Five independent public charter schools were denied Tuesday night by the LA Unified school board.

The board granted one petition of the nine schools on the special agenda that had been recommended for denial. Another school will likely keep its charter under a last-minute deal, and two were petitions withdrawn.

Here is the action Tuesday night. Come back to LA School Report on Wednesday for a full report.

• El Camino Real Charter High School — The charter will remain, as long as a last-minute deal is ratified next week by the charter’s board. In it, Executive Director David Fehte will resign and four members of the governing board will step down. This is after the district staff had recommended taking the second step toward revoking the school’s charter. The last-minute deal was worked out with the involvement of UTLA, the LA teachers union.

• WISH — The petition was withdrawn prior to the meeting after issues were “remedied” over the weekend, and the petition will instead come before the board in November.

• Citizens of the World — Citizens of the World 3’s petition was granted to expand the elementary school to serve grades 6-8. The organization withdrew its request to open a new school, Citizens of the World Westside, which would have served 740 students in grades TK-6. District staff recommended against both petitions.

• Celerity — Both petitions were denied based on concerns about transparency of governance. Celerity Dyad and Celerity Troika will lose their charters at the end of the school year unless they appeal to the county. This followed the staff recommendations, and the board and staff acknowledged that the schools had a strong academic record.

• Magnolia — The three schools were not renewed, for procedural and accountability issues that district staff deemed not yet cured. The schools can appeal to the county and then to the state. The schools can continue to operate through that process and remain on co-located campuses. The schools’ strong academic record was noted by the staff.

*This article has been updated to clarify the board’s action on Citizens of the World schools.

By Brenda Gazzar

The governing board of El Camino Real Charter High School revised its fiscal policies Wednesday night in its latest effort to placate Los Angeles Unified School District concerns about liberal credit-card spending by school administrators and inadequate board oversight.

The meeting of the El Camino Real Alliance board, which took place in a mostly full auditorium at the Woodland Hills school, was held two days before El Camino’s deadline to respond to LAUSD’s “notice of violations” that was unanimously approved by the district’s Board of Education last month.

The notice, which alleged “fiscal mismanagement” and open-meetings violations, is the first of three steps to potentially revoking the school’s charter. El Camino officials have denied any wrongdoing.

Wednesday’s vote marks the third time the El Camino board has updated its fiscal policies and procedures since L.A. Unified issued a warning to the school, which converted to an independent charter in 2011, last October. The board was also slated to discuss possible employee “discipline/dismissal/release” in closed session Wednesday night, a continuation of a discussion started at an urgent meeting held Friday, said Jonathan Wasser, the board’s president.

To read the full article, click here. 

El Camino Real Charter High has back-to-school night this week.

An emergency meeting has been called for Friday morning by the El Camino Real Alliance Board to discuss an internal investigation and the paperwork left to satisfy an LA Unified inquiry. On the agenda is “public employee discipline/ dismissal/ release” in closed session.

Meanwhile, the El Camino Real Charter High School already sent new documentation to LA Unified to answer questions of their Notice of Violation which could lead to the district taking back the independent charter school. The school plans to give more documentation before the Sept. 23 deadline next week.

Before Friday’s meeting was announced, Marshall Mayotte, the school’s chief business officer, said Wednesday that the board has been trying to schedule a special meeting since LA Unified issued the Notice of Violation at last month’s LA Unified school board meeting. The El Camino board is made up of three teachers, a parent, a classified employee representative and two community representatives.

“We are not sure what they will discuss, but it could have to do with the Oracle report,” Mayotte said.

The school spent $20,000 to hire Oracle Investigations Group earlier in the summer when LA Unified charter division officials were asking about what they called “seemingly exorbitant personal and/or improper expenses.” It is possible that some results of the investigation will be revealed on Friday, and it’s possible the board could decide whether or not the results could be made public. But it’s also possible the report may fall into attorney/client privilege and never be released to the public.

Marshall Mayotte, El Camino Real Charter chief business officer.

These next few days are important to the future of the academically successful charter school. Thursday is back-to-school night, which will not be a forum for anyone to address the issues before the LA school board, according to ‎the school’s Director of Marketing Melanie Horton. Parents have been notified by a weekly newsletter and staff is informed regularly at staff meetings about the progress of the school’s response.

Friday’s emergency meeting will be followed next Wednesday by the El Camino regularly scheduled board meeting. El Camino isn’t expected to be scheduled for discussion at Tuesday’s LA Unified school board meeting, but issues or updates could be brought up while other charter school issues are addressed. Then, Sept. 23 is the school’s final deadline to answer all of the district’s questions.

