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 Another school will likely keep its charter under a last-minute deal, and two were petitions withdrawn.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• WISH — The petition was withdrawn prior to the meeting after issues were “remedied” over the weekend, and the petition will instead come before the board in November.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.

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. 

*UPDATED

While LA Unified is firmly committed to online credit recovery classes as a means to the district’s newly stated top goal — 100 percent graduation — Los Angeles charter school operators use these classes much more sparingly, as their graduation rates tend to be far ahead of the district’s.

At three of the city’s largest charter management organizations, no more than 5 percent of students have taken an online credit recovery course. LA Unified has yet to report how many of their 2016 graduates used credit recovery to gain a diploma. A $15-million credit recovery program took LA Unified’s projected graduation rate from 49 percent last fall to an estimated 75 percent this summer, a record. The official graduation rate will be reported later this fall.

The three CMO’s also have more stringent policies for testing out of a course. LA Unified allows students to test out of much of a course if they can score 60 percent on a pre-test. The charters set that bar higher or don’t allow testing out.

“I strongly support the use of online learning, not just for credit recovery but for enrichment and for broadening the curriculum. That said, across all of our schools, only 1.3 percent of the course credits are provided through online learning,” said Caprice Young, who is CEO of Magnolia Public Schools and also a former LA Unified school board president.

Last school year, as part of a $15 million program, LA Unified for the first time implemented a major push for online credit recovery courses across the district. The move was in response to a looming graduation crisis, as the school board raised the bar for graduation requirements and installed a series of courses called “A through G.” Students would need to take and pass the A-G courses before the end of their senior year, and if they earned all C grades or above would be eligible for admittance into California’s public universities, although the district allows D’s for graduation.

The district was unprepared for the raised bar, so part way through the fall of 2015 the credit recovery program kicked in. This year the courses were offered as soon as school started.

The dramatic increase in the graduation rate has turned some heads in the academic world, with some experts questioning the validity and rigor of online credit recovery courses. In that program, students without enough credits to graduate retake classes during free periods, after school, on Saturdays and during the winter break. The courses are online and have either a teacher running the class along with a computer program, known as blended learning, or an all-online course known as virtual learning. If students prove proficiency with the material they receive a C grade at LA Unified. A’s and B’s aren’t an option.

But LA Unified is not alone in using online credit recovery programs despite their controversial nature. Most large districts across the country also use them, as do at least three of the largest CMOs authorized by LA Unified, although each one appears to use them on a far more limited basis. And each CMO — PUC Schools, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and Magnolia Public Schools — had a different set of guidelines regarding if students could pre-test out of some course material.

PUC SCHOOLS

“We most definitely use it very sparingly. It is not our goal to use it in place of intervention and support,” said Leslie Chang, superintendent of leadership and instruction for PUC Schools. PUC operates 16 schools, of which six are high schools.

Chang said PUC used Apex Learning for its online programs, which is one of two companies that LA Unified also uses. Chang estimated that 4 or 5 percent of PUC graduates last year had taken at least one online course and said it was most commonly used when a student transferred into a PUC school already behind in credits.

“If the child is behind and we determine that based on their current schedule they may need to take an additional course, then we will offer that option to them. We want to make sure it is not the go-to for everything that is required for graduation for our schools. Typically, a select few number of students will use the blended learning approach,” Chang said.

PUC also has different guidelines on pre-testing. While LA Unified allows students to skip chapters or units if they pass at least 60 percent of a pre-test, PUC sets the pre-test bar at 70 percent.

“I think there is a place for online learning in the academic experience of every student in today’s day and age. I do not think it can replace the power and effectiveness of a teacher, and if a student is behind in credits or content, then blended learning can have a very powerful effect,” Chang said. “But they really do have to be in tandem with teacher support and done very strategically and intentionally.”

MAGNOLIA

Young said she thought that LA Unified’s approach to online credit recovery will become more balanced in time. Magnolia operates eight independent charter schools within LA Unified, and four of them are schools for grades 6-12.

“I think LAUSD is going in the right direction, and the next step is to get more nuanced in how they use it. This is pretty common when school districts implement online learning. The first year it may be overused or underused or inappropriately used, but as they get more nuanced about how to match the right kids with the right courses and the right content it makes sense,” Young said.

