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. 

This is part of a series looking at the various types of schools in LA Unified. For facts, comparisons and maps of charters in LA, click here. Follow the series with magnet schools and affiliated charters.

Independent charter schools have come to often dominate the conversation surrounding LA Unified. Proponents hail them as a savior to the district; their detractors blame them for the district’s financial woes.

The California Charter Schools Act was passed in 1992, but it took more than a decade for charters to become a significant part of the district. Part of the reason is the original act only allowed for 10 schools per district, regardless of its size, and it wasn’t until 1998 that the law was amended to allow for unlimited expansion.

By the 2001-02 school year, there were only 13 independent charters authorized by the district.

“At the time I came on the board, charters were seen as kind of a novelty and a place to send your principals who were a little too creative for their own good,” said Caprice Young, who served on the LA Unified school board from 1999 to 2003 before founding the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) in 2003. Today she is CEO of Magnolia Public Schools, which operates eight independent charters authorized by LA Unified.

David Tokofsky served on the board from 1995 to 2007 and said in the early days he was a supporter of charters, but when large charter management organizations (CMOs) started to open multiple schools around the turn of the century, his opinion changed.

“Most of the people at that stage (in the ’90s) were respected LAUSD veterans. I think in the machine politics of government organizations, they were more individualistic than if you were in this guy’s machinery or that guy’s machinery. They were mavericks,” said Tokofsky, now a consultant for the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles.

“They were people who thought they knew some stuff about good schools. They knew the district well, but they felt that the standard operations systems were not necessarily maximizing creativity. That’s what the law was all about. It wasn’t about that you are free from all regulations of government.”

Irene Sumida is executive director of Fenton Charter Schools, which today has five schools in its network. When Fenton Avenue Charter converted from a traditional school to a charter in 1993, it was only the seventh charter school in the district.

“I think the school district saw us as a novelty or an experiment that might succeed, or that might not. I cannot say that I felt real support for what we were doing, and we were very much treated like outsiders,” Sumida said.

After the charter law was changed to allow for unlimited expansion, slowly more CMOs began to open multiple schools in the district, and that is when both supporters and detractors started to take notice. PUC Schools, which operates 16 schools today, opened its first school in 1999. Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, which operates 27 schools in the district, opened its first school in 2004. Magnolia Public Schools opened its first school in 2002.

In 1999, both Dorsey High School and Crenshaw High School converted to independent charters but within a few years converted back to being traditional schools.

“Partly because the whole Dorsey cluster and Crenshaw cluster gave up their charter status people kind of thought, ‘Well, maybe this charter school thing is going to stay just being a novelty.’ It really started hitting the stratosphere in 2003 to 2008,” Young said.

In 2003-04, there were 24 charters in the district. By 2007-08, there were 114.

“From ’03 to ’07 is when the expansion started, and somewhere around ’05 there grew a little more antagonism,” Tokofsky said.

In 2003, Granada Hills High School converted to an independent charter school, and Sumida said that started to turn some heads.

“Honestly, for me, when Granada Hills High School decided to become an independent charter school, I really feel that things changed, even for Fenton,” Sumida said. “I thought that there was much more pressure on us and it was just a very different climate. It just seemed to make the district more aware of what was happening, that they may lose some of their comprehensive high schools. I think it shook them up that a high-performing school like Granada was leaving them.”

Tokofsky pointed to Young and the formation of CCSA as a turning point, because the organization helped court big donors like the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation to fund CMOs.

“Caprice changed the discourse when she lost the board election and went to head up the charter association and the Walmart money came in. That’s the game changer, when it went from individual charters to multiples,” he said.

By the 2008-09 school year there were 137 independent charters with roughly 60,000 students enrolled, and the growth has continued. In the 2015-16 school year there were 221 charters authorized by LA Unified with more than 101,00 students enrolled. This school year there are 228 independent charters with more than 107,000 students — 16 percent of the district’s 665,000 total K-12 students.

• Tomorrow: Alliance College-Ready Public Schools: A replicable model or unique success?

