*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. 

Jacqueline Elliot

By Jacqueline Elliot, Ed.D.

When PUC Schools opened the first start-up public charter school in the San Fernando Valley in 1999, I never imagined we would be at the forefront of a movement that has grown to 274 charter schools in Los Angeles, serving over 138,000 students and thousands of students being the first in their families to graduate from university. On Saturday, these pioneering leaders will come together in Pacoima with thousands of parents and students for a triumphant celebration honoring the rich history of public education reform in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

I was inspired to start Community Charter Middle School to help solve the high dropout rate at the local high schools. Along with the 100 families from the community who desperately sought a safer, higher-achieving middle school, we created a learning environment that was small and focused on meeting every student’s needs. We were quickly successful. Our state test scores far exceeded those of the surrounding district schools within our first two years.

We’ve now grown to 16 schools throughout Los Angeles and serve more than 5,000 students. In what is perhaps the biggest validation of the work we’re doing, we see every year that many of our graduates are returning after going on to pursue a higher education, to contribute to their community in which they grew up. Some PUC alumni are returning to work at PUC and other schools in the community, helping us realize our founding mission to uplift communities. We’ve witnessed firsthand living conditions improving, crime rates dropping and families getting empowered.

PUC is proof of what real collaboration can produce. We never would have opened our doors if leaders from different parts of our education community had not stepped in at the last minute to help. When we were opening our first school in 1999, our facility was not yet ready. Los Angeles Unified gave us two days to find a temporary facility or they would not allow us to open that year. My four teachers and I were about to fall to our knees in the Cal State University Northridge quad, to beg a staff member from the dean’s office to allow us to use a few classrooms until our campus was ready. He agreed and Los Angeles Unified board member David Tokofsky secured free transportation for our 100 students to travel to the university campus for six weeks.

Today, we’re at a critical juncture. The charter movement is a significant force for change in the district. Graduation rates have increased, but too many kids are still dropping out.

Somewhere along this journey, we lost sight of the spirit of cooperation that allowed PUC to open. Superintendent Michelle King has started making significant inroads toward collaboration, most recently by hosting a “Promising Practices” forum with a series of workshops aimed at sharing best practices.

It’s time now for all educators to elevate the discussion from the type of school, be it charter, traditional or magnet, to what makes great schools. We must adopt a student-centric approach where everyone comes to the table with those innovative, scalable ideas that are good for all kids.

What if these forums happened on a monthly basis? Let’s develop formal partnerships between schools, matching up high-achieving models with those in the same neighborhoods that are still struggling, to act as mentors who share best practices.

I was touched by what the principal of nearby Sylmar High School recently told us. He held up a picture of our PUC Sylmar Education Complex to his staff and said, “See this? This is our competition.” He visited our school because he wanted to learn what we were doing to get our great results. It takes a big person to act based on one reason: what’s best for the students. And will PUC learn from him and his teachers? Absolutely.

This rich diversity of perspectives is a tremendous asset to Los Angeles Unified that we shouldn’t waste. Let’s give the students of the nation’s second-largest school district the tools to not only graduate high school but be prepared to succeed in college and life. Let’s make success through mutual respect and collaboration part of the culture of LAUSD.

The charters that started in the northeast San Fernando Valley all shared the common belief that we could do better for our students, no matter what their background. With all the northeast San Fernando Valley charter pioneers—Vaughn, Fenton, YPI, Montague and PUC—creative and aggressive reforms led to dramatic increases in student achievement.

On Saturday, when we celebrate the northeast San Fernando Valley charter schools as pioneers in the national charter school movement, we won’t just be honoring the reformers on the ground, but also the leaders at Los Angeles Unified who supported the schools from the beginning.

It behooves us to remember how it all began. Politics and egos must be cast aside, because collaboration is the only way we will herald a new era of success throughout all LAUSD schools in the years to come. Together let’s bridge past and present, and look to a future where public education is a product of our united efforts, best thinking and collective passion.