“We feel confident that all of the questions will be answered to their satisfaction and that we will be able to put this behind us,” Horton said.

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer asked for a detailed list of the inaccuracies that the school saw in the violation notice presented by the district’s charter division. After three weeks, they presented 40 of them to Zimmer. Some of those included business expenses such an Academic Decathlon coach who traveled to Sacramento to receive a proclamation by the state Senate. Others include charges made on Mayotte’s card by other employees.

Some of the teachers were concerned about the school’s response to the district and wanted to be involved in writing the response, but Horton said, “This requires going over a lot of accounting records handled by the business office so teachers are not involved in the response.”

“It’s really a busy time for our teachers and they are making every effort to stay focused,” Horton said. “There was some fear about what it all means, and is the school going to close tomorrow, but we have had staff meetings and explained the process and let everyone know it is our top priority to put out a quality document and provide a satisfactory response that will end this process.”

El Camino officials, who claim there is no wrongdoing in their financial reports, provided a lot of details and evidence that they provided previously, but did so once again “just to prove our point,” Horton said.

The LA Unified staff noted that no one at the school has been disciplined or replaced for violations, and Horton said the El Camino Real Alliance Board “made it clear that they won’t take any action until they study the results of the Oracle report and have all the information and allow due process to all of our employees.”

Mayotte said the school didn’t have a chance to respond fast enough before the Notice of Violation was made public.

This is the first of three steps the district would have to take before the school reverts from a charter to a district school. The school converted to an independent charter in 2011 and receives $32 million a year in government funding.

Patrick O’Brien, a parent of two children who just started at El Camino, sent a detailed letter to Zimmer protesting the unfairness of the scrutiny that the school faces. An attorney who has conducted investigations himself, O’Brien wrote: “I don’t at all disagree with the reasonableness of your use of a school-owned vehicle to head out for dinner and a nightcap when you’ve put in a long day of school business, and I don’t really think the law is intending to prohibit that. But the apparent approach of the Notice of Violation report applied to your use of a school vehicle seems to reach the same unproductive result.”

Eric Choi graduated from El Camino and has taught there for more than a dozen years and coaches two teams.

If El Camino Real Charter High School is stripped of its independent charter status, its teachers would lose their higher salaries and seniority and would have to start all over as new LA Unified employees, teachers have been told by union representatives.

About 30 of the more than 150 teachers from the west San Fernando Valley high school attended a Friday afternoon information session given by UTLA to explain how the union will try to help the teachers as much as possible. El Camino is one of a handful of charters whose teachers have union contracts.

The facts were grim.

“It was as bad as we could have heard,” said Eric Choi, an English teacher at the school. “If we go back to the district, we will start from Year 1.”

The district last week issued a Notice of Violations and took the first steps toward revoking the school’s charter and returning it to traditional school status. LA Unified oversees independent charter schools and asked for clarifications on some business expenses to determine if they were irregular or excessive.

If the district revokes the independent charter status, the teachers will lose their higher pay grade. The teachers make about 7 percent more than the contracts that UTLA negotiated for the traditional school district. That’s an average salary scale of $90,000 per teacher last year.

El Camino student council.

A number of the teachers at the school have not only worked there before it became a charter five years ago but also graduated from the high school and live in the neighborhood. And many of them take on extracurricular duties in clubs, drama and sports after school.

Choi is one of them. An English teacher and head coach for girls soccer and boys golf, he graduated from the high school in 1997, lives in the west San Fernando Valley and began teaching there about a dozen years ago when it was a traditional district school.

“We all love this school and we are all bummed about what could be the worst-case scenario,” Choi said. “The teachers are all a bit scared.”

El Camino students welcome friends back to school.

For Choi, the pay cut would mean a loss of $14,000 a year, and he said many others stand to lose more. They would also lose the lifetime health benefits now provided by the school, and they would have to work up to such benefits under more restrictive policies now in use at the district.

He would also lose five years off his accumulation toward his retirement, for the five years or work at a charter school.

Choi had hoped that the union’s message would be more encouraging.

UTLA representative Hong Bui, who is a union charter organizer, spoke to the teachers last week and offered to be available to them for ongoing questions. It is unusual for charter schools to have union representation, and some teachers are concerned that UTLA works against groups that are trying to form more charters.

“We pay UTLA out of our dues, and still they are out there speaking against charters,” Choi said. “We are a charter school and we are UTLA.”

Teacher and former graduate Lori Chandler said she has devoted 33 years to the school. She was one of the people who spoke at last Tuesday’s public hearing at the district to express her concern. She, like Choi, remembers when teachers didn’t like the idea of becoming a charter, but now it is “the very best thing that happened to El Camino Real.” The teachers say the school district is trying to take back a successful charter school.

