he received many emails from faculty members who said they were happy with the school, but unhappy with the administrators who created these problems. “The great majority of the emails I received were for the school, but against the deeds that were done,” Schmerelson said.

El Camino attorney Janelle Ruley

In the charter school’s own by-laws, it notes that purchases for staff meals must be pre-approved and “each department has a budget of $50/employee/year for meals.”

Janelle Ruley, a charter rights attorney of Young, Minney & Corr representing the school’s governing board, said the school district’s recent action “feels like a bait-and-switch sucker punch.” She said the school board’s actions are unproductive and said the school answered all the questions in a timely manner and changed some school policies.

“Like Charlie Brown kicking a football, charter schools are set up to make compliance mistakes and they’re heavily penalized when they actually do,” Ruley said. She added that the school board action “will expose the district to liability.” Ruley said the school plans to answer all the questions within the deadline, but that didn’t stop the teachers and families from being angry.

Teacher Gail Turner-Graham

Teacher Gail Turner-Graham pointed out that “El Camino takes care of its teachers” with an average salary scale of $90,000 per teacher last year. She said the school increased classes, clubs and extracurricular activities by more than 15 percent and two college counselors are dedicated specifically for college planning and helping students with credit recovery. She said the school has a waiting list of 1,000 students and has “established a lean operating system,” and support staff increased by more than 40 percent.

Softball coach and teacher Lori Chandler said she had taught at the school since 1985 and when they first talked about going charter. “At the time the faculty lacked confidence and a majority was not in favor, but five years ago was very different and the faculty fully supported it,” said Chandler who also graduated from the high school. “That was the very best thing that happened to El Camino Real. Being a charter school means decisions are made at the school level.”

Chandler pointed out the school won 97 awards in the past five years in athletics. She suggested that the district wanted to take back the school because it was thriving so well and had several million dollars in their coffers for retiree benefits. “Perhaps that’s the problem, we are thriving too much,” said Chandler, who devoted 33 years to the school.

Lori Chandler, teacher and alum at El Camino Real.

District officials said they first notified the school of concerns last year, on Sept. 29, 2015 and issued a “Notice to Cure” to explain the irregularities by Oct. 30, 2015.

But the faculty and students didn’t know of the issues at the school until the first week of school this year, according to a science teacher at the school for the past 14 years, Dean Sodek. He said the faculty and parents were surprised and it was like “having a kitchen sink lobbed at us” by the district.

Sodek said the district paid a total of $1.2 million in oversight fees over the past five years to the district. He said the district charter office should offer more assistance to the school. He and other staff members said the district’s actions have shaken up the school.

“Please try to understand our frustration,” said the school’s ‎director of marketing, Melanie Horton. She said the district’s actions were “distracting and scaring our students and staff.”

Dermot Givens, an El Camino parent.

Parent Dermot Givens, an attorney whose son Damian got into the school through open enrollment, pointed out that his is one of the 8 percent of African-American families at the school. “It is not an all-white upper-class population,” Givens said, adding that his son is fluent in French, learning Mandarin Chinese and a member of the basketball team.

Marshall Mayotte, the school’s chief business officer, said the district’s report was a result of “sloppy work and false statements.” He pointed out that his name was mentioned 11 times for charges made on an employee business card and he was not at the restaurants that were named.

After the district voted to approve the latest notice to the school, Mayotte said, “We were caught off guard.” He said he didn’t have time to answer the summary of facts before the district made them public. The Los Angeles Daily News conducted an in-depth investigation of the school finances in May that also detailed expenses.

Tensions during the school board meeting grew so tense that board member Monica Garcia ordered: “OK, everybody breathe! Everybody breathe! There is a lot of tension and anxiety out there. What I hear is there is a lot people who support their school and want to see a solution and concern about some behavior came to light at some point. …  What I’m interested in hearing is a conversation of how to fix the issues.”

Scott Silverstein, a newly elected member of the El Camino school board and the parent of a recent graduate of the school, said, “We are more than happy to make the necessary changes.”

Principal Richard Ramos with Dominga Verduzco.

Haddon Elementary Avenue School is so in demand that families want to drive their children across the San Fernando Valley from Granada Hills to attend the Pacoima school.

Haddon is not a charter school, it’s not a new pilot program and it’s not a magnet school (yet). It’s a traditional Title 1 district school in a low-income Latino neighborhood that has been there since 1926.

But it wasn’t always growing. And in fact it had to fight district rules that prohibited families from moving to the school.

Five years ago, parents were so fed up with the school that they initiated a “parent trigger” to try to take over the school from the district. The trigger was never pulled, and a new principal came in who brought programs students wanted, like a Mariachi class, a robotics program and an award-winning speech and debate team.

“We are certainly an anomaly in the district, and I’m learning now that part of my job is to figure out how to be competitive and promote the school,” said Haddon Principal Richard S. Ramos, who has worked with the charter school group Partnerships to Uplift Communities and on dozens of successful electoral campaigns, most recently for Robert Gonzales to the San Fernando City Council in 2012. “We have to figure out better ways to get the word out about what we’re doing that’s good in our schools.”

Soon students were clamoring to transfer to the school — a welcome change especially as without the new enrollment, the school faced a loss of teachers.

Then came the curve ball. District administrators said “No!” to the families who wanted to transfer to Haddon.

The district wouldn’t allow students to transfer because it wasn’t a pilot or magnet or charter school. Families weren’t allowed to leave their home schools to attend Haddon. One family was pleading to get in because their daughter loved robotics, and the parents were willing to drive nearly an hour every day to bring her to the school.

“They have parents wanting to come in, and I don’t understand why it’s not allowed?” school board member Monica Ratliff said at a board meeting this spring after she heard about the issue.

District administrators listened to Ratliff. They worked it out so that applicants could say they wanted to transfer to the school because similar programs were not offered at their home schools. Parents’ requests needed to include a waiver form that explained the programs offered at Haddon were not offered elsewhere.

Removing that roadblock resulted in unprecedented growth for the school unlike any other school in the area. The principal noted that Haddon has had increased enrollment for the past two years. In fact, he said that 39 of the new students he has this year are transferring from charter schools.

“We are in a time now where the entire district is seeing declining enrollment,” Ramos said on the first day of the new school year on Tuesday. For the past decade, the school enrollment was on a steady decline. The school now has an enrollment of more than 900, with a capacity of 960.

Mariachis at Haddon. (Courtesy: Haddon)

Ratliff, who was at Haddon on Tuesday for the first day of school, said she was a bit irritated about the district’s initial response late in the school year.

“It should not be up to a board member to have to bring this up at a meeting to promote that a school is doing well,” Ratliff said. “Everyone on the administrative level should be helpful in a situation like this,” Ratliff added. “I’m glad the district was listening and no one stymied the efforts of this great principal.”

Ratliff pointed out that many principals at traditional district schools have great programs that no one hears about, and the district should be better at promoting those programs. She said charter schools do their own promotion and have learned to become competitive for students, so the district schools should too.

Monica Ratliff greets volunteers on the first day of school.

“Our principals haven’t had time to promote their programs,” Ratliff said.

One solution for Haddon is that the school will apply to become a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) Magnet Academy. That proposal will come before the school board in January. Ratliff said she would be stunned if it doesn’t get approved. When it becomes a magnet school, the school will have open enrollment and anyone can apply from within the district.

Superintendent Michelle King repeatedly brings up sharing best practices and touting and promoting district school successes. The LA Unified Communications Department launched LAUSD Daily last year and LAUSD Shines, which shares school successes. They place posters in schools and throughout the district to encourage principals, teachers, parents and students to share their stories.

“I am realizing I have to be competitive with our school,” Ramos said. “People don’t hear about our great programs unless they hear about it in the laundromat or at a soccer game.”

Before Ramos came to the school, parents at Haddon organized a parent union chapter to initiate a parent trigger and began gathering signatures in 2011, aided by Parent Revolution, which helps with parent trigger movements at failing schools.

But in January 2013, parents voted to put the process “on pause.” The following month, teachers at the school voted to institute a series of reforms by becoming a Local Initiative School, a reform model that allows some autonomy from district policies, such as in hiring.

“We were unhappy, and the district brought in a new principal and the parents are now happy,” said Dominga Verduzco, who was president of the parent chapter. “They implemented new programs and a curriculum and brought in a principal who puts kids first. We like what he is doing,” Verduzco said Tuesday as she helped give out school supplies donated by the nonprofit Rainbow Packs.

Haddon’s speech and debate team. (Courtesy: Haddon)

This is the last year at the school for Verduzco’s fifth-grader, and she is proud of the changes she helped create.