Disclosure: LA School Report is the West Coast bureau of The74Million.org, which is funded in part by the Walton Family Foundation.

LA Unified’s district schools and independent charters enroll nearly the same percentage of students with disabilities after five years of gains by charters, a new report shows.

But cooperation between nearly 100 of LA Unified’s 221 charters and the district could slide into chaos if the LA Unified school board decides not to continue a five-year pilot program that has been credited with the enrollment increase. At least one charter leader said discontinuing the pilot could cause a chain reaction leading to the school board not approving the charters’ renewals.

The report, from LA Unified’s independent monitor of its special education programs, shows that 11.04 percent of students at independent charters are in special education — a new high — compared to 11.96 percent at district schools. The statistics were celebrated in a press release this week from the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA). However, the release does not mention that the district still has a much larger number of special education students with moderate or severe disabilities, who are more costly to educate.

The number of students with moderate to severe disabilities at the nearly 100 charters has increased from 1.2 percent in 2010-11 to 2.1 percent this past school year, while the percentage of special education students in traditional district schools with moderate to severe disabilities has risen to 4.72 percent from 3.63 percent five years ago. The district noted in an email that the percentage at traditional schools includes preschools, which charter schools do not serve, so “it is difficult to compare the district’s percentage to charters.”

Caprice Young, CEO of Magnolia Public Schools, operator of eight charters in LA Unified, said the reason for the increase is the pilot program that is up for review this fiscal year.

“The pilot has led to a lot of really great things. It has led to an increase in the quality of special education in charter schools because we have been implementing the best practices that we have been learning from each other,” said Young, a former LA Unified school board president.

In 2011, some charter operators were threatening to leave LA Unified’s Special Education Local Planning Area (SELPA) and have their special education students served by the El Dorado County Office of Education in Northern California. Under state law, multiple school districts can band together to pool money and resources to serve special education students, and some of the district’s charters believed the cost of special ed at El Dorado would be cheaper.

But then a deal was struck that persuaded the charter schools not to leave LA’s SELPA, and that deal must now be reviewed during the current fiscal year.

Under the board-approved pilot, charter schools can select one of three options for how to serve their special education students through LA Unified. In Option One, the district provides all of the staff and services for a charter school’s special education students and the charters pay all of their special education budget dollars to the district. Under Option 2, charters can select an outside provider from a list of district-approved vendors. Under Option 3, which offers the highest level of autonomy for charters, the schools pay a portion of their special education fees to the district to administer the SELPA, but the rest of the money is managed by the charter school.

A total of 123 charter schools used Option 3 for the 2015-16 school year, 90 used Option 2 and one used Option One. Nearly 100 using the high-autonomy option have informed the district they may leave its SELPA. Young said autonomy is the reason that more special education students are choosing charters because the quality of the services has improved.

According to the independent monitor’s report, special education students at charters have increased by 34 percent since 2010-11, when they made up 8.21 percent of enrollment. The report said the “continued increase in (students with disabilities) enrollment is evidence that the changes to the policies and practices for servicing (students with disabilities) have resulted in a positive outcome.”

Adding to the stakes is that the board in recent years has been hesitant to approve a charter school or a charter renewal if it is not part of the district’s SELPA, even if the school is high performing. In 2013, 20 LA Unified charter schools were part of the El Dorado SELPA, and today it is seven. If the high-autonomy schools leave the district’s SELPA, it could lead to denials by the board when they come up for their five-year renewal.

“We know how (the board) feels about El Dorado. They are no longer willing to approve charters that are no longer in their SELPA, and a couple of them have gone into El Dorado,” Young said. “And in many cases, not all cases, the school board chose not to approve schools because the case that they made was that unless (the district) was providing the special education they could not confirm that the quality of the special education was appropriate. So if they would discontinue Option 3, that would be close to 100 charters probably no longer authorized by LAUSD.”

Young added that most on both sides are happy with the high-autonomy option, but if the board were to discontinue it or alter it significantly, the charters using it would leave LA Unified’s SELPA and go to El Dorado. Young said by law a school must inform a district a year and a day in advance if they might leave the district’s SELPA, and the schools using the high-autonomy option all sent a letter to the district on June 29 informing them that they would leave if it went away.