The teachers are hoping to have more input into answering the administration’s questions, which must be done by Sept. 23.

“As teachers we want to be involved in the situation,” Choi said. “Everyone thought the issues were answered.”

Choi said he remembered when the school had only about $100,000 to spend because it wasn’t a Title 1 school. “It’s not fair that other schools get millions of dollars and our school doesn’t just because the parents make more money in the area,” Choi said.

Meanwhile, the teachers are trying to keep students out of the fray.

“The kids don’t really know much about it,” Choi said. “And the teachers just want the best for the children. Most of us are optimistic that everything will be answered and it will all go back to normal.”

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.”

The Highlander Road Elementary School campus in West Hills has been closed since 1982 and fallen into disrepair.

LA Unified Local District Northwest Superintendent Vivian Ekchian faced an angry and skeptical group of West Hills residents Thursday evening as she presented the district’s plan to redevelop a long-shuttered and dilapidated elementary school into a high school serving 500 students.

The anger stemmed from the school board’s sudden cancellation last month of a plan that had been in development for more than a year by an independent charter school, El Camino Real High School, to rebuild Highlander into a K-8 campus.

Ekchian spoke before the West Hills Neighborhood Council and outlined the emerging plan to convert the closed Highlander Road Elementary School campus into the Hale Academy for Visual and Performing Arts. The new campus would serve as an extension to Hale Charter Academy, a nearby district middle school.

Several residents said they felt that El Camino had been open, responsive and transparent with them through the long process, while the district’s moves came without any community outreach efforts. Residents also said they are opposed to a high school being located at the campus due to the increased traffic and other problems high school students bring to a residential neighborhood.

“El Camino Real has been very straightforward with us. They have been having meetings, they have included us in their plans and this has been going on for about a year and a half,” Matthew Moon, who lives across the street from Highlander, said at the meeting. “And then out of the blue, it is scrapped and this new project is put in. We don’t know anything about it. All we have in conjecture. So if you are going to come to the homeowners and ask for their support, you better bring your A game, because El Camino had their A game.”

Ekchian told the council and audience that until the LA Unified school board approved the Hale plan at last month’s board meeting, she was not able to do any outreach. Several times she promised that her appearance was the beginning of an effort to engage the community.

“There is no way I would make a decision about a school in West Hills without communicating with all of you, who are on the neighborhood council,” she said. “But prior to the resolution going to the board, it would have been highly inappropriate to come to all of you and begin to distribute information that my board had not even seen or agreed to look into. So I apologize if some of you have been offended by thinking that this came to you as a surprise.”

At the meeting, held at de Toledo High School, a private Jewish high school in West Hills, Ekchian outlined her vision for the new school, which is to focus on the arts, and said that a main reason for the plan is to help the district increase enrollment. LA Unified has suffered a huge drop in enrollment over the last decade, in part due to students leaving in droves for charter schools, one of several factors contributing to the district facing giant budget deficits in the coming years.

The Highlander campus has been closed since 1982 and is among three other campuses in the west San Fernando Valley that have been vacant for decades after the area suffered a loss of enrollment in the early 1980s. With the exception of a private school renting the property for a few years in the 1990s, the Highlander campus has remained closed and fallen into disrepair.

The campus is located in a quiet residential neighborhood, and the homes surrounding it are primarily well-groomed, single-family, suburban residences. Two neighborhood residents, Faye Barta and Mark Berens, told LA School Report of the numerous problems the campus has caused, including junk and debris filling the property, graffiti, homeless people camping out there and teenagers frequently jumping the fences to skateboard on the property and the roof.

“It is a blight. It is an eyesore. It is a shuttered school, and it is one that reflects little to no maintenance and a fair amount of neglect. I use the term ‘dilapidated,’ which is probably a very good descriptor,” Berens said.

During a recent visit to the property, teenagers were skateboarding in the parking lot while another group of teenagers in two parked cars played music and smoked cigarettes. Piles of dry leaves and pine needles that appear to have built up over several years fill the parking lot and along the fence line, creating a potential fire hazard. Junk was strewn about, including a discarded couch.

After district officials said repeatedly over the last few years that LA Unified had no money to rebuild the schools nor any enrollment need in the area for them, the district put out a request for proposal for the four closed sites in 2014, and El Camino was later named the preferred developer of three of them: Highlander, Oso and Platt Ranch.

Since 2014, El Camino officials have held a series of outreach meetings and adjusted their site plans in response to community concerns, according to neighbors. Barta estimated that approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of neighborhood residents supported the El Camino plan.