The teachers voted 29 to 2 in favor of the STEAM program to come to the school, and Ramos said they all stepped up to improve the school curriculum. Test scores are still not up to par, with the latest scores showing English and math at 18 and 11 percent meeting or exceeding standards, respectively, and 5 percent chronically absent. They expect to see improvements soon.

“Some of the special programs we have are electives that kids don’t see until middle school,” Ramos said.

Not only are the Mariachi classes a big draw, but the students can choose gardening, cooking, computers and photography thanks to the nonprofit Woodcraft Rangers, which offers after-school activities and clubs that align with Common Core standards. Do It Yourself Girls also comes to campus and helps introduce girls to professions such as engineering, construction and other traditionally male professions.

Another plan Ramos has for the school is to make it a dual language school.

“Although most of the students are bilingual, it is not a good Spanish, it is more colloquial and they could benefit from a dual language program,” Ramos said.

He wants to get the school’s test scores up, but the principal said he already notes some major changes. The attendance rate is increasing, chronic absences are down, and even teacher attendance increased from 69 percent to 79 percent.

This year, the school has a new director for the parent center, and the school was picked to be part of the Early Language Literacy Plan that works to make sure students read by third grade. The school is also starting a new Eureka math program — and explaining all the changes to parents along the way.

“People are wanting to come to school, and that’s a good thing,” Ramos said.

Meanwhile, Ratliff, who is running for Los Angeles City Council and will be leaving the school board, said she hopes the district will take note of the successes at Haddon.

“People do a lot of head nodding at the district level, but all administrators should be on the same page with helping schools like this succeed,” Ratliff said.

LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King at the “Promising Practices” forum on July 23.

There were plenty of kumbaya moments at the July 23 “Promising Practices” forum, called by LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King, leaving charter leaders cautiously optimistic it can lead to a new era of cooperation.

More than 200 people from the LA Unified world attended the forum, which featured a series of workshops and discussion panels aimed at sharing best practices between the district’s charter schools and traditional schools. Another forum is planned for next spring, and while it is too early to tell, some charter leaders said they hoped the sharing would continue.

“I’m so excited about what Michelle King is doing, because for the first time since I was on the board, we have a superintendent who is saying, ‘Hey, we can learn from each other,'” said Caprice Young, CEO of Magnolia Public Schools and a former LA Unified school board member. “And it’s not like charters have the answer or traditional schools have the answer, it’s that we can all learn from each other. And she is supporting her internal innovators like pilot schools and magnet schools.”

Young said it is too soon to tell if there will be more tangible evidence of increased cooperation beyond the forum, but “good vibes are not to be underestimated, particularly in a place where there has been so much conflict. The fact that there are good vibes matters.”

Jason Mandell, spokesman for the California Charter Schools Association, said the focus on learning as opposed to politics was refreshing.

“I think it was a very healing event because it did provide an opportunity for teachers and the elected officials and the appointed officials to all focus on instruction and learning and say regardless of the issues that sometimes cause conflict, this is what we are here to do. This is why charters are here,” Mandell said. “They are here to innovate and to try and do things and share what’s working with district schools. There is so much time that could be spent on solving those problems that aren’t.”

Parker Hudnut, CEO of Inner City Education Foundation Public Schools, who attended the forum, also said it is not yet clear what will come of it.

“The teachers and I were pleasantly surprised when they got their session surveys back to find out that most of the people in the seminar were district teachers and not other charter teachers,” Hudnut said. “It was amazing that the LA Unified teachers came to us. Now there needs to be a follow-up. I’ve not heard what they are doing with what was heard at the sessions, or what people came away with, but there could have been a goldmine of ideas that were shared.”

Perhaps the crescendo of the good vibes at the forum was a speech by LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer, who spoke about breaking down barriers and working together. The speech turned heads due to Zimmer’s sometimes incendiary comments about charters schools and their proliferation.

“Steve Zimmer gave a wonderful heartwarming speech. Michelle King was very positive. The vibe in the room seemed very positive,” Hudnut said. “I see the day as positive, but LAUSD and charters still need to work to improve our relationship. It should be more of a partnership, not a compliance culture. How strong can that relationship be when one day we are working together to better educate children and then the next day we get a notice to comply that is pretty silly. There needs to be positive celebration that stands shoulder to shoulder.”

Joya, Hattie and Chandler Weinroth at the GALS orientation.

More than 100 girls and their parents gathered last Thursday to sign up for the first all-girls charter middle school in LA Unified. They were nervous, excited and wary as they lined up to get their pink T-shirt emblazoned with “Power, Flexibility, Focus, Balance” on the front and “GALS” on the back.

GALS — short for the Girls Athletic Leadership School of Los Angeles — is based on a highly successful school in Denver which focuses on the physical, emotional and psychosocial needs of female adolescents.

“Welcome, it’s so good to see you,” said Carrie Wagner, the executive director who helped pass out papers that needed to be signed and was flanked by her teaching staff and a few board members. The girls then stood in line to get a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausages, fruit and pancakes.

“I’m nervous,” a girl almost in tears told operations manager Kelly Snyder as they took a tour of the classrooms.

Snyder smiled back and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and said, “I know, I am too.” The girl smiled and cheered up.

GALS is co-located at Vista Middle School on Roscoe Boulevard in Panorama City, in the heart of the San Fernando Valley. They have four classrooms on the second floor that were opened to the charter school staff only the day before the students came to tour the school. The host school’s principal greeted the new teachers with doughnuts to welcome them.

Wagner said the school has spaces for 20 more girls to reach their maximum capacity of 125. So far, the population of GALS is about 80 percent Latina, and 70 percent are low income, with more than half from the Panorama City area, but the rest coming from every corner of the Valley.

Lorelei and Martina Eberhart

Same-sex schools are relatively new to LA Unified. The first all-girls district school, GALA, the Girls Academic Leadership Academy, is also opening this year on Aug. 16 as an all-girls middle and high school. There are two other traditional district schools specifically for pregnant students and young mothers, and Young Oak Kim Academy is a traditional middle school that has had boys and girls separated in classes since 2009. Next year, an all-boys district school will open, and GALS hopes to eventually ask for an all-boys charter school to open in LA Unified.

“I’m a little nervous, but excited, I think it will be a challenge,” said Hattie Weinroth, 10, who came to the orientation with her mom, dad and little sister, Chandler, who isn’t in school yet. “But, there are no boys here, yay!”

Her mother, Joya Weinroth, said, “This is an amazing time in history where we have the first female presidential candidate. It is great to have a place where girls can learn to use their voices.”

Weinroth also mentioned how Ava DuVernay of “Selma” fame became the first female director to recently get a movie with a $100-million budget for “A Wrinkle in Time.”

“Los Angeles has its share of sexism, and it’s changing,” Weinroth said. “I want my daughter to be a part of these things.”

It’s about a 25-minute drive one way to the school from where they live in Studio City, where Hattie attended an affiliated charter district school, Carpenter Community Charter. The decision to come to the all-girls school was completely Hattie’s decision.

“Hattie liked the idea that the school gives the chance for special help for students who may be falling behind in a certain subject,” such as math, Weinroth said.

The school bells for GALS will be different from the middle school that they are sharing space with, and the school day will start earlier and end later. Because exercise and movement are important to the school, every day will begin with warm-ups.

“The teachers all got together to do some movement,” Warner said. “The team that sweats together learns together.”

Wagner said research shows that young women attending all-girls schools have higher self-esteem and stronger academic performance, especially in math and science.

“I expect to get more interested in math and science,” said 11-year-old Lorelei Eberhart, who is entering 6th grade.

Her mother, Martina Eberhart, said an administrator from their charter elementary school, Our Community School, sent her daughter to the GALS school in Denver and loved it.

“We have followed the school for a few years as it was being created and wanted to go to a single-gendered school,” Martina said. “We liked the mission statement and how the focus is on movement and concentrating on math and science.”

English teacher Lauren Pinto and math and science teacher Michelle Acosta crowded more than 30 parents into a classroom during a tour. About a dozen were still outside in the hall.

“We can get everyone inside, keep moving up to the front,” Acosta said.

“We can get everyone in,” Pinto added. “GALS culture is, ‘We can do it,’ and this is the start of a new day for the school.”

(Photos courtesy of iStock)

The first half of 2016 brought high stakes and high drama to Los Angeles’ education scene, from dire budget predictions to heated charter debates to attempts at overhauling teacher tenure laws.

There were anniversaries to celebrate along the way — 25 years for both charter schools nationwide and Teach For America — and comings and goings of superintendents, plus the glimmerings of electoral races to come (for the school board’s members and president, LA City Council, mayor and even governor) that promise a starring role for education.