Dr. Jacqueline Elliot founded the first startup charter school in the San Fernando Valley, Community Charter Middle School, in 1999, which grew into PUC Schools. PUC serves more than 5,000 students in 16 public charter schools located in the northeast San Fernando Valley and northeast Los Angeles, as well as one school in Rochester, New York. Dr. Elliot is President & CEO of PUC National.

Incoming PUC sixth-graders participate in a soccer clinic on Wednesday during the charter school group’s annual CSUN week.

*UPDATED

The first day of middle school can be a pretty nerve-racking experience for almost any kid. You don’t know anyone, you have no friends, you don’t know where your classes are, you don’t know your teachers, you don’t know the rules and you don’t know what is expected of you.

But PUC Schools, an independent charter organization that operates 14 schools at LA Unified, has taken a different approach to the start of middle school aimed at calming those anxieties while also inspiring students to set a goal of going to college. All incoming sixth-graders at PUC’s five San Fernando Valley middle schools spend a week on the campus of California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in a summer camp-like environment while getting to know their teachers and fellow classmates before school begins.

CSUN week dates back to the founding of the school in 1999 and came out of a desperate move by PUC’s co-founder, Jackie Elliot. After spending a year preparing, Elliot was set to open her first school.

But there was one problem, and it was a big one. The school building wasn’t ready.

Elliot was an alumna of CSUN and had been using an office at the college during the year she was preparing for the school’s opening.

“There was a critical moment when LAUSD told me I had 48 hours to find a temporary facility or we would not be able to open the school that year,” Elliot said. “So I went to the facilities person at the dean’s office and begged him to give us temporary space. All I needed was four classrooms for 100 students, four teachers, me and an office manager. He didn’t know if he should do it, it was unconventional, but he had gotten to know us through the course of the year and it just tugged on his heart strings and he didn’t want us to not be able to open, so he said yes.”

So the group of incoming sixth-graders — most of them from low-income, minority families — spent their first weeks taking classes on the CSUN campus, and what was to be two weeks turned into six weeks because the building was still not ready in time. But before long, Elliot said she started to notice that the college campus was having a positive impact on the kids, and what initially looked like a disaster was turning into a blessing in disguise.

“The students came to feel at home at the campus. Most of them had never been to a university campus. The majority of their parents had not taken a college course or graduated high school. They became like part of the campus and would play frisbee on the lawn with the college students and eat lunch out there,” Elliot said. “The students were surrounded by many university students, and if you asked them, ‘Are you going to go to college?’ they would say, ‘Well yes, I am already in college.’ So I realized this was having a very positive impact and instilling in them the desire to go to college.”

Elliot said she decided to make CSUN an annual tradition for PUC students, and each year all incoming sixth-graders in the Valley spend their first week of school at the campus. Elliot said for many years CSUN donated the space but after the 2008 recession asked for a stipend she described as very reasonable.

This year roughly 600 students have been at CSUN all week. They sit through various classes that prepare them for the PUC rules, a panel discussion with PUC alumni or spend time developing social-emotional skills. There are also fun activities like a swim in the CSUN pool and a soccer clinic with the CSUN women’s soccer team.

Many of the students said their favorite part of the week was the opportunity to meet their teachers and new friends before real school begins.

“This week is really fun because I get to know my teachers and make some friends early in the school year, and that’s really important,” said Isaiah Garcia, an incoming sixth-grader at PUC Community Charter Middle School (CCMS) in Lake View Terrace. “I think it is very interesting how we get to do these activities every single day and just get to know each other better and expand upon our information about each other.”

Claudio Estrada, principal of CCMS, said a big value of CSUN week is getting kids prepared for what middle school and PUC will be like.