Magnolia has an 80 percent pre-test bar and they use Fuel Education for their programs. Young estimated that 5 percent of Magnolia’s graduates last year took an online credit recovery course.

“And that’s because kids don’t always start with us in 6th grade, they may come to us in their junior year and they are already behind and we have to help them catch up, and sometimes that requires them to essentially take more than six courses in the semester. Adding more online can catch them up,” Young said.

Young also defended the idea of pre-testing.

“One of the things that the online learning is for is at the beginning of each unit the student can demonstrate their knowledge, and then if they can demonstrate their knowledge that they know it, there is no sense in boring the student and making them retake it,” Young said.

ALLIANCE

Perhaps the biggest reason the large CMOs use online credit recovery on a more limited basis is because they tend to be far ahead of the district in graduation rates. Magnolia’s graduation rate in 2015 was 96.4 percent. Alliance’s grad rate in 2014-15 was 95 percent, and PUC says they exceed 90 percent every year. With fewer students in danger of not graduating, fewer are obviously in need of credit recovery.

“Graduation is what we do. It’s part of our DNA. It’s what we do. And it could be what LAUSD does too and hopefully they will,” Young said.

Robert Pambello, an area superintendent for Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, said Alliance’s use is “very limited. Every student has a graduation plan, and so we track students on a regular basis for being on track for graduation, and there are very few kids that actually need the credit recovery.” Alliance is LA Unified’s largest CMO and operates 28 schools. Eighteen of them are high schools.

Pambello said less than 3 percent of Alliance’s graduates last year took an online course and that Alliance does not allow pre-testing.

“We do not have that feature. The student takes the whole course because they did not pass the course,” he said. “We don’t do pre-testing at all, they are assigned the course and they work through the course at their own pace.”

GREEN DOT

Not every large CMO is as centrally organized with its online curriculum as PUC, Alliance and Magnolia. Green Dot Public Schools, which manages nine high schools in Los Angeles and Inglewood, has online credit recovery programs but does not centrally track how many students are taking them. The courses are viewed no differently than its regular curriculum, according to Sean Thibault, communications director for Green Dot.

“It’s not like there is an online department or a whole team working on online programs, this is just part of what the whole curriculum team does,” he said. “Every one of the Green Dot schools in high school are offering A-G curriculum as the baseline, there is no friendlier curriculum they could do. So all the schools are doing assessments and doing what they can with proficiency and to catch some students up in the school year.”

As far as what the guidelines are, Thibault said “as a general rule, where students need that kind of option (with credit recovery) we have made it available. I don’t think that there is a model that is enforced or universal for pre-testing, but it is more school-by-school, or depending it could be course-by-course or instructor-by-instructor or student-by-student. And that’s Green Dot’s approach, to identify the student’s needs and develop the instruction they need to be successful.”

Pacific Palisades Charter High School is not a CMO but a standalone independent charter school. While it also offers credit recovery, like Green Dot it does not centrally track how many students are taking the courses. The school has been offering online credit recovery courses for five years during summer school, but this year it also began offering them throughout the school year as well. Like LA Unified and the large CMOs, the online courses are overseen by a licensed teacher.

“We do not know (how many take online credit recovery). We don’t track it in that way, because when the student passes the course, because it has a highly qualified teacher running it, it doesn’t have a separate designation,” said Jeff Hartman, director of academic planning and guidance.

Palisades does not allow for any pre-testing out of chapters or units. Randy Tenan-Snow, an English teacher at Palisades who helps oversee online credit recovery, predicted the school will be expanding its program in the coming years.

“I believe that as we gather more data and we start enrolling more students, I see that online and blended programs will be the wave of the future for most students that are trying to do credit recovery,” she said. “It is very difficult to add a class when you are already taking six classes, so to take a class online it definitely helps our community and our students. We will probably expand as we move forward.”

*UPDATED to reflect PUC operates six high schools, not four. 

As part of that agreement, Magnolia acceded to a request by the district that Magnolia not do business with Accord Institute for Education Research, a service vendor, in any of Magnolia’s eight schools within LA Unified.