In November during a vote to approve El Camino’s charter applications for Oso and Highlander, district officials announced a sudden reversal. Then-Superintendent Ramon Cortines announced a desire to build a magnet school at the Oso campus, and board member Scott Schmerelson announced that Ekchian was developing a plan for Highlander, although the details, including Hale’s involvement, were not released at the time.

Based on the new developments, the board rejected El Camino’s application for Oso at the November meeting and postponed the Highlander vote until more information on the plan could be presented. In February, the board officially rejected El Camino’s Highlander application and approved $500,000 for Ekchian and the district to develop the Hale plan. (Click here to learn more about the back story of El Camino’s attempt to redevelop the sites and the board’s sudden reversal.)

Previous to the West Hills meeting, Berens told LA School Report he found the district lacked transparency, and he repeated similar comments to Ekchian at the meeting.

“If I were to compare the El Camino process to the LAUSD process, then I’ve got a highly transparent, engaged and collaborative relationship with El Camino, and I don’t have any of those attributes with LAUSD,” Berens said. “I have concerns that the voice of the neighborhood will be lost in this process if the same lack of transparency that was applied to this decision that they made is applied to the exploratory process and then whatever comes of that.”

The LA Unified plan to develop Highlander by spending $50 million of bond money comes as the district is in need of up to $60 billion to fix and modernize its existing schools, while only $7.8 billion in bond funds is available. Other than the new plans at Highlander and Oso, the district has no current plans to build any new schools, and LA Unified Chief Facilities Executive Mark Hovatter told the board last month that in order to free up money for the new schools, other renovation projects would have to be cancelled.

Barta told LA School Report that she does not believe the district has the money to develop the sites, and she repeated those comments at the meeting.

“They don’t have the money to do it. So they are wasting the $500,000 and they are wasting everybody’s time and they are letting that school sit and rot,” she said.

During the West Hills meeting, the roughly 25 members of the council did not express much skepticism or ask hard questions of Ekchian. But several members of the audience, which also numbered about 25, did ask tough questions, and after Ekchian’s presentation, about a dozen local residents joined her in the hallway to ask more questions. Many of the residents were animated and angry.

Ekchian promised she would be responsive the community’s concerns and that the process would be transparent.

“I’m not going to do this without you, because it will be a failure upon arrival if we don’t have the community on board,” she said.

Some residents said they were skeptical of the timing, that just at the moment El Camino’s plan was set to be voted on by the board after a year and a half of planning, the district announced its own plan after 33 years of letting the property sit empty.

“Vivian, what the community is aware of is, if you have had this thought for nine months or six months or however long, why did you string along El Camino?” asked resident Bunny Field. “Why did you string along our community? Why did you put it on hold at the vote in November? Why weren’t you forthcoming with El Camino and all of their efforts and say, ‘You know what, it’s never going to happen, take your marbles and go home’? We feel that this is a fraud that has been perpetrated on all of us.”

Other residents then chimed in with questions, and Ekchian did not directly respond to Field’s question. But during the meeting she had said that despite all appearances it was essentially a coincidence that she came forward with her plan — which she said had been in the works for some time with the Hale staff — just as El Camino’s was set to be voted on.

“There is nothing that we have concocted. I could have brought to you 500 students and teachers and parents who would argue with you that it wasn’t concocted,” Ekchian said.

Barta asked why the district wasn’t interested in using the Platt Ranch site because it is closer to Hale than Highlander. El Camino’s plan for Platt was to develop it into a science center that would not house any full-time students.

“In response to Platt, it is also a part of El Camino’s application process. … I can’t negotiate who gets which school,” Ekchian said. But Highlander was also part of El Camino’s plan, and Ekchian did not address the discrepancy.

LA School Report asked about the $60 billion needed to fix the district’s current campuses. If the reason to expand Hale is to increase enrollment, doesn’t the district’s other neglected campuses, which include failing air conditioners and an array of other shortfalls, also turn off prospective parents and students?

“To me this is an investment. It is not a waste of money nor is it taking away from maintenance and operations, because I have a lot of other schools that require curbside appeal and maintenance. But one does not compete with the other,” she said, despite the fact that Hovatter told the board the new Valley schools would require the cancellation of renovation projects. “Who is to say we can’t find partners? I found with the Oso plans foundations that would invest in that, so if we think narrow and only think about this is what we have right here, we will never be globally competitive.”

Ekchian also told the residents that if the current plan for Highlander did not come to fruition she would advocate for the district to at least tear down the existing structures. But if the district were to only tear down the buildings and not build new ones, it would need to use general funds out of its operational budget and not bond funds. Ekchian told LA School Report she would still advocate to tear the buildings down even if it meant using general funds to do so.