“We know how stressful and traumatic the transition from elementary school to middle school can be for some, so we try to figure out like what are those things that we got nervous for, things like making new friends, figuring out the teachers, or am I going to be liked?” Estrada said. “So we bring all those elements in, but we fuse it in a fun, interactive summer camp style, but we also indoctrinate our students into the way we do things at our school, like knowing the school rules and the way that we communicate with each other.”

PUC focuses on serving low-income, minority students, and a college discussion panel on Tuesday was made up of former PUC students who are now in college or graduated from college. Panel members gave the sixth-graders advice on college and answered questions.

“One thing I learned in college is if no one is talking about you or writing about you, or if you are not being in existence in the history books or on television, it is like you don’t even exist,” Estrada said. “So we give them the opportunity to start hearing other narratives about people that are just like them — same demographic, same cultural ethnicity and the way that they identify — and they think, ‘If they can do it, I can do it.'”

*Clarified to state that CSUN week takes place before school begins and is not the first week of actual school. 

George McKenna and Monica Garcia in school board debate.

If anything, it was good television.

LA Unified school board members confronted each other headlong in a dramatic discussion Tuesday night over whether charter schools were being treated fairly by the district.

The discussion opened calls for a deep dive into how district staff comes up with its recommendations for denials or approvals of charter schools.

The debate erupted during talks about the renewal and a new application for two charter schools run by Partnership to Uplift Communities (PUC). By state law, the school board oversees the creation of charter schools in the district and renews the contracts for up to five years. LA Unified is the second largest school district in the nation and has the largest number of charter schools.

PUC students and teachers cheer after vote.

Because board member Ref Rodriguez co-founded PUC, he stepped out of the meeting and watched on closed-circuit live stream television, which is also available to the public.

The drama began when recent media reports, including those in LA School Report, were brought up that suggested charter schools were under more scrutiny.

Monica Garcia, whose district has the PUC schools, said flatly, “I think that the politics of the board has changed.” When asked to clarify the statement by board President Steve Zimmer, she repeated the statement.

Monica Ratliff responded, “I think something has changed. I’m not necessarily opposed to it, but let’s be transparent about it.”

• VIDEO: To watch the board members’ debate, start at 5 hours 51 minutes into the meeting in this video. 

Ratliff asked the chief of the Charter Schools Division, Jose Cole-Gutierrez, why the staff suggested denying the PUC petitions. “It seems like you are saying we are always consistent in our denials,” she asked.

Cole-Gutierrez said, “We strive to be consistent, period.”

George McKenna, the senior statesman of the board and vice president, called out some of the statements by his fellow board members. Sitting next to Garcia, he said he didn’t like the idea that she suggested that charter school decisions are based on politics.

“I’m concerned with the conversation of my colleagues. I’m not making my decision based on politics,” said McKenna, then he pointed across the dais to Ratliff and said, “Also, I have a problem with [saying] we have public allegations, therefore we have to do an investigation.”

McKenna said, “Charter renewal is based on intensive data analysis.”

Nevertheless, before the night was over, the board would ignore the data collected by the staff and approve the two petitions recommended for denial, and deny one petition for a charter school that the staff suggested for approval.

Attorney David Holmquist consults with Superintendent Michelle King.

McKenna also called out Zimmer for asking Cole-Gutierrez if he believed that PUC could change in the future. McKenna said they should stick to the data.

“I love these kids, love them,” he said, looking down at two 10-year-old fifth-graders who waited eight hours to testify to the board.

McKenna suggested that Ratliff didn’t trust the staff recommendations. “I don’t think we are in a position of analyzing him because we don’t like his outcome. Why don’t you just make your decision instead of finding his data is flawed.”

Ratliff retorted, “I’m offended actually with what you are saying.” She said she wasn’t questioning the data from staff, but simply the history and procedures based on allegations by the charter school petitioners.

“I’m not saying that the data he’s providing is inaccurate data,” Ratliff said. “What I’m asking for is a five-year analysis of our denials and approvals.”