Accord has complained to LA School Report that our coverage was unfair, casting Accord in a bad light. While we disagree with that interpretation, we would like to clarify the record that none of the conditions imposed on Magnolia by the court or LA Unified reflected questionable practices by Accord. We have no reason to believe Accord acted improperly in any way. Nor did any of our stories say so, which is why we refused a request from Accord to remove them.

Accord has also raised concerns about a graphic that accompanied the first story we wrote, in July of last year. It showed the Accord logo in what could be perceived as an unflattering way. Because we took artistic license with the logo, we believe that Accord’s request was fair, and we removed the graphic from the story.

As for Magnolia and Accord, the two companies continue to have a business relationship, including contracts for work relating to Magnolia’s math contests, science programs and professional learning community work at schools in San Diego, Santa Ana and Santa Clara.

LA Unified, in a response to a question from LA School Report, said “to our knowledge” Accord has no other contracts with charter schools in the district.

The largest credit agency in the country lifted Magnolia’s rating to BB and revised its outlook from “negative” to “stable.”

“This is wonderful news for us that means we’ll be able to serve more students and get access to more resources,” Caprice Young, CEO of Magnolia, told LA School Report. Young took over the troubled network of schools in January.

Magnolia operates eight schools in LA Unified and another three elsewhere in California. It plans to use its new borrowing power to buy facilities for schools that currently lease space from local school districts and to expand existing campuses.

“In the immediate future we want to get into facilities that will allow all of our existing schools to grow above 400 students,” Young said. “Because that will allow us those schools to become financially stable.”

At the top of the list for improvements are Magnolia Science Academy 1 in Reseda and another in San Diego.

“Both of those schools have long waiting lists,” Young said.

The school board voted on March 10 to renew two Magnolia charters whose renewal the members had rescinded last year as well as one charter whose renewal they had denied and to settle a lawsuit filed by Magnolia subsequent to the denials of the schools in 2014.

“I’m waiting to get my tuberculouses results,” she said, laughing on a phone call from her office. “Then I can actually set foot on a campus and be around children.”

Young, who is a divisive figure in California education politics for her strong advocacy for charter school expansion, says she’s excited about the opportunity to turn around the controversial charter school organization with 11 public charter schools serving close to 4,000 students in Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Clara and San Diego counties. She is taking the reigns from interim CEO, Murat Biyik, who held the post for less than six months.

“I’ve done this work before,” she explained, referring to her efforts that made Inner City Education Foundation Public Schools, a network of charters she’s credited with saving from imminent closure.

A financial audit by LA Unified last year concluded that Magnolia Public Schools doesn’t have the cash-flow necessary to be solvent, owing more money than it costs to continue operating all eight of its campuses within LAUSD. As a result, two schools had their charter renewal applications denied but are operating under a court injunction, while a third campus will close at the end of the school year.

Young’s response? “It’s not uncommon for charter schools that have grown a little quickly to have financial problems or organizational problems. But those are very fixable. And I’m coming in to fix that.”

Another issue that has dogged the schools’ operator in the past has been its ties to the Gulen Movement, a Turkish Islamist group that has founded schools, think tanks and media outlets around the world.

At an LA Unified board meeting in March, Inspector General Ken Bramlett confirmed claims of the association, “We have done some looking into that allegation and there is some evidence that some members of the Magnolia organization do have ties with the Gulen movement, but we have not found anything currently that would be grounds for denial.”

That’s not an issue for Young, either.

“I haven’t seen a connection but, I’m not in the habit of asking people about their religious beliefs,” she said. She acknowledges that Magnolia has “had Turkish leadership form the start” but says, “my impression of them is that they run great schools.”

And if there is a questionable relationship to Gulen, Young contends she was hired by the board, in part, “because they knew I wouldn’t allow anything to go forward that wasn’t appropriate.”

Young will leave her job as President of the National Charter Resource Center in the spring. “I’ve made several commitments that I have to see through,” she said.

But she did not specify if that included continuing to work with the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District, a tiny rural school district under fire for approving charter schools outside its borders. LA Unified is suing the l district for opening three charter schools within the LAUSD boundaries.