Vivian Ekchian, Local District Northwest superintendent

In dual votes Tuesday about a long-vacant school in the west San Fernando Valley, the LA Unified school board halted a charter school that was previously proposed for the site and instead allowed a district school to pursue it.

The school board gave a unanimous thumbs-up for Hale Charter Academy to pursue a proposal to develop a performing arts school on the campus of Highlander Elementary School in West Hills. Hale Charter Academy, named after the astronomer George Ellery Hale, is now 6th through 8th grades in Woodland Hills. The expansion, which would be called Hale Charter Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, would go through high school graduation and continue into two college level grades (grade 14), allowing for an Associated Arts degree.

Then, in a cliff-hanger vote an hour later, the board voted 4-3 against allowing an El Camino Real Alliance charter school to be built at the site after the charter held some meetings with the Woodland Hills community over the past year to replace Highlander, which had been vacant for three decades.

It’s an area of the LAUSD district where students have few options to attend a public high school and many move to private schools or charter schools, according to district staff.

“I am puzzled with the misperceptions about this plan, but I’m thrilled that we will be able to expand the arts and other wonderful programs already going on at Hale,” said Vivian Ekchian, the local district northwest superintendent for LAUSD, after the first vote was taken authorizing an estimated $500,000 for Hale to pursue the expansion. She was instrumental in clearing up some of the issues to the school board about the district school’s expansion. She said that the plan for expanding into the space was discussed for nearly a decade.

The Highlander school site was a rundown encampment for homeless for decades, and El Camino Real Alliance offered to build a charter school there for 550 students in grades kindergarten through 8th. But that plan was delayed in October when school board member Scott Schmerelson pointed out that there were plans for the same site for a public school that would keep the students under the LAUSD funding umbrella.

It would also ensure that the teachers at the school would fall under the LA Unified union contract. In an unusual move, four labor leaders on Tuesday spoke in favor of the Hale Charter expansion during their own reports to the board.

“It is a well-rounded curriculum that serves the community needs, we urge you support it,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. After the vote, he said he was happy with the decision.

The president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, Juan Flecha, who represents principals and administrators, said he previously worked in the area and said, “This is a definite need, and it’s an innovative and exciting project forward.”

Jackie Keen, a community volunteer on the El Camino board and resident near the Highlander site, said, “You can approve the charter school and let’s work together.” She, and the representatives of El Camino, were voted down.

The vote wasn’t for a complete commitment to the charter school at the site, but when the board was asked to approve it, only Monica Garcia, Ref Rodriguez and Monica Ratliff voted for it. Ultimately, school board president Steve Zimmer, George McKenna, Richard Vladovic and Schmerelson voted against it.

“I’m concerned about the process,” Garcia said before the vote. “In October, the response around what to do with Highlander was mostly that we were told we do not have money to operate that site. What’s not here is how we’re going to pay for this.”

LAUSD facilities director Mark Hovatter said that no promises were made to the charter school applicant and made it clear that its proposal could be canceled at any time. He did also point out that if a school is planned for the site, its funding will have to come from some other projects that are already planned by the district.

Ratliff said, “I’m a fan of being as transparent and straightforward as possible,” but she said before the vote against the charter organization, “I would wonder why they would ever want to work with us again.”

Students, parents and teachers from Hale spoke about its successes, as did new principal Chris Perdigao, where there are 2,000 6th through 8th graders. He said the school has a 400-pupil waiting list for their performing arts program. Teachers talked about the school’s jazz band, mariachi band, cheerleaders and dance and acting performances and how they are sharing their work with the community.

Hale teacher Hank Amigo talked about writing plays for students and raising money from the community to help with programs. He recently had 563 students audition for 22 spots in a show. He now also teaches an early morning class where he said 150 students come to dance.

Rodriguez, who previously co-founded charter schools, said, “I’m impressed that the community is galvanized for the plan. I’m concerned where the money is going to come from.”

Zimmer added, “We need to grow enrollment in the district and this is a creative way, and it can permeate the entire district.”

*UPDATED

LA Unified is exploring building two new schools in the western San Fernando Valley on the sites of two campuses that have been vacant for decades at a potential cost of tens of millions.

The move comes as the district has no current plans for any new schools and would need to spend an estimated $40 billion to repair and modernize its existing campuses with only $7.8 billion in available construction bond authority.

The idea of building schools on the sites is a complete reversal of plans that had been in place for a year and a half and after district officials had repeatedly said for years there is no money or need for new schools in the area.