“Everyone is really happy and no one really wants to leave, but the politics are so weird you never really know,” Young said.

The charters that are threatening to leave LA Unified’s SELPA include some of the district’s largest and highest-performing charter management organizations, including Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, KIPP Public Charter Schools, Magnolia Public Schools and PUC Schools.

Kate Dove, a special education advisor to CCSA, agreed that the high-autonomy option was a big reason for the increase in special education enrollment at charters.

“We think (high autonomy) allows charters to have more autonomy and flexibility in their special education programming. They were completely dependent on the district before, and now they have some funding where they can hire their own special ed staff, and we think that increase in infrastructure is a major contributor to the change in the enrollment,” Dove said.

Adding to uncertainty is that Sharyn Howell, executive director of the district’s Division of Special Education, retired this year and no permanent replacement has been named yet by Superintendent Michelle King. The district said she was not available to comment, and Beth Kauffman, the interim director, only answered a few basic questions via email.

The district did provide the following statement in response to questions about the renewal of the high-autonomy option and CCSA’s press release:

“Students – including those with disabilities – should have access to the many instructional choices offered within District boundaries.

“The District’s Office of Independent Monitor has reported that the special education enrollment at independent charters has continued its upward trend. This demonstrates that collaboration with LA Unified has improved policies and services for our special-education students.

“The data shows that the enrollment of students with disabilities at independent charter schools has increased to 11.04 percent, compared with 11.96 percent for traditional schools. While this progress is welcome, it is worth noting that LA Unified continues to serve the overwhelming majority of severely disabled students.

“We will continue to ensure that we provide students with disabilities with a free, appropriate public education.”

Former superintendent Ramon Cortines with 20th Street families over the summer. (Photo by Omar Calvillo.)

LA Unified has rejected a parent petition to take over a failing elementary school in South Central Los Angeles, reversing district policy and essentially asserting that no California school qualifies under the state “parent trigger” law.

Parents of 20th Street Elementary School were informed of the district’s rejection in a letter late Saturday, the last day the district had to notify the parents. They had hoped to be able to take over the school and possibly create a charter through the state’s Parent Empowerment Act, or parent trigger, which has been used twice to help under-performing LA Unified schools.

“We are so disappointed, all the parents are really upset,” said Guadalupe Aragon, one of the parents who started the petition drive. “We just want our children to have the same opportunities to get to college that other children in the district have, and this was our only way to do it. We are very angry.”

After two years of trying to get changes at the school, and dropping the threatened trigger by the parents at least once, the 20th Street Parents Union filed again last month to take over the school with 57 percent of the families (the parents of 342 students) signing a petition.

“This is shameful,” said former California state senator Gloria Romero, who authored the law, after reading the district’s letter. “They have a brand new superintendent and she is harking to the past, in a sense. Where is the leadership? It’s supposed to be a new game with LA being unified. This does not bode well for the spirit of the law.”

The law was passed in 2010 and used at two LA Unified schools in 2013. That year, statewide tests were suspended in anticipation of computerized tests based on the Common Core State Standards. The following year former Superintendent John Deasy argued that the district was exempt, for one year, from the parent trigger by a federal waiver from the federal No Child Left Behind law that allowed LA Unified and seven other California school districts to create their own metrics for academic performance in the temporary absence of statewide standards.

One of the first things interim Superintendent Ramon Cortines did when he took over was to reverse Deasy’s edict and lift the ban on parent triggers. King worked under both Deasy and Cortines.

King and her staff met with parents only five days before the letter was sent out rejecting their petition. The meeting last Monday, held at district headquarters, was called by King and also attended by representatives of Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, which was brought in by the district to see if it might be a solution for the parents.

Joan Sullivan, CEO for Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, said she was invited to attend the meeting at the district to offer some sort of solution for 20th Street. Partnership was offering a hybrid of a charter and traditional school as an option, which they have done in 17 schools over the past eight years in the South Central LA area.