During the entire debate, in an audience filled with about 75 people, Zimmer allowed the discussion to continue. He even allowed for a straw vote, which he called “unorthodox.” He turned to new Superintendent Michelle King sitting next to him and asked if she had an opinion, and she reminded him that the staff decision had to be signed off by her.

For the denial of the PUC Excel Charter Academy renewal, a tie vote meant there would be no action and the school could remain. McKenna, Scott Schmerelson and Richard Vladovic voted to deny the school, while Ratliff, Garcia and Zimmer voted to approve, with Zimmer saying, “I do trust the staff.”

For the petition to open the PUC International Preparatory Academy, the board worked out approving the school for only three years, negotiating up from McKenna’s suggested two years so the school can have data showing improvement rates. That vote ended with all voting for the school except Zimmer.

When Rodriguez returned to the room after the votes, he gave a wave to his former PUC colleagues.

‘Healthy’ debate

In an interview with LA School Report on Wednesday afternoon, Rodriguez said he has yet to speak to his fellow board members about the debate the night before, but he found it all fascinating.

“I’m OK with the discourse I saw last night, that’s an important component of the work,” Rodriguez said. “It was healthy to put things out into the public, but I also thought that some of it was not well thought out.”

He said he was surprised by some of the votes after the heated debate, but said, “As an observer and colleague it tells me a lot in the sense that it’s an issue by issue thing, that gives me some hope. It isn’t that ‘I’m in this camp always voting no’ and ‘I’m in this camp always voting yes.’ There are individuals being thoughtful about it.”

Ultimately, Rodriguez said, “We have the same regulations, the same policies, the same standards for charters, but I do believe something has changed around holding them accountable. I’m not against that, but it needs to be consistent. I’m not sure that’s where we are at this point.”

Rodriguez blamed the dire financial crisis facing the district. “The board is strained and stressed around the financial cliff coming our way, and so I think that is playing out in decisions, and particularly in charters. Because it is a general public belief that charters siphon kids from the district and that’s the reason we’re in the situation, until we have a coherent comprehensive plan for how we will address the financial situation there will be this forced decision making. Some will feel forced against the wall with no other relief valve in sight, and this is the only way we know.”

As a former charter operator, Rodriguez said he agreed with Ratliff’s idea to look back at five years of data. “We should see how many renewals the board overturned and how many got renewed that were in a similar situation as PUC Excel with the same data. This is holding a mirror up to say are we being consistent.”

Rodriguez said he is not questioning staff data, nor did he believe Ratliff was, but said, “If there’s a pattern, we could course correct. I want to have quality oversight and be analytical about it. I have no interest in the department being a puppet of the board. That unit needs to be rigorous in its approach to its work, so that it helps me make the best decisions.”

At the meeting, Zimmer said he had a high bar to approve charters. “We are looking at one school, and the data presented has some hard truths.”

Schmerelson suggested that principals write letters to the editor asking for “an investigation and find out maybe the charter is not being fair to the neighborhood schools in the area.”

Vladovic said, “I don’t think the inconsistency is with the staff, it’s with our votes. We allow some to go through. If there’s a problem, it’s us.”

The LA Unified school board is expected on Tuesday to deny more applications for new charter schools and charter renewals than they may approve. This is the first time the recommended denials exceed approvals since the new configuration of the school board was seated last July.

Already, the board has denied as many charters in the past half year than in the previous two school years combined.

On Tuesday’s agenda, three denials have been recommended by LA Unified’s Charter School Division and two approvals. The board is not bound to follow the recommendations but usually does.

Three additional charter proposals, from Magnolia Public Schools, were pulled in advance of the school board meeting because they had been recommended for denial. CEO and Superintendent Caprice Young said she withdrew the three new charter applications last week rather than face the likely rejection by the board. In 2014 LA Unified denied renewals for two of its charters based on what it said were questionable practices. A judge ordered the schools change some of its practices but allowed them to stay open. In May, the board voted to renew the charters and the district settled a lawsuit with Magnolia that the charter organization had filed.