El Camino Real Charter School High School, which has been named by the district as the preferred developer of the sites, has plans to raise its own money to develop them into K-8 schools along with using bond funds set aside specifically for charter school development. LA Unified would then lease the land to El Camino long term, for up to 40 years.

The district has been under increased pressure from Valley leaders and residents to do something with the sites, which have been shuttered for decades, leading neighbors to say they have become eyesores that attract vagrants. Previous statements by district officials have estimated it would cost $20 million per site to build a new school.

LA Unified Chief Facilities Executive Mark Hovatter said the buildings are no longer suitable even to be repaired.

“The facilities have not been occupied as schools for an extended period of time,” he told LA School Report. “We believe that the cost to renovate them would exceed the useful value and it would be cost-effective to tear them down and build new, if there were going to be a school built there.”

At the November board meeting, Superintendent Ramon Cortines announced plans to develop one site — Oso — into a magnet school for autistic students that would be connected with nearby Taft High School, and board member Scott Schmerelson said the district is working on a plan for a second site — Highlander — although he provided no details on what kind of school it would be.

Based on the sudden announcements, the board denied El Camino’s charter application for the Oso site and postponed the vote on Highlander. Although El Camino officials had been told of the Oso plan in advance of the meeting, El Camino’s director of marketing, Melanie Horton, said the Highlander announcement came as a complete surprise.

“We put a lot of time and effort into writing the charter and conducting community outreach over the last year, more than a year now, so it’s frustrating to hear that there might be other potential plans for the sties,” Horton said.

Horton said development of a third site, Platt Ranch, would be revisited by El Camino if its Highlander application is denied since Platt was to be a K-12 STEM center without any permanent students on site.

“Obviously if our charter for Highlander is also denied then we wouldn’t have a K-12 operation so we wouldn’t have a need for a K-12 science center. So we would have to revisit that following board action on Highlander,” Horton said.

Schmerelson did not respond to an email asking what the district would do about Platt Ranch if El Camino abandoned its development plans there.

Board member Mónica García, who voted in favor of El Camino’s application for Oso, expressed some skepticism about the need for new Valley schools during the debates about Oso and Highlander at the November meeting.

“We’ve been told for three years there is no money for this project. Isn’t that why we did the (request for proposal)?” she said. “Are we redefining need? Are we just being super creative in how we are determining how we can use those dollars?”

García also joked about not being interested in sending more resources to the Valley, a reference to the fact that she represents some neighborhoods in East LA that are economically challenged while the West Valley is one of the more affluent areas of the district. Her comments are a preview of the opposition the district and board could face if it moves forward to develop the sites.

Now in the final stages of a $25.3 billion bond program that financed 130 new schools since 2003, LA Unified has no active plans to construct any new schools. The final and 131st school as part of that bond project is currently being built, Hovatter said.

The district also has limited resources to pay for any new schools. Of the $7.8 billion in available construction bond authority, Hovatter said the district has already commited $2 billion to $2.5 billion of it.

Hovatter would not speculate on the cost of developing Oso and Highlander.

“There are a lot of things that have to happen now and we are extremely preliminary,” he said. “It is essentially a concept study at this point. No one has made any decisions. There’s not an approved project and there’s not an approved program that’s established. So before that happens we first have to define what the program would be.”

* Updated to include clarification that Horton said El Camino would revisit the Platt plan, not necessarily abandon the idea of developing the site.

The sites are located in the western San Fernando Valley, one of them in Zimmer’s district, and were shuttered decades ago due to declining enrollment in the area. With the district unwilling to part with the valuable land but without any specific need for them, the buildings have become crumbling eyesores.

LA Unified still has no enrollment need for new traditional schools in the area, giving it few options for sites that many view as a major blight on the western Valley community.

Issam Dahdul, facilities development manager for LA Unified, said selling the land isn’t an option because the district may have a future need for new schools. Also, he explained, state law says before a district can sell land, it must first offer it to charter school operators.

Starting a year and half ago, district leaders, including former school board member Tamar Galatzan, voiced support of El Camino’s plan to develop the sites into charter schools. The plan called for El Camino to refurbish or rebuild the sites and sign a long-term lease with the district. Thirty-five percent of the building costs would be put up by the district from bond money set aside specifically for charter school development, Dahdul said.

El Camino leaders started holding community meetings in 2014 to present their plans to convert the sites — Highlander, Platt Ranch and Oso Grande elementary schools — into feeder elementary or middle schools for El Camino, which converted from a traditional district school into a charter in 2011 through a majority vote of the staff.