“Parents are asking for a choice, and we could offer a good option,” said Sullivan said. “We take on whole schools and support them with the current student body and most of the staff and use the parent involvement and voice.”

At last week’s meeting, the district “never told us that our school may not be eligible or that there was any problem with our petition,” Aragon said.

In a statement Monday to LA School Report, King said, “Some parents were dissatisfied with our efforts and filed petitions under the Parent Empowerment Act to change the governance structure of 20th Street Elementary School. Because the law doesn’t apply to this situation, we returned the petitions. However, we remain committed to working with parents to address all concerns in a timely manner.”

The letter to the parents, written by LAUSD General Counsel David Holmquist, gave four reasons why the parents’ petition was denied, including some of the same reasoning that Deasy used.

20th Street Parents Union meeting.

First, the letter said the school doesn’t have an Academic Performance Index under 800 as the law requires. That’s not true, according to Gabe Rose of Parent Revolution, a group that helps parents organize and take over a failing campus. He said the API score of the school is based on the past three years of scores, and 20th Street has a score of 765. There is no API score for this school year because the state suspension of testing.

Second, the letter notes that a school must fail to show Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), but the district letter states that 20th Street has in fact improved, based on state data released in December. However, the AYP no longer measures test scores, because of the suspension in testing, but simply measures the attendance of students during the test. LA Unified released data showing that 20th Street has 96.29 percent attendance compared to 95 percent for the district.

The Anaheim School District used a similar argument regarding AYP to to fight a parent trigger at Palm Lane Elementary School, but it was rejected by a judge last summer. The district has appealed the ruling.

Third, the district said that a federal waiver granted to the California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, exempted the district and “relieved LAUSD from the requirements of taking improvement actions,” according to the letter by Holmquist. But the U.S. Department of Education, which granted the waiver and was asked to clarify its conditions, stated at the time that neither the federal government nor any other entity can override a state law.

In its fourth reason for rejecting the 20th Street petition, LA Unified said the parents didn’t state whether they wanted to have a solution within the district or create an independent charter school. But according to the state trigger law, parents’ petitions are not required to state their preferences. Aragon and other parents said they always had the intention of entertaining charter management organizations to help their school.

One of those is Magnolia Public Schools, led by CEO Caprice Young, a former LA Unified school board member. She said, “We absolutely want to support the families of 20th Street Elementary School, and we know we have a phenomenal program that can help them. We like working with proactive families, and this shows that LAUSD does not want parents to be involved, otherwise they would support this.”

Young said she remembered when Cortines reversed Deasy’s initial stance against the triggers, and said, “LAUSD has a moral obligation to uphold this.”

Romero said the district shouldn’t waste taxpayer money fighting parents on this issue, especially since she created the law to avoid just that. The law firm of Kirkland & Ellis has offered to handle the legal issues for parent triggers at no cost throughout the state.

Mark Holscher, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, said his firm is helping the parents in communities that couldn’t afford legal representation on their own. He said he cannot discuss any plans yet that the 20th Street parents may have about pursing a case against LA Unified but did say the situation is very similar to the one they represented in Anaheim.

“The LA Unified School District sent our clients an email on Saturday and said they were inspired by the courageous conversations of the parent leaders, but those are empty words,” Holscher said. “What they’ve done is refuse to even consider the parent trigger law. Parents tried to work with the district on the last petition. LAUSD didn’t honor what they said they would do. They can’t ignore the Parent Empowerment Act.”

In response, King said, “LA Unified is committed to partnering with all parents of 20th Street Elementary School to provide our students with high quality learning opportunities and to help them succeed. We are continuing to strengthen instructional supports and enhance social-emotional and parent-engagement programs that are essential to the school community. We look forward to working with the school community to build a unified vision that addresses the needs of all students.”

Romero said the district must do more. “Ultimately, the parents and schools will prevail,” Romero said. “LAUSD needs to read the law. It would be in the best interest of reform for LA Unified to accept the parent petition and not fight the parents. The sacrifice is that they are losing more time for kids. It’s shameful.”