NEW SUPERINTENDENT

The new year started with the announcement that Michelle King had been chosen by a unanimous vote of the school board to be LA Unified’s next superintendent, the first black female ever to lead the district and the first woman since 1929. The three-month nationwide search had ended at home, with an LA Unified “lifer” who was educated in the district and has worked for it for nearly 30 years. King replaced Ramon Cortines, who stepped down at the end of 2015.

King had to immediately grapple with how the district would co-exist with the growing number of charter schools and the school board’s opposition to a plan to significantly increase their numbers. In fact, the day she was confirmed by the board was also the day of the unanimous board vote against an early draft plan to expand charters.

King called for healing, and in her first community town hall she stressed, “It’s not us versus them.” She met three times with the new head of the nonprofit formed to lead the expansion of the city’s high-quality schools, Great Public Schools Now Executive Director Myrna Castrejon, who, like King, was announced in January, is a minority woman and single mother, and stands to have significant impact on the shape and state of education in LA.

King also took on the plummeting graduation rate as well as predictions of a massive deficit within three years, holding a series of special board meetings in May and June to address the predictions and as well as recommendations outlined in a November report by an independent financial review panel.

She presented her first budget in June, which most board members praised, but noted there was much work yet to be done.

“Are we there? No, we’re not there, but we are on a path moving forward in the right direction,” King said as she presented the budget to the board.

“In general, I think that your staff and you have done a good job of trying to meet the needs in the district with the limited funds we have,” board member Monica Ratliff told her.

BUDGET GLOOM

“The future is dire,” is what King heard at the outset of the special meetings on the fiscal health of the district.

Internationally renowned education expert Pedro Noguera of UCLA, hired by the district to advise King and the board and facilitate the special meetings, warned that unless more serious measures are taken, the nation’s second-largest school district is destined to lose more students.

The challenges LA Unified is facing, Noguera said, include declining enrollment because of the growth of charters and demographic shifts, chronically under-performing schools, structural budget deficits and the need to increase public support for schools.

The details were daunting: the budget deficit was projected to reach nearly half a billion dollars in three years; a district audit showed LA Unified debt outstripped assets by $4.2 billion; unfunded pensions topped $13 billion and have more than doubled since 2005; per-pupil funding had doubled but the district still faces financial crisis; and plans for a turnaround included boosting enrollment but not cutting staff. Indeed, even though the district has lost 100,000 students in the last six years, its certified administrative staff has increased 22 percent in the last five years.

While the board in June passed a $7.6 billion balanced budget for 2016-17, it included $15 million for “housed” employees, which have increased to 181. These “teacher jails” are for staff members who are being paid to essentially do nothing while awaiting internal investigations about alleged misconduct, while the district has to hire substitutes to do their jobs.

CHARTERS

The tensions over charters grew increasingly more heated after January’s unanimous vote by the board to oppose the charter expansion plan.

Charter operators contended the district had turned up the heat on them by making charter approvals and revisions increasingly difficult and documented that investigations into charters had increased. The board openly pondered whether the district is unfair to charters.

In May a study funded by the LA teachers union claimed that independent charter schools drain half a billion dollars a year from LA Unified, but the district disputed the report, and its own numbers show LA Unified actually makes money from charters.

The union, UTLA, also stepped up pressure on charters that are co-located on traditional school campuses, with a UTLA-led rally at a school in Chinatown and organizing other rallies districtwide.

Charters and their growth were a recurrent theme at board meetings, as were responses and reports by the California Charter Schools Association, including one that charter schools in the state are excelling at getting historically disadvantaged students into college over traditional schools.

Meanwhile, the district was offering up its own plans to stem declining enrollment, focusing in large part on its popular magnet schools. The board approved a $3 million expansion of magnets, delved into why charters were attracting more federal dollars than magnets and voted unanimously to seek help from outside the district to replicate high-achieving schools, including magnets.

In June Great Public Schools Now revealed its long-awaited plan to increase access to high-quality education for tens of thousands of low-income students in Los Angeles and announced its first three grants, though none directly went to district schools. More grants are expected to be announced in the fall.

GRADUATION RATES

In her first month, King declared it was “all hands on deck” in an internal memo that revealed that only 54 percent of seniors were meeting their A through G requirements and on track to graduate.

A $15 million credit recovery program started in the fall that included online classes and staff interventions was credited with raising the projected rate to 74 percent by the end of the term, topping last year’s rate of 72 percent, while California graduation rates also rose to a new high of 82 percent.

But questions remained about the quality of those online courses, and about the worth of high school diplomas statewide. And while there was much celebration over the improved numbers, still a quarter of all LA Unified seniors, perhaps as many as 10,000, would not celebrating in commencement ceremonies and would be facing uncertain futures.

Even of those graduating and heading to college, a rising percentage find themselves required to take remedial classes, setting them back financially and increasing the likelihood of dropping out.

ACCOUNTABILITY

A three-year dearth of state data on schools continued to have ramifications and cause deep consternation throughout California.

Most responsible for the dearth is Gov. Jerry Brown, who has been one of the foremost critics of federally driven efforts to use data to improve education — leaving researchers and policymakers in the dark and setting up the possibilities of significant consequences for defying federal guidelines.

Felt most notably is the absence of a single-score method of ranking schools. The Academic Performance Index (API), which reported a single score, was discontinued after 2013 as the state transitioned to the Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced tests, which debuted last year.

Then a new accountability system was released in February, but LA Unified said it wouldn’t even consider it, even though it was one of the six school districts that developed it.

The School Quality Improvement Index was developed by the California Office to Reform Education (CORE) and is a significant jump away from API scores because it represents a far more complex and intricate way of ranking schools and incorporates more than just test scores while also valuing how well the neediest students are performing.

Because the state is developing its own guidelines in the wake of new federal legislation, the CORE data will not be reported again after its initial year, but its creators hope that it will influence the state process.

But the data revealed a trove of insights, which LA School Report documented in a number of deep dives inside the system, calculating the scores of all 714 LA Unified schools entered into the data set (which didn’t include charters) and ranking them.

The new data revealed the best and worst of the district. It showed that the district’s 13 lowest performers are all elementary schools, and it looked at the top and bottom elementary schools, the stark differences among middle schools and the high and low high schools (Harbor Teacher Prep Academy at the top, Jordan High at the bottom).

The lack of data also played a notable role in the drama over 20th Street Elementary School, when LA Unified rejected a parent petition to take over the failing elementary school in South Central Los Angeles, asserting that no California school qualifies as failing under the state “parent trigger” law precisely because data no longer exist, meaning no school could be failing.

TEACHER TENURE AND UNION DUES

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February set off fears of deadlocks and predictions that the Supreme Court could change course on education reform.

Indeed, following Scalia’s death, the Supreme Court split 4-4, upholding mandatory union dues for teachers and other public employees in Rebecca Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which had been called a “life-or-death” case for public employee unions.

Plaintiffs fighting the mandatory dues had been optimistic following January oral arguments, when a 5-4 decision in their favor seemed likely. That calculus changed, however, following Scalia’s death.

A blow to efforts to overhaul California’s teacher tenure laws came in April, when the Court of Appeal overturned a Los Angeles Supreme Court ruling in Vergara v. California, which challenged teacher tenure, layoff laws and dismissal policies. Attorneys representing the students plaintiffs appealed to the California Supreme Court, which must decide whether to take the case by the end of August.

Then in the closing days of June, state lawmakers defeated a bill that would have amended teacher tenure laws and extended the probationary period from two to three years — even after the bill was stripped of its boldest language. The bill, AB 934, had been drafted to address some of the same concerns raised in Vergara.

On Friday morning, more than 100 parents were lined up outside Walter Reed Middle School in Studio City waiting for a permit to get their child into one of the district’s Schools for Advanced Studies. One dad spent the night on the school steps.

No, it’s no April Fool’s joke. Getting into one of LA Unified’s popular magnet or dual-language programs, or one of the many other choices, is a complicated process of deadlines and forms, and a lot of waiting.

At a special school board meeting earlier this week, Superintendent Michelle King said her staff was proceeding with a unified enrollment process that would make the application process easier and prevent parents from having to camp out in front of their child’s school just to get them in a better program.

However, the simplified process will not include any of the charter schools that are overseen by the district, which seems to fly in the face of King’s public declaration to avoid the “us vs. them” mentality between traditional schools and independent charter schools within LA Unified.

School board member Ref Rodriguez, who helped start charter schools in the northeast Los Angeles area, told LA School Report that parents should be informed about the charter school options in their area at the same time.

“I’m really enthused about this step forward, but we didn’t bring all the gear, there’s still a missing piece of this equation, the charter school,” Rodriguez said.

He doesn’t think that all parents will want to flock to charter schools.