Zimmer expressed general support at the time, but much has changed since then, including his election to board president in July. Last Tuesday, El Camino’s leadership approached the board for approval to convert to a charter management organization (CMO), which essentially opens the possibility for the school to operate more than the one charter. The vote was 6-1, with Zimmer dissenting.

His vote appeared to be a compete reversal of his original support for El Camino’s plan. In 2014, he told LA School Report that Oso was in “horrific disrepair,” and that “it’s one of these things where the district has not fulfilled its obligation to a community in a very sad and obvious way.”

He also said he would prefer that the three campuses — and a fourth being developed by a different charter group — be rehabilitated as traditional district schools or as a district-run educational facility, but that “this process is the next best option.”

Zimmer now objects to El Camino’s becoming a CMO. While the conversion of El Camino to a charter school came about from school staff approval, the same people have no say in converting to a CMO. Such a conversation rarely occurs, Zimmer said, and he could only recall only one other instance in LA Unified.

“My assumption was that they would create a new CMO that would do the management work as a separate entity, which they didn’t,” he said in an interview this week. “I assumed they would come with an actual charter for these closed campuses.”

Earlier this year, El Camino tried to take over nearby Canoga Park High School, but district staff found numerous problems with the plan, and the application was withdrawn before it came before the board.

“Let me just be very straightforward: My thinking changed profoundly during the effort to take over Canoga Park,” Zimmer said.

El Camino’s five-year charter renewal is due to come before the board next month, when the school’s leadership may begin presenting part of its plan to develop the closed sites.

It is unclear how continued opposition from Zimmer might affect the effort. Four votes against the renewal would close the school.

Zimmer’s skepticism isn’t the only hurdle El Camino faces. Some neighbors of the schools objected strongly to the plan during community meetings in 2014, citing increased traffic, among other issues.

As it stands, the current plan is to develop Highlander and Oso into K-8 schools and develop Platt into a science and math center that would house no permanent students, said Melanie Horton, El Camino’s director of marketing. As to Zimmer’s potential “no” vote and skeptical comments he made at the board meeting, Horton said, “I have no comment on Mr. Zimmer’s comments.”

Zimmer said although he opposed the CMO move by El Camino, he will examine the plans for the redevelopment of the sites on their own merits and has not yet made up his mind.

“The one thing I will say about Oso is, before I leave this job, I want to make sure we have finally done right by the community and removed that blight and hopefully have an educational use on that property,” he said.

When asked why no one else on the board shared his skepticism and voted with him over El Camino’s request to become a CMO, Zimmer said, “Oh, I wonder about things like that all the time.”

As if winning the City Section wrestling championship at 195 pounds wasn’t enough, an El Camino Real Charter High School senior will have his short film about the emotional and physical stress of the sport screened at no less than the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

Rory McClellan’s film “Pride,” shot during this past wrestling season, blurs the lines between fiction and reality and will be screened during the non-awards portion of the festival, which begins in two days, the Los Angeles Times reported. It was produced as a part of El Camino Real’s Careers in Entertainment Academy. Another student in the program, Noah Kentis, will also have his film “Delirium” shown.

McClennan is fresh off the triumph of winning his weight class the citywide tournament in February.

“[The film] entails the personal struggles of what a high school wrestler has to go through, from losing a match, cutting his hair, giving up sleep at night, overcoming that first fall and getting back on his feet,” McClellan told the Times.

Check out the film film attached above.

It’s the fifth year in a row that LA Unified schools have swept the state, national and online academic decathlon events, the district announced in a press release.

“ECR’s win affirms Los Angeles Unified as the nation’s Acadeca powerhouse,” school board member Tamar Galatzan, whose District 3 included the two schools, said in a statement. “I’m so proud of our students, and so grateful to their coaches and families for their hard work and sacrifice.”

El Camino won the overall national championship last year and in 2012. This year’s team members are Mara Abesamis, Jose Apolaya, Alexis Brito, Sarah Kwon, Tracy Levick, Noah Millman, Dmytro Pasikov, Shoshana Reic, Ethan Waldman and coach Stephanie Franklin.

“Not only did Ethan have the highest individual score in the 10-year history of the online competition, ECR had the highest team score,” Cliff Ker, the academic decathlon’s coordinator, said in a statement. “These are remarkable decathletes and an extraordinary coach who deserve all the praise they can get.”

West Athens Elementary surprised with new music room

As part of Teacher Appreciation Week, a teacher at West Athens Elementary hailed for the many hours he volunteers teaching music was surprised by his principal with a brand new music room and instruments.

Aaron Stanley spends countless hours after school giving his students free lessons, according to a LAUSD press release.