Two of the three schools recommended for denial Tuesday are from the Partnership to Uplift Communities (PUC), which was co-founded by one of the newest school board members, Ref Rodriguez.

It would be the first time in 17 years of operating schools in the district that PUC would be denied, said Jacqueline Elliot, co-founder of PUC, which operates 14 schools in the district. “I haven’t experienced this level of challenge and scrutiny in my two decades as a charter leader in the city,” Elliot said in an email to LA School Report. “But I believe the school board will recognize the tremendous value PUC adds to the school district and will demonstrate leadership by continuing to support our program for the thousands of families hungry for excellent educational opportunities in these neighborhoods.”

Since July, six of 11 applications for new charters in LA Unified have been denied, according to an LA School Report analysis. This represents a 45 percent approval rate, compared with a 77 percent approval rate for the 2014-2015 school year, when 10 were approved and three denied. In 2013-2014, 17 were approved and three denied, for an approval rate of 85 percent.

The reasons for Tuesday’s three recommended denials include low test scores, which the staff report says is “well below the performance of the public schools that the charter school pupils would otherwise have been required to attend.”

The staff found that the charter schools present “an unsound educational program” and that PUC is “demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program.”

Recommended for denial is a renewal for PUC’s Excel Charter Academy and a new charter for PUC’s International Preparatory Academy as well as a new charter for WISH (Westside Innovative School House) Academy High School.

PUC’s 14 schools show mixed results when compared to LA Unified schools in performance on the recent Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced standardized tests. The number of PUC students on average who met or exceeded the standards in the English Language Arts test was 40 percent, compared to 33 percent for the district. However, on the math test, PUC students averaged 23.85 percent, compared to 25 percent for the district.

The staff recommended that the board on Tuesday approve new charters for Arts in Action Community Middle School and El Camino Real K-8 Charter School, but the latter is at the former Highlander campus which may have another public school planned for the site and therefore could be denied by the board. The board is also being asked to renew the charter for the Gifted Academy of Mathematics and Entrepreneurial Studies.

Meanwhile, also on the agenda for Tuesday are three violations at charter schools, for Clemente Charter School, Ingenium Charter Middle School and Ingenium Charter Elementary School. The violations include fiscal mismanagement, violations of law and other concerns that the LAUSD staff found.

Independent charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed schools. Most employ non-union teachers, and the school board’s oversight of them is limited. The board can approve or deny new charter applications, and every five years existing charters must be re-approved. The board’s decisions by state law are to be based essentially on if a charter school has a sound educational plan, sound management and its financial situation is in order.

Already, LA Unified has 221 independent charter schools, which is the most of any school district in the country. And many more may be on the way through a new private group, Greater Public Schools Now (GPS Now), which plans a major expansion of school funding.

The school board meeting has a closed session beginning at 10 a.m. Tuesday and a later meeting at 1 p.m.

* Updated to reflect that Magnolia now says it does not plan to resubmit its applications, and to include information about its settlement with LAUSD.

Craig Clough contributed to this story.

The 7.5-acre campus will accommodate PUC Triumph Charter Academy for grades 6 through 8 and two high schools — PUC Triumph Charter High School and PUC Lakeview Charter High School. The campus also includes facilities that all three schools will share, including a state-of-the-art gym, a soccer field, regulation basketball courts, baseball/softball diamond, science labs, a theater and dance room.

The thee schools had been operating at different sites before now.

The $26 million campus is expected to reach the full capacity of 1,250 students by next school year. Currently, 250 students are on the waiting list to attend one of the three schools, which were financed through a bond and $600,000 from the Ahmanson and Weingart foundations.

PUC –Partnerships to Uplift Communities — operates 12 PUC public charter schools that provide college prep educational programs in densely-populated urban communities with low-achieving schools in northeast Los Angeles and the northeast San Fernando Valley. There group also runs one school in Rochester, NY.