“I have a hunch that it would be the opposite,” Rodriguez said. “I come from the charter world, and I know that most families want their neighborhood schools to work, but they don’t always know what’s available. I think this works in the district’s favor to do this.”

Ref Rodriguez wants charters included in unified enrollment.

A unified enrollment system with one deadline and application period for all area schools has been established in Denver, New Orleans, Newark and Washington, D.C., but has caused controversy in other school districts considering such a plan, such as Boston and Oakland, and raised concerns among some charter organizations about a loss of autonomy. Rodriguez said he was familiar with the Washington plan and that it helps with diversity and ensures that charters are not “cherry-picking” the best students.

Jesus Angulo, LA Unified’s director of Counseling and Student Services, is in charge of putting together the unified enrollment plan. At the moment, there’s no specific deadline, no specific funding and they’re not sure if it is going to be developed in house or by a firm outside the district.

“We are in the exploratory stage,” said Angulo, who said the biggest changes will be to shorten the sometimes eight-month-long process to no more than six weeks and put it entirely online. The hope is to offer a search engine with the available choices, career pathways and other comparable data.

For now the district plans to combine deadlines for magnet schools, SAS schools, early education, International Baccalaureate programs, dual-language schools, Zones of Choice schools and other programs.

“Right now we are only considering district schools, not charter schools,” Angulo said. “We are streamlining our own internal process and what we can control within our district.”

The idea for a simplified process came when King was assistant superintendent, but now it’s being fast-tracked even as funding is being sought.

Sarah Angel, managing director of advocacy of the California Charter Schools Association, said, “It’s encouraging that the district is trying to better engage families. Clearly it should be easier for parents to explore their options and choose the best public school for their children. But charter schools are public schools, and more than 100,000 Los Angeles families are already choosing them.”

Angel added, “So it seems reasonable that charter schools would at least be invited to be part of the discussion about a common enrollment process for families. If district leaders are serious about treating all public school students and parents with the same care and concern, then charters should be part of the conversation.”

Rodriguez said the different deadlines with charter schools can create unnecessary competition because a parent may be waiting to get into a district magnet school, but then they are accepted earlier into a charter school. Two or three months later, they are accepted into the magnet program, but the family already has a relationship with the charter school so they stick with them.

“By including the charter schools, it gives charters the advantage of quicker enrollment, but it also allows schools to plan properly for next year,” Rodriguez said. “We have to try to see if this system works in this district.”

He said it is important to see if charter schools will sign on to the idea. Now that the schools will all be connected via the district’s MiSiS computer system, such a process could be easier.

“I’m really grateful that LA Unified is going to the united enrollment of their choices, but we should be thinking more broadly,” Rodriguez said. “We should have conversations with our charter parents. Does it make sense to include all the options for the district?”

Rodriguez said some of the district’s mentality is still that charters are not part of LA Unified. “That is the biggest frustration I have on both sides. I know Ms. King really does mean that it’s not us vs. them, but the machine only knows how to see the world in one way. The charter world is the same way, they want to be part of the district when it makes sense and do not want to find solutions together when it doesn’t. There are parallel systems fighting most of the time and not working together for the kids.”

After hearing about the long lines outside Walter Reed Middle School, Rodriguez said, “If you’re a low-income person you do not have the time to take off or spend the night at your child’s school. You shouldn’t have to do that. Families need to be informed of their choices, and there’s not choice if people are not informed. They can’t make that decision properly if charters are taken out of the equation.”

Students perform at CLIC’s Festival de Las Americas.

The principals of a charter and a district elementary school that share a Baldwin Village location have teamed up to bring dual-language educators together this weekend to learn from each other and share best practices, strategies and resources.

About 60 educators from the LA area have signed up to attend Saturday’s free half-day “unconference,” in which participants that day collectively choose the main topics to be discussed. Dual Language Los Angeles will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Hillcrest Elementary School, an LA neighborhood school in Baldwin Village in South Los Angeles that also is home to City Language Immersion Charter (CLIC), a 3-year-old public charter school founded by parents from West Adams.

“The principals made this happen,” said Valerie Braimah, executive director of City Charter Schools, which runs CLIC plus a middle and high school. “They were discussing how to collaborate on professional development and came up with the idea together.”

The event is a unique charter and district collaboration, Braimah said. “There is so much conflict between charters and the district, but I see a lot of ways in which, on a person-to-person level, those tensions are overcome for the greater good.”

Another motivation, she said, was “because dual-immersion programs are so dispersed geographically. This is the first time we have ever done anything like this. There are state and national bilingual language conferences, but we haven’t seen a lot of opportunities locally.”

Although the principals of CLIC, Raul Alarcon, and Hillcrest, Anthony Jackson, already provide professional development to their teachers separately, they saw their co-location as an opportunity to solve problems and serve teachers together.

“I hope that this type of collective learning and leadership can be a model for the district,” Alarcon stated in a news release. “We hope to show what happens when we work together to solve common challenges with the goal of better serving all of our students.”

Jackson added, “Our reciprocal model of collaboration and partnership just makes sense. We both offer dual-language immersion programs. We both share the school’s location. It makes sense to grow our knowledge and that of visiting educators, and practice together to benefit our scholars and their families.”

The half-day unconference is still registering participants at dualla.weebly.com. Walk-ins are welcome. For more information, contact Raul Alarcon, ralarcon@citycharterschools.org, (323) 294-4937, or Anthony Jackson, anthony.c.jackson@lausd.net, (323) 296-6867.

To help a model charter school expand into high school, the LA Unified school board took unprecedented steps Tuesday night to cobble together a plan, concocting at least half a dozen proposals and amendments during a lengthy and at times contentious discussion. District staff had recommended that the board reject the school’s petition.

Ultimately, the charter school was approved for three years, against the recommendations of not only the district’s charter school review staff but also Superintendent Michelle King and school board president Steve Zimmer, in whose district the school is located.

Michelle King and Steve Zimmer were still discussing the charter vote long after Tuesday’s meeting ended.

This was the third time in two meetings that the board voted for charters against staff recommendations. The robust debate both this and last month indicates that the board, which has been recently criticized for voting against charters, is trying to help charters they find effective, even if they don’t meet all LA Unified qualifications.

About 80 students, teachers and parents from Westside Innovative School House Inc. (WISH) elementary and middle schools in Westchester cheered and applauded the decision after some of them had waited more than eight hours before the board took up the issue. The vote was four in favor of allowing the school to try a high school for three years, two against, with Zimmer abstaining.

The vote followed a frenzied debate where sidebar conversations were happening in different parts of the school board auditorium and ended as board member Monica Garcia was standing near a back door to leave early because she was the keynote speaker at a Linked Learning Showcase at a local high school. It was her plan for the WISH high school that eventually passed.

After the meeting, Zimmer and King remained in their seats for nearly half an hour talking about the evening’s drawn-out discussion.

“We deeply care about the kids, this was not a charter or anti-charter issue, it was very complicated,” Zimmer told LA School Report. WISH is in his district, and he supports what they have done, but he remains concerned that the school cannot handle the leap to starting a high school just yet. Zimmer offered a proposal that WISH students attend Venice High School beginning in the fall in a “full inclusion model that would be comparable to the WISH model.” His five-part proposal would also expedite money for disability access to the classrooms because WISH is noted for having a high percentage of students in wheelchairs.

Zimmer thought this was the best deal for the school and could solve the problem of not yet having classrooms for their new high school. But the board rejected it.

“Unfortunately, the board was very divisive and disrespectful in not giving any credence to the board member who knows their district the best,” Zimmer said. He added, “Not one of my colleagues has the enrollment pressures in high schools like I have on the Westside. They did not defer to my valid perspective.”

It was the latest chapter of battles over charters going on throughout the district. In the last week, 30 charter organizations signed a letter supporting WISH’s charter petition. The district is facing declining enrollment while dealing with well-funded proposals to increase charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated.

WISH families and teachers after the vote.

“Everyone is in such a bunkered battleground,” Zimmer said.

“I abundantly support the school, but this vote doesn’t mean their problems are solved,” he said. “When I abstained, I did not vote against the school, I just in good conscience could not vote for a plan that did not have a real strategy to succeed.”

But WISH’s executive director, Shawna Draxton, said she was thrilled by the board’s turnaround and accepted the three-year commitment for the high school, although she would have preferred five years, which is standard for such charter school proposals at the district.

“I am grateful for the vote, and we will continue to work with the district,” Draxton said. “At this point, we do not have a place for the high school students to go to this fall, but we will find a place.”

The two other WISH schools share spaces on traditional LA Unified campuses, and WISH did not apply for space under Prop. 39 in time for this fall for the new high school, which is supposed to start with 84 students and eventually serve up to 336 students in ninth through 12th grades.