“Mr. Stanley does this on his own time without compensation, teaching music to the kids,” principal Ruth Castillo said in a statement. “He plants the seed in their head to possibly continue playing, and children have. They come back and assist with his guitar lessons and with the other kids. I see a maturity level when the children go from fourth grade into fifth grade. It transforms them. Music through the arts can help student achievement and rounds them out as an individual.”

The surprise was made possible by the “Helpful Honda” team, which was approached by Castillo and her assistant principal, Jeffrey Clay, to make Stanely a candidate for its Teacher Appreciation Week gift, according to the district. Helpful Honda reps worked over the weekend to clear out a storage room, fix it up and stock it with new instruments as part of a $5,000 renovation.

“I never did this to be recognized,” Stanely said in a statement, “but it’s always nice when people recognize what’s going on.”

LAUSD all-girls school idea getting nation attention

Whether for good reasons (see above) or bad (think iPads), LAUSD seems to have a knack for turning heads on the national stage pretty frequently. Most recently, the school board’s decision to create an all-girls school focused on STEM skills seems to be turning them — in both directions — as some are applauding the idea, and others are asking tough questions about it.

Today, NBC News posted a story an in-depth and thorough examination of the topic. Whether you are applauding the idea or have questions of your own, it is worth a read.

A total of 38 teams from Southern California middle schools and high schools converged on Reseda High School on Saturday for the VEX Victory in the Valley Robotics Competition.

The teams compromised both students from public high schools, private high schools and private clubs, and the winners moved on to the state tournament with the right to advance to the VEX Robotics Competition World Championship to be held in Louisville in April.

The competition was sponsored by VEX Robotics and the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation and featured robots built by students with the VEX Robotics Design System.

A team from LA Unified’s El Camino Real Charter High School was a co-winner of the competition, along with a team from Servite High School in Orange County.

Check out the video above for highlights of the action.

John Marshall High School

LA Unified has claimed a second victory in a major academic competition.

Marshall High School won the 2014 U.S. Academic Decathlon Online competition, scoring 39,461 out of a possible 48,000 points. The win follows El Camino Real Charter High School’s victory in the 2014 U.S. Academic Decathlon championship last month.

Marshall represented California in the Large Schools Division made up of nine schools.

“I am so proud of our Marshall High School Academic Decathlon team for winning the online competition,” said LA Unified board Member Bennett Kayser, whose district includes the school. “Congrats to the Aca-Deca team for again putting the spotlight on academic excellence at LAUSD.”

Members of Marshall’s winning team under Coach Larry Welch were Aninda Bhowmick, Kimiyo Bremer, Alexander Guillen, Kenneth Huh, Ha Min Ko, John Lascano, Wen Lee,  Alayna Myrick and Marvin Paparisto.

The winning team
Photo: LA Daily News

And now for the celebration.

In honor of its seventh national Academic Decathlon championship, El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills is holding a rally tomorrow morning for a team that won the title last Saturday in Honolulu.

Neighboring Granada Hills Charter High School, which had won the championship in each of the previous three years, placed second. The field included 50 other teams from the U.S., the United Kingdom and China

El Camino’s nine-member team — eight seniors and one junior — worked every day for nearly a year to prepare for the two-day event, earning 52,601 of 60,000 points in a competition with World War I as this year’s theme. Granada Hills scored 52,392 points.

Senior Justin Chau, whose excels in the subject of music, told LA School Report that the experience was hard but worth it.

“It’s been incredible, it feels so amazing to know that all of our work has paid off,” he said. “We’ve all had our mental breakdowns. We’ve all had those days where we were just so tired and stressed but we made it through.”

Coach Stephanie Franklin said the key to the team’s success was working together on every aspect of the competition, from lesson plans to dealing with the mental strain of preparation.

“They understand that pressure is part of it,” she said. “We talk our way through it. We talk about what they’re afraid of. We rehearse the things that they’re concerned about. We make sure they know they’re not alone and that they’re going to be supported.”

Franklin said the most important part for her was letting the kids know how valuable they are.

“My kids know I’m proud of them no matter what they do,” she said. “They know to expect my support in everything they do.”

And that strong support turned into a winning combination with team members answering questions in 10 different categories, ranging from science to literature to Word War I, earning a 15th national championship for an LA Unified school.

But it’s not only about winning, Chau said. It was the experience he had with coach Franklin will stay with him throughout his lifetime.

“Our coach is absolutely amazing,” he said. “I’ve never met such a great leader and I can honestly say she’s changed my life.”

Chau’s teammates were Jose Apolaya, Rohan Boone, Melissa Cheng, Neelem Sheikh, Brandon Slater, Thasneem Syed, Sandra Vadhin and Eric Yun.