This article has been corrected to note the year that John Deasy requested the one-year exemption, which was in 2013, and that the Anaheim School District had used the AYP argument in its rejection of the Palm Lane trigger, not the CORE waiver argument. 

Applications for six new charter schools will come before the LA Unified school board at its meeting tomorrow, the biggest wave of requests since the Broad Foundation proposed a plan to expand the number of charter schools in LAUSD.

In addition, eight other charters are seeking renewals.

While the board will not vote on the new applications for at least another month, any public discussion on the requests could provide valuable insights into the board’s latest sentiments on charter expansion by an outside group and on more charters, in general. LA Unified is already home to more independent charter schools than any school district in the country.

The plan for rapid expansion in LA Unified is now in the hands of a Broad offshoot, Great Public Schools Now, which intends to raise $400 million to invest in new charters and high-performing public schools that serve low-income students.

The new charter requests come as opposition to the plan is building. The teacher’s union, UTLA, is asking members to protest at the meeting, and two anti-charter resolutions are under consideration, although in deference to the board’s need to spend more time on other issues while the superintendent search continues, they were postponed until the board’s January meeting. One seeks to oppose efforts to open charters at the expense of traditional district schools, an obvious response to GPSN; the other would create greater scrutiny of charters.

“I have no idea how the board will act,” said Caprice Young, CEO of Magnolia Public Schools, which has eight schools already in the district and is having a public hearing tomorrow to open three more. “I have kept my head down during this Broad plan so we’re not really involved in that.”

Young, who served on the school board, noted that it’s part of the responsibilities of the elected officials to make sure that new schools proposed in the district meet educational requirements. It’s also important that the rules are met evenly.

“It’s a good thing that the board looks closely when they are creating a school, and that scrutiny should be the same for all schools,” Young said, adding, “I am hoping that it will not mean that these applications will take more time. It always costs the charter schools more money the more time it takes.”

By board rules, as many as 12 public speakers can address each of the new applications. That could make for a long afternoon. But it also could open the door to telling remarks — critical or otherwise — from board members who will be facing even more applications in the years ahead if GPSN fulfills its mission.

Magnolia’s requests for for schools in the East and West San Fernando Valley and the West Adams area near downtown to supplement existing schools they have nearby. the others for Arts in Action Community Middle School and Center for Advanced Learning Middle School in south Los Angeles, a PUC International Preparatory Academy in Northeast Los Angeles and a WISH Academy High School in Westchester.

Among the schools seeking new charter petitions are two from LA’s Promise that are recommended for denial: LA’s Promise Charter High School and LA’s Promise Charter Middle School. The district’s charter school division said the proposals for the new schools had “met the needs of all students.”

* Clarifies number of schools applying for new charters. Also adds that two resolutions regarding charters were postponed until January.

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Caprice Young

Among the 43 people identified by the Los Angeles Times this week as potential candidates for LA Unified superintendent were nearly a dozen with a background in charter schools or the reform movement.

One of them was Caprice Young, a former president of the district school board, as well as a founder of charter schools, the former president of the California Charter Schools Association and the current CEO of Magnolia Public Schools.

With at least four of the current seven board members having expressed concerns about the rising tide of charters in the district, including a nearly half billion dollar plan by the Broad Foundation to double their number, was she surprised to see her name as a possible choice?

“I don’t know about surprised or not,” Young told LA School Report. “Overall I was exited about the candidates the LA Times came up with. I think there are a lot of good people on that list. I think everyone who is committed to the students of Los Angeles would be excited to be thought about in that context.”

Young said she had not been contacted by the board’s search committee about the job but didn’t think anyone would before the Nov. 10 board meeting when the results of an online survey and public forums about the search will be discussed.

The Broad plan is unpopular among board members for its potential impact to enroll half of all district students in charter schools, wiping out thousands of union jobs, draining district coffers and causing other extraordinary changes in district operations.

Young characterized the plan as not that big of a deal and said it should not be part of the discussion in a new superintendent.

“What I hope is that the school board isn’t going to make decisions on who will be the next superintendent based on if they are aligned with the Broad plan,” she said. “The real criteria should have to be if whether or not the candidate will be focused on the highest quality of education in Los Angeles, whether it is charter schools, traditional schools or magnet schools.”