Monica Garcia holding sidebar conversations during the meeting.

California Charter Schools Association‘s Sarah Angel said she was very encouraged by the school board’s discussion and decision. “The board was really compelled to make it work,” she said. “The success of this national model is that all students can learn together, and WISH can be replicated in schools everywhere.”

WISH allows the teachers to have modest autonomy and includes all students with moderate and severe disabilities mixed in with other students. It wouldn’t have worked at Venice High School, the WISH team explained. WISH so far has a high concentration of students with special needs and ethnic diversity and shows test scores higher than the district average.

But the district’s charter school review team was concerned about declining net assets and expenses exceeding income in three of the past four years. The staff report shows that the submitted budget for the new high school projects a net loss of more than $48,000 in the startup year.

José Cole-Gutiérrez, director of LA Unified’s Charter Schools Division, said his staff recommended rejecting the petition in part because of the financial situation of WISH, and also thought they did not have the commitment for enough students to start the high school. “Their record of projections are overly optimistic and have not materialized in fact,” Cole-Gutiérrez said. “Compounding that, in the report they have no facilities plan and, especially on the Westside, that is a challenge.”

Board member Scott Schmerelson apologized to Cole-Gutiérrez and his staff, saying he felt they were “treated as if you were fools and buffoons and did not know what you are talking about” by other board members. “I apologize for the way I saw you being treated,” he said.

Nearly every board member had a different plan for the school to get around rejection. Richard Vladovic suggested simply adding a ninth grade to their present charter plan and allowing them to come back next year to reapply for a full high school.

Monica Ratliff suggested the school consider becoming a pilot school, and Superintendent King suggested the school become an affiliated charter school. Both options would give LA Unified more control, such as with teacher salaries and hiring processes. WISH administrators turned down those offers in the past.

Being part of the district would not allow WISH to receive a state startup grant of $575,000, which the school was promised once the district approved their petition. WISH’s Draxton said the school will now get the money with the board’s three-year decision.

At one point during the discussion, board members seemed to lean toward giving the school only a one-year tryout.

Newly appointed King, who last week talked about a healing between charter and non-charter factions at a town hall meeting in the San Fernando Valley, proposed a solution of approving WISH for one year and discussing a possible affiliated charter status. “We could help them with staff and extra experts that they would have access to,” King suggested. “They can have their own program and still realize the benefits of being part of a larger school.”

Her plan was also rejected.

WISH families waiting in the audience.

Ref Rodriguez, who has created charter schools, said his staff analyzed WISH’s financial history and explained that most of the problems were with one 6th-grade program. But he said he was also concerned that the petition submitted by supporters of the school did not include their “intent to enroll, and I need to hear about that.”

George McKenna, who ultimately voted against the three-year plan, said he thought WISH should go to Venice and withdraw their petition. He was concerned that making an exception for WISH would be unfair to other charter applications past and future.

“There is a lot of passion and I am concerned about facts,” McKenna said. “I have feelings too. I am concerned that the process is fair to all charters. … I”m frustrated about the way we are doing this. Why do we have staff making reports? I also care about what the children say, and how great they think the school is, but that will not sway me.”

Nevertheless, a litany of children, including one who was unable to speak clearly, presented their case to the board and even addressed specific board members on video.

“WISH should have a high school because it’s a powerful community that pushes students to do their best,” said 8th grader Oliver Drexel.

Ivey Steinberg, mother of a 7th grader confined to a wheelchair, said her son Jack has a 4.0 grade-point average because he thrives in an inclusive environment. She said her neighborhood school wasn’t accessible and she had no other options.

Suzanne Goldstein, parent founder of WISH, said the school should have no problem getting its high school enrollment. “I appreciate this robust discussion and want to have inclusive schools everywhere. We have done our best to date.”

A WISH 5th-grade teacher, Pilar Chavez, said she found her calling at WISH and spoke to the board about a student who couldn’t read. “He wanted to be taught, and the WISH classmates all participated and within a year he was reading at a 3rd-grade level,” Chavez said. “You need to have every teacher involved in inclusive education, and it takes working countless hours to make it happen.”

The vote ultimately was for a three-year authorization with reviews every year, as suggested by Garcia. It was seconded by Vladovic. Ratliff and Rodriguez agreed; Schmerelson and McKenna voted against it, and Zimmer abstained. Student board member Leon Popa, whose vote is advisory, voted in favor.

The vote weighed heavy on Zimmer. “I absolutely and completely as a board member say this district supports the WISH model,” he said. “I have been personally moved by it, and it has helped me to change as an educator. … To say that WISH is valued, well respected, doesn’t even cover it.”

Zimmer said he preferred that WISH would have made some deal with the district before the messy public meeting.

“The board all wanted to put kids first, and we were all forced to think out of the box,” Zimmer said. “I hope and pray they figure this out.”

Monica Ratliff prepares to take a selfie with Michelle King at the town hall.

At her first community town hall as LA Unified’s superintendent, Michelle King received the most applause when she called for a healing between charter and district school factions. Seven weeks into her job, she met Tuesday morning with more than 700 parents, teachers, principals and local residents in a relatively low-income area in the north San Fernando Valley where many of those in attendance had strong feelings about charter schools.

“We are all LA Unified school students,” King said in response to a charter school parent who was asking about the district’s perceived bias against charters. “It is unfortunate we have labels, saying that this one is better than that one. It’s not us versus them.”

King then shared a plan she is developing. “One of the things we are looking at, and I’m meeting with charter leaders, is to have some sort of forum or event and bring those traditional schools, magnets, pilots, charters all together and share what is working best.”

The Pacoima Singers perform before the question-and-answer session.

She added, “I can’t do it alone, we need your help. We need all of us breaking down walls and barriers on behalf of kids and be working together. It doesn’t help to have battles over property.”

She told the audience how she became a teacher and discussed a diverse range of topics that came from parent questions including students cutting themselves, school calendars, teacher firings and campus bullying.

The town hall was so successful that officials hope to replicate it in other parts of the district and hold them regularly. Although she has met with civic groups, teachers, principals and other specific groups so far since she was named in January, this was King’s first meeting that encouraged all community members to attend.

King was treated like a rock star. The audience almost exceeded the capacity of the performing arts auditorium at Pacoima Middle School, with many standing in the back. People greeted her and hugged her, some took selfies with her, a half dozen media outlets came to cover the event, and she received a standing ovation at least twice. Babies were crying in the audience and audio translations were available in Armenian and Spanish.

“The way this town hall came about is that I was at a community meeting and I was bragging about how great our superintendent was, and they asked, ‘When is she coming out to the Valley?’” said board member Monica Ratliff, who represents the area and moderated the town hall. “I said I would see what I could do, and then I thought, ‘That’s a lame answer, I’m going to make it happen.’”

Flyers and posters were in English, Armenian and Spanish.

And so she did, and it may well become a model for more town halls for the superintendent, and a way to respond to parents directly with their issues. Both King and Ratliff were delighted with the response and turnout for the two-and-a-half-hour question-answer session, which began with informal schmoozing outside where community members were served apples, bananas, coffeecake, coffee and water with cucumbers. District Northeast Superintendent Byron Maltez, District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian and many staff members from various LA Unified departments were in attendance in case parents had specific concerns about certain schools. Attendees were handed informational brochures and given sheets to write down questions which would get answered by email or telephone if they weren’t answered at the meeting. Ratliff said the answers would also be posted on her LAUSD website.

The charter school issue that has been so divisive in the community seemed to be on a lot of people’s minds. One Spanish-speaking parent was concerned that charter schools did not follow certain laws and were not properly monitored, to which King explained how the district monitors all independent and affiliated charter schools and offers recommendations and guidance if there are violations or complaints.

Sarah Angel, managing director of regional advocacy for the California Charter Schools Association, said, “Charter school leaders have been very public about seeking opportunities to share best practices with the district and learn from successful district schools, so Superintendent King’s comments are a great sign of hope. The charter community remains eager to work with Superintendent King to implement concrete policies that will make collaboration a reality.”

Angel added, “We all want an end to the divisive rhetoric, including the parents who just want the opportunity to choose the school that best fits their children’s needs. Many of those parents attended today’s event and they emphasized that the issue is not charter schools versus traditional schools — the issue is how do we work together to improve all public schools for our students? Pacoima is a great example of a community that has rallied behind its public schools, both charter and traditional, thanks in part to board member Ratliff’s thoughtful leadership. The rest of LA can certainly learn from that community’s collaboration and unity.”

Great Public Schools Now, an Eli Broad-affiliated nonprofit focused on accelerating the growth of high-quality LA public schools including charters, emailed a statement after King’s remarks. The group’s plan was denounced in a unanimous vote in January by the LA Unified school board one day after King was named superintendent.

“We applaud Superintendent Michelle King’s remarks during [Tuesday’s] town hall, particularly her plan to bring all types of schools together to share best practices. We share her desire to identify what’s working best to educate our students and help ensure every child has access to that high-quality public education,” the email stated. “We share Superintendent King’s perspective that all students, whether they attend district or charter schools, are LAUSD students. We know that working together we can accomplish much more than working at odds, and we are eager to do our part to ensure every student in Los Angeles gets a high-quality education.”

The morning started off with the middle school cadets marching in with the U.S. and California flags and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Then the Pacoima Singers from the Television, Theatre and Performing Arts Magnet on campus performed a few timely numbers, especially one dealing with a faux election, as it was Super Tuesday.

Among the issues that came up was from a distressed father who said his daughter was wearing long sleeves to hide the fact that she was cutting herself, and he then discovered her friends were doing the same.

King responded, “We are aware that children cutting themselves is a growing issue and we are going to start a campaign of awareness, showing where it comes from and what it means. I also want the training to speak to the whole cyber, flash chat and social media issue and all that they’ve got going on and look for training so that we as parents know what to do, and what to look for.”

One parent asked why bad teachers are not fired and whether the teachers union was to blame. King answered, “We don’t want to fire folks, period. We hope to train teachers and get them to perform at a high level,” she said. If that doesn’t work, they’re fired. “Every single board meeting we dismiss teachers and other employees who do not fulfill their jobs to the best of their ability.”

A mother from Colfax Charter Elementary School complained that other districts start school after Labor Day and wondered why the district spends $1.4 million in taxpayer money to run air conditioners in order to hold classes in August. King laid some of the blame on the Board of Education supervisors because her office suggested a three-year calendar, but they only approved it for one year and are looking into the issue.

King said the district had a study for nearly nine months asking for input and said in her more than three decades at LA Unified, “I never saw such an action where so much input was sought trying to get information to make a decision.” She said the biggest issues about the schedule are starting school before Labor Day, having a week off for Thanksgiving and having three weeks off over winter break, as the district now has.

Breakfast was served during the town hall.

“We decided to take more time and more examination and gather more input to come up with a different recommendation,” King said.

One mother said through a Spanish translator that her 11-year-old son was shot and killed on his way to school and that she was concerned about the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries in the area.

King said, “I’m sorry for your loss, and let me say that our first priority is the safety of your children at all our schools.” She said that includes bullying and cyber-bulling.

King discussed the issues she is working on, including the budget situation, how to bring arts and music to all schools in the district, getting more parents involved in schools, and bringing back summer school not just for remediation but for students who are interested in getting ahead and becoming more prepared for college.

Michelle King was treated like a rock star.

One of the community members, North Hills West Neighborhood Council member Garry Fordyce, suggested to King that she coordinate more with the councils, which are advisory groups for the Los Angeles City Council. King said she hoped to reach out to stakeholders like the neighborhood councils more and include them in a community strategic plan.

At the end of the meeting, Ratliff said, “I’d be happy to do this all day if we could.” She said she felt the questions and reactions from the audience were very positive.

“They were clearly being honest about what is going on in our schools, and I appreciated that,” Ratliff said after the meeting.

King added, “I think some of you see the ‘I love LAUSD’ buttons we have on, and that’s what it’s about for me, it’s about being united.”

Another winner was a district performing arts school, which won the go-ahead to pursue expansion onto a long-shuttered school site in the west San Fernando Valley. But it came at the expense of a charter school’s plan to move onto that site. Read about that here.

And then there was the existential, heated debate over whether the board has moved toward an anti-charter slant, as put forth in an open letter to the district from the California Charter Schools Association, in which 23 charter operators said they see increased scrutiny of charter schools. For more on Tuesday night’s school board debate, come back to LA School Report Wednesday and we’ll tell you all about it.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Two and a half years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa left his office steering the nation’s second-largest city with a legacy of pushing the kind of changes in the school system that education reformers relish.

Trying to make good on a campaign promise to fix the city’s schools, he fought the teachers union in court to limit seniority-protected layoff policies (he won) and supported another court challenge that sought to incorporate student test scores into teacher evaluations (no clear victory yet on that one).

He successfully lobbied lawmakers to wrest control of the school district from its elected school board (the courts turned him down), aggressively expanded choices for parents, including charter schools, founded the non-profit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools to take over the city’s lowest-performing schools and raised a boatload of money to help elect reform-oriented school board members.

Since leaving office Villaraigosa, 63, who drew national attention as the city’s first modern-day Hispanic mayor, has been stumping for Hillary Clinton, teaching at USC and traveling the country giving corporate speeches. Most recently, the man who tried to remake the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District while in office has been singled out as a likely gubernatorial candidate.

In an extensive interview last week, we spoke with the former mayor about the political challenges he faced, what he told Eli Broad about his foundation’s $490 million proposal to dramatically expand charter schools (he’s for it with some caveats) and national education controversies. Take, for example, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case before the Supreme Court in which justices are weighing whether charging mandatory union dues to cover costs for activities like collective bargaining violates teachers’ free speech rights. The justices heard oral arguments in January and will have to issue a decision by the end of their term in June. If the Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs, their ruling could severely hamper a major fundraising vehicle for teachers unions across the country but also support educators who feel union leaders use their money on political causes they don’t agree with.

Here’s what Villaraigosa had to say about Friedrichs: 

I do not support the appellants in this matter. … In a democratic society, it’s critical that workers have an opportunity to organize and collectively bargain their wages, their hours, their working conditions. … I believe the agency fee issue that is particularly in question is one that is very important. Unions have a duty (to provide) fair representation. I worked for them for eight years. They are, by law, required to represent people, even if they are not union members. I think it’s important that those non-union members pay their dues so that they can be represented fairly. I do not support the plaintiffs in that matter at all. … In fact, I am vehemently against it. … At the same time I am vehemently against the status quo where African-American children and English language learners are relegated to the bottom. … We have to stand up for these kids too. You can be pro-union while at the same time stand up for the civil rights of these kids.

On the Great Public Schools Now initiative, a $490 million proposal by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and other advocates to increase charter schools, a plan Villaraigosa said he is heavily involved with.

Well, I’ve already said I’m open to providing parents and particularly parents of failing and low-performing schools with better options. I support charters, successful charters. But I have also said that I believe that we should include a broader range of schools including traditional public schools that want to set a higher standard. … So what I said to Eli and them is I could support expanding charters, even dramatically. But that effort should be open to a much broader cross section of models (such as) traditional public schools (and) hybrids like my own, not just charter. … I think initially there were some who thought it should just be charters, but I think they have been convinced that in order to be successful we have to work together. We have to collaborate with the union, with parents, with charters (and) traditional public schools to improve the quality of education now in (Los Angeles) Unified. And we can only do that together.

On the perception that education reform is often implemented top-down and engineered by an elite group:

As a general proposition there is no question that most of what’s put forth as public policy priorities and the changes that emanate from them … come from the top down. Historically, that’s true. Actually, I think, with respect to the (education reform) effort, what distinguishes it is that it is more focused on parent empowerment and involvement. They have often been, particularly poor parents, missing in the equation. They have not been given their due as stakeholder. They are the ultimate consumer. … This notion that we drop off our kids and aren’t responsible for their education is misguided and a recipe for failure. We have got to include parents. We have got to engage them.

On what would need to happen politically and policy-wise to improve Los Angeles schools:

I think the Partnership Schools is the model. I think we’ve got to set higher standards. We’ve got to focus on teacher training and (select) principals, who as a first priority are instructional leaders, who are collaborative with parents and teachers. … I think at some point we are going to need more resources, but as I said to many people, “Before the public will give you more resources … they’ve got to see that you are doing more with the money you got.”

On his nonprofit, the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools:

If we were a school district we would be as large as Santa Monica-Malibu (Unified School District). It’s the largest turnaround effort in the country (and) these are traditional public schools. I think some of the elements of success we have (are) we hire educational leaders with a track record of turning failing schools into successful ones. (We hire) people who set high standards for the kids and people who understand that it’s important to collaborate with both parents and teachers while at the same time putting the interest of kids first. …When we started out there was a 44 percent graduation rate (at Los Angeles Unified). By the time I left there was a 72 percent graduation rate. … I’m very proud of what we did. We set a higher bar. … We’ve got to continue. We can’t rest on our laurels. … We should have (a) 100 percent graduation rate for virtually every one of those kids.