She added that the Broad plan “shouldn’t be a litmus test. Frankly, a lot more than $500 million dollars has been spent in philanthropy to expand charter schools already.”

Asked whether the board might overcome hesitations to consider a candidate with a pro-charter background, Young said, “You are asking me to speculate about someone’s intentions. I have no idea.”

So does she think there’s a chance that someone like herself, former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or Kaya Henderson, the chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools and a Michelle Rhee accolyte, would be considered, as the LA Times suggested?

“I hope so,” she said.

Young said she agrees with the major decisions the board has made so far regarding the public survey, public forums and keeping candidates names private. During her years on the board, she was involved in hiring two superintendents, Ramon Cortines (in his first stint) and Roy Romer.

Young said in her experience, the decisions to not publicly identify candidates and hold open town halls where they can be grilled were good ones.

“It is important to maintain the confidentiality of any candidate that applies whose work might be compromised if their own constituents found out they were interested in another job,” Young said. “The other question is are those public dog and pony shows genuine. Mainly, those kinds of forums turn into halls packed with special interests as opposed to legitimate listening sessions.”

“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.

Caprice Young

* UPDATED

Magnolia Public Schools, which has fought bitterly with the LA Unified school board to keep several of its schools open, has turned to an old LAUSD hand to take over its leadership.

Caprice Young, a long-time education reform advocate and former school board president has been named Magnolia’s new Chief Executive Officer.

Young confirmed her appointment in a text message to LA School Report.

Young served four years on the LA Unified school board, from 1999 to 2003, and worked closely with then superintendent Roy Romer in helping the district make gains in student achievement and in launching an ambitious program of school facilities renewal. She served as board president in her last two years.

During her first year on the board, Young and her colleagues launched a complete overhaul of the district’s organizational structure.

Young plans to continuing working part-time through April in her current post as President of the National Charter Resource Center. Then, she intends to start full-time with Magnolia, which operates 11 schools across the state. Many of them have been subject to recent scrutiny over management practices.

But her resume could serve as a chronology of the education reform movement, making her an ideal choice to lead the group. After leaving the district, she founded the California Charter Schools Association and served as its first president. It has grown to become one of nation’s most powerful state associations and accelerated the growth of charter schools throughout the state.

Following that, she moved into the business of technology in education, reformists’ cause du jour these days.

Young’s name was first floated by Magnolia consultants and advisors as a possible candidate for the position in mid-December, Magnolia spokesman Mike MeCey told LA School Report.

“She is very dynamic and what she’s done is very impressive,” MeCey said, adding that Young’s history with the district will be a boon for the charter school group.

“Her experience can only improve communications between Magnolia and the board,” he said.

In late June, the school board moved to close two of the organization’s eight charter schools in LA Unified — Magnolia Science Academy 6 in Palms and Magnolia Science Academy 7 in Van Nuys — for fiscal mismanagement and a slew of other accounting irregularities. Magnolia took LA Unified to court, and a judge overturned the board’s decision ruling that the two schools could remain open under certain conditions.

One stipulated that the parent company could no longer do business for the two schools with its primary educational service vendor, a non-profit called Accord Institute for Education Research. It had to maintain a 5 percent cash reserve for each of its charter schools and cannot engage in deficit spending; and Magnolia had to provide the district with monthly updates of the the charter schools’ profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash flow and bank statements, check registers, and expense reports.

Magnolia complied but that didn’t restore the district’s faith in the groups accounting practices.

In November, the board voted unanimously to deny the renewal for Magnolia Science Academy Bell. Members rejected the school’s five-year renewal application based on a report by the district Inspector General that found the charter management group is “fiscally insolvent.”

Jerry Simmons, a lawyer representing the school, pleaded with the board to keep it open. “As of this morning, Magnolia has $9,462,000 in its bank account,” he contended.

The closure of the South LA school at the end of the school year brings the number of Magnolia campuses under the purview of LA Unified to seven.

*Clarifies timing of her move to Magnolia.