Does he have any regrets about the way he handled education issues in the city: 

I initially felt that we needed someone (to be held) accountable for success in our schools. And I do not believe that seven people, a (school) board and less than 10 percent of the (city’s) voters is the best mechanism for accountability and responsibility. I thought that as mayor, the buck should stop with me. I was willing to partner with the school district to improve our schools. Obviously, I was successful in getting the legislature to approve that … and give the mayor a role in LA. But in the end the courts … overturned that legislation so I had to go to a Plan B. Plan B was to help elect a group of school board members that would be more cooperative and set higher standards and give parents more choices. … That was such a radical paradigm shift that it created a furor and a level of conflict that was never my intention to create.

Was he surprised by the pushback he received in response to part of his education agenda:

Yeah, remember I worked for the teachers union. I believe in unions. I am unabashedly a progressive. I didn’t understand why there would be so much pushback. My schools were union, but I also believed in parental choice and, particularly for kids who were in low-performing to failing schools, I believe their parents had a right to a choice and that they had a right to go to a school where their kids could succeed. I was surprised at the pushback.

Why he was willing to engage in political fights over education issues: 

My only motivation was fighting for the civil rights of poor kids. I tell people it’s really simple. I recognize the historical nature of our election, the first (Hispanic to become mayor) in 133 years. I felt that the role of the first is not to bang on your chest and say how great I am. The role of the first is to acknowledge that you are here on the shoulders of others and to open up the door for the rest. I thought the only way you could do that is through education. I don’t think anyone was looking to engage in the kind of … conflict we had for eight years. … I moved ahead (be)cause I believe this issue is the most important issue facing the state and the nation. When you look at the Black Lives Matter movement, and you look at the growing poverty in California and America, you got to ask yourself why. The answer is simple: Too many of our kids aren’t going to graduate from high school and go to college. Communities of color, oftentimes, more of them are going to penal institutes than institutions of higher learning. I just don’t believe that that’s a paradigm that can work for us.

On whether the union was his biggest obstacle to bringing about more change in Los Angeles schools:

I always tell people, it was a city and a state that refused to invest in these kids. … Money does matter. We have failed as a society to make investments in these people, to create a safety net for them, and we wonder why there are so many disaffected people, angry with their circumstances. They have lost hope. I think it’s incumbent on all of us. It wasn’t just the unions. We all say we want better schools, but we haven’t wanted to invest in them in the way that we should.

Who do you listen to on education issues: 

Well, historically it was Ramon Cortines, John Deasy, Marshall Tuck (and) Joan Sullivan … but also parents (and) teachers. I don’t think we can listen to one stakeholder group to the detriment of the rest. Teachers and the unions are important, so are parents. I think the community overall is important.

When will you decide on running for governor:

I would just say that sooner rather than later…I don’t want to talk too much about (the race for) governor.

What advice would you give students about their education: 

I’d give it to the parents. I’d say, “Put your children in the best school you can.”

This article was produced in partnership with The74Million.org.

Daniel Cruz and Malia Sandoval, both 10, wait to speak.

The LA Unified school board this week awarded, renewed or revised requests from 10 charter schools, and two applications for new schools were rejected. Some of the approvals came with specific warnings by board members to shape up.

The charter approvals came at the same meeting that the board unanimously condemned the Eli Broad-affiliated group, Great Public Schools Now, and approved another resolution requiring stringent transparency requirements for charter schools.

Charter petitions and renewals are routine at LAUSD school board meetings. Even so, 50 or more families often line up as early as daybreak to get into the school board meeting to vouch for their charter schools. Most votes are unanimous because state law provides stringent reasons for denying them.

At this week’s meeting, fifth graders Malia Sandoval and Daniel Cruz, both 10, waited more than six hours to speak about their Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts. “I love all subjects and the classes have us interact with each other,” said Malia. “My favorite was making shadow puppets.”

In the case of Los Feliz charter, board member Mónica Ratliff pointed out a lack of diversity in the racial mix of the students. She also said many students in her district would be interested in the unique arts program at the school.

“Our job is to push for diversity,” Ratliff said. “It’s more than just white people who like art. We have a lot of artist in Pacoima, we have a lot of artist in Sylmar.”

The district’s charter school division director, José Cole-Gutiérrez, said the school came close to being denied renewal because of its lack of ethnic diversity, but he noted improvement, an observation that helped sway a vote to approve. ”They have made outreach efforts, and they are making progress,” he said.

Los Feliz Charter School has only 35 of 505 students coming from the local area, and 56 percent are white. Board member Ref Rodriguez said the school’s arts education is “phenomenal” and convinced other board members that the school was aiming for greater diversity.

The material revision and renewal for the Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts were approved, with the only dissent coming from board president Steve Zimmer. But board member Scott Schmerelson shook his finger at the crowd from the school and said, “You need to fix a few things.”

Two charter petitions were denied for LA’s Promise Charter Middle School and High School. The CEO and president of LA’s Promise, Veronica Melvin, said her schools have been around for 15 years and have an 80 percent graduation rate and 90 percent of the graduates going on to colleges. She said she found it “frustrating” working with the district’s charter division and that it “created a story to support their negative findings.”

After some parents and teachers spoke in favor of LA’s Promise, former school board member David Tokofsky suggested that the school board set out “more precise granular definitions” to mark charter school success.

“It would be very helpful for the board to define the granular of what is a sound educational program and fiscal issues,” he said.

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Leaders of LAUSD unions unite against charter plan

Leaders of the nine unions that represent teaches, administrators and other staffers at LAUSD stood before the district board today to express a united front against the Broad foundation plan to create more charter schools in the district.

Flanked at the podium by the union leaders, Juan Flecha, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), told the board, “All of us and our respective unions see this single passion for public education and commitment for the district.” He expressed disappointment that school board member Scott Schmerelson‘s proposal against the Broad plan had been postponed until January in deference to more time needed to continue the search for the new superintendent.

Flecha said the union leaders stand in “support of the motion and it is important for the incoming superintendent to know where we stand, and we look forward to have the board pass it.” He added that he saluted Schmerelson’s braveness to bring the issue before the board.

Schmerelson issued a statement only hours before the school board meeting saying that “I remain extremely concerned about the issues outlined in the revised resolution, Excellent Public Education for Every Student, and I am grateful for all the input I have received about the future of our public schools.”

Flecha also took the time to salute outgoing superintendent Ramon Cortines, saying, “I want to salute and thank Ramon Cortines and honor him. His efforts have been heroic and his ability to listen and act accordingly is admirable.”

UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl, who represents the teachers, also said he was disappointed that the Schmerelson proposal was delayed and suggested that it would be beneficial for the new superintendent to hear the debate. He called for teachers to write the school board members directly about successful programs and projects at their schools, and come to the meeting today to tell their stories.

“We don’t think the resolution had been a distraction; it would have provided a roadmap to the new superintendent.” he said. “We will remain resolute, we were disappointed about the delay.” He pointed out that they had a meeting with teachers yesterday to figure out how to highlight traditional public school’s successes.

The appearance of the union leaders represented another challenge to the Broad-affiliated group now spearheading the charter expansion, Great Public Schools Now. They provided the board additional political cover to oppose the plan, as Schmerelson’s resolution seeks. UTLA, in particular, has been especially aggressive in fighting the plan, even though the board has limited legal authority to deny viable charter applications.

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Parents, teachers and school administrators from Larchmont Charter School in West Hollywood are protesting a cell phone tower proposed for a church bell tower next to the campus, with a large turnout expected at a public hearing at 6 p.m. tomorrow at the West Hollywood Library.

The independent charter school is overseen by LAUSD but is not on LA Unified property. The district has had a policy against installing cell phone towers on school property since 2009.

“LAUSD can’t help us, but we are concerned for our children’s safety,” said Daisy Gardner. “Most of the civilized world bans cell phone towers and the science shows that it can harm children. Do we want to have less safety standards than Russia?”

Gardner said she is concerned for her 7-year-old going to the school and her 4-year-old, who is about to start the charter school, which has four different campuses. The Fairfax campus in West Hollywood is next door to St. Ambrose Catholic Church, where Verizon wants to add a cell phone tower to help with reception. It is also where the youngest students of Larchmont Charter attend.

Gardner lives in Studio City, where the community fought cell towers at Beeman Park last year, causing the company to back away from installing them around the playing fields. Although some studies about the dangers of cell phone radiation are mixed, parents are concerned particularly about the younger children who have softer and more vulnerable skulls.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles issued a statement saying that no final decision has been made about the tower. It says, “The proposal is in preliminary stages and has yet to be finalized or approved. The public hearing process will start soon and provide a forum for community members to share their opinion.”

Last night, the Larchmont Charter school voted for the first time to oppose the cell tower. Parents and administrators plan to make statements at the public hearing.

LA Unified addressed its concerns in 2009 but in 2013 reevaluated the wireless Internet connectivity being installed at the schools to see if they were violating their own board policies and exposing children to excessive radiation. The report concluded with a requirement for a lower emission limit.

The parents and neighbors of Larchmont Charter have an online petition with more than 700 names. Many of the signers echoed comments made by Natasha Ulrich, who lives in the neighborhood and said, “I’m a mother with two small children under the age of 5 years old. I live less then a block away and absolutely this tower should not be near us nor on the same lot as the school due to health risks.”

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Eli Broad

Steve Zimmer, president of the LA Unified school board, said today that plans by Eli Broad and other philanthropists to expand the number of charter schools in the district represents “a strategy to bring down LAUSD that leaves 250,000 kids vulnerable to damage.”

A draft report of the plan appears show how the organizations involved would be creating the equivalent of a parallel school district, one with a defined goal of serving half the number of students attending LA Unified schools within eight years.

The “Great Public Schools Now Initiative” says the expansion would cost nearly half a billion dollars by 2023, through 260 new charter schools to serve an additional 130,000 students “most in need — low-income students of color.” Currently, about 151,000 students now attend charters in LA Unified, which has more charter schools, 264, than any school district in the country.

The 54-page report, dated “June 2015,” omits the names of authors or sponsoring organizations. But Eli Broad’s name appears at the end of a cover letter accompanying the report that makes a case for charter schools as “the greatest hope for students in L.A.” And alluding to the number of students on waiting lists to get into existing charters, now about 42,000, the need for more charters, he says, is urgent.

“We are committed to closing the waitlist and ensuring that every family in L.A. has access to a high-quality public school,” Broad writes. “Such dramatic charter school growth would address the needs of families who have been underserved by public schools for years, if not generations.”

He also argues that, “The stakes are extraordinarily high. In all our years working to improve public schools, we have never been so optimistic about a strategy that we believe has the potential to dramatically change not only the lives of thousands of students but also the paradigm of public education in this country.”

But Zimmer characterized the plan as a destructive one that would ignore the needs of thousands of other children “living in isolation, segregation and extreme poverty.”

“This is not an all-kids plan or an all-kids strategy,” he told LA School Report. “It’s very explicitly a some-kids strategy, a strategy that some kids will have a better education at a publicly-funded school that assumes that other kids will be injured by that opportunity. It’s not appropriate in terms of what the conversation should be in Los Angeles. The conversation should be better public education options and quality public schools for all kids, not some kids.”

He added, “To submit a business plan that focuses on market share is tantamount to commodifying our children.”

A spokeswoman for the Broad Foundation did not respond to numerous messages, seeking comment.

The draft report, a copy of which was given to LA School Report, represents the most comprehensive accounting so far of what the organizers intend to do, provided they can raise the considerable funds necessary. Broad says in his letter that $490 million “in new philanthropy” is necessary.

A full list of who is involved in the effort remains a mystery. So far, officials have acknowledged only the involvement of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, along with the W.M. Keck and Walton Family Foundations — all leading players in educational reform efforts around the country. People familiar with the plans say the effort also involves more than a dozen other groups as well as wealthy individuals, some of them from Los Angeles.

The report says the Broad and Walton foundations are the initial funders for the effort.

The rationale for the expansion effort is based on the report’s assertions that charters do a better job of educating children than traditional public schools. Citing data from the California Charter Schools Association, the authors argue that charter students generally score better on statewide tests and have higher graduation rates even though it has widely been demonstrated that not all charter schools out-perform all traditional schools.

In building its case, the report is highly critical of LA Unified, the second-largest school district in the country, and its ability to provide quality education to young people in the city.

“Los Angeles has struggled mightily to educate its K-12 students, mirroring the challenges faced by many American cities,” the authors write, adding, “The achievement of students attending LAUSD schools is poor.”

It goes on to say that the Great Public Schools Now Initiative would serve as a model for other large urban districts so that “governors, mayors and other leaders across the country can point to Los Angeles as a city where a coordinate set of important investments significantly improved opportunities for students, families and the city.”

Even before details of the initiative were made known, powerful forces within LA Unified are already mounting efforts against the expansion. Among the opposition leaders is the LA teachers union, UTLA, which has fought long and hard against charters for years, arguing that they siphon off public money from traditional schools, attract a high percentage of higher-performing students and operate without the same scrutiny required of public schools.

UTLA, like its sister unions across the country, also oppose charters because their teachers are generally not union members.

Just two days ago, as the new Broad Museum opened downtown, UTLA teachers staged a protest rally against the charter expansion plans at the museum, aiming much of their invective at Broad.

Zimmer acknowledged that the foundations’ plans have opened a new front in public education wars that have roiled LA Unified and other large districts for years. This one, he said, would bring before the board a sharp focus on issues of choice and equality.

“The board,” he said, “has many strategies, tools and existing structures to raise questions about how quickly this could happen,” he said, without identifying them.

Besides the union and possible board opposition, the expansion effort faces several other major challenges, as well, which the report describes in detail.

First among them is finding suitable facilities for the new schools. Many charters have struggled to find adequate space, leading to neighborhood fights with public schools who share space with charters under the state’s co-location regulations. The report notes that in Los Angeles “available and useable real estate is scarce and expensive.”

Next, the authors acknowledge that the sources of “effective teachers and school leaders” are insufficient to meet the need of the expansion plans at a time the number of California teacher preparation programs is declining and a prime source of the charters for new teachers  — Teach for America — is producing fewer candidates.

The report also says the search for quality teachers will be hampered by UTLA’s new labor contract with the district that provides teachers a 10 percent salary increase over the next few years.

As a third factor, the report says the effort can only succeed through an strategy of finding quality charter operators, pointing out that the state charter association has taken steps in recent years to reduce the number of “under-performing” charters  and “growth for growth’s sake” is not the aim.

A final challenge is raising money. The report says the initial support for the plan from the Broad and Walton foundations “should help to catalyze support from other philanthropic sources.” It mentions no other groups who have made contributions.

The report lists 21 foundations and 35 wealthy individuals as potential investors — all of them worth at least $1.2 billion and many of the individuals familiar names, including Elon Musk, David Geffen, Sumner Redstone, Ed Roski and Steven Spielberg.

Source: CCSA

Students from LA Unified’s independent charter schools outperformed their counterparts at traditional schools on the recent Smarter Balanced standardized tests in the number meeting and exceeding standards, according to a new analysis by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

The charter group found that the charter students scored nine percentage points higher in English language arts but only four percentage points higher in math.

The new analysis differs from a previous one by CCSA, in that it removes LA Unified’s 53 affiliated charters from the comparison, as the state does. Affiliated charters are district schools that operate with most of the same rules as regulations that govern traditional schools but with greater autonomy over spending decisions. Their teachers are union members.

The district’s 211 independent charters are publicly-funded schools run by outside groups who have even more autonomy, and in most cases, their teachers are not union members.

Students from affiliated charters accounted for only 22,750 of the district’s 267,228 students — about 8.5 percent — who took the tests, but they tend to skew the comparison because their racial and economic demographics do not match up with the district averages. They tend to have about half as many children from families living in poverty, with dozens of the schools located in more affluent neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley.

Including their scores with those from traditional district schools reduces the difference between independent charters to only a few percentage points.

By removing them from consideration, the demographics of traditional schools and independent charters match up more closely. According to the CCSA analysis, LA Unified’s affiliated charters have 47 percent white students, 30 percent Latino and 7 percent black, compared with 7, 74 and 13 for independent charters and 7, 77 and 9 for traditional schools.

“The main point is that autonomous charters, with nearly identical demographics, outperform traditional schools on both subjects,” the CCSA said in an email.

The demographic differences are also noteworthy due to a very large achievement gap that black and Latino students showed on the tests compared with their white counterparts. Also affiliated charters tend to have fewer English-language learners, 7 percent, compared with 22 percent for traditional schools and 19 percent for independents. English learners also showed a significant achievement gap.

The CCSA also pointed out that affiliated charters have 35 percent economically disadvantaged students, while traditional schools have 83 percent and independent charters have 82 percent.

Cynthia Lim, LA Unified’s executive director of Office of Data and Accountability, declined to comment on the charter group’s numbers, saying, “Our analysis is currently under review by the Superintendent.”

The relevance of these scores as they relates to charter schools is sure to be a hot topic for discussion in the coming months, considering the announcement recently from group of powerful foundations that are planning a major expansion of independent charters in LA Unified.

The teachers union, UTLA, is leading a fight against the expansion even though the foundations have resisted providing any information about their intensions.