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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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The measures would move the city and school board elections to November so that they would align with the more high-profile national and statewide elections, a move designed to increase voter turnout. LA City Council and LAUSD elections would be held on the same day as the presidential election beginning in 2020 and with mayoral, citywide and gubernatorial elections in 2022.

The flip side to the argument is that LAUSD and city candidates could receive less attention and would have to raise more money to get noticed amid the more high-profile elections.

So what does Angelenos’ leader think? He has no opinion.

As he told the Los Angeles Daily News, “I can see both sides of the issue. Sometimes it’s not cut clear. I take a position when it’s very clear to me … I think this is something that should be in the hands of the voters.”

Garcetti did add that because he could benefit from the change, as it would add 1.5 years to the mayor elected in 2017, he didn’t feel he should weigh in on it.

Premature cheers from AALA over testing 

 Magnolia Science Academy before county board

The LA Unified school board denied the five-year renewal application of Magnolia Science Academy in Bell in November, basing their ruling on a report by the district’s inspector general that found the charter management group is “fiscally insolvent.”

However, Magnolia has a second chance at life through the LA County Board of Education, and its application for renewal was scheduled to be heard at the board’s meeting on Tuesday.

The school was facing an uphill battle, as the County Superintendent of Schools Arturo Delgado had recommended denying the application. The board did vote, but it was to simply grant a 30-day extension as it asked for more information from Magnolia.

Should a parent company operate its charter school network as a single entity, as MPS does with its 11 California charters? Or should each school be run independently, with separate budgets and governance?

LA Unified last month closed two MPS schools, saying financial problems at the parent company rose to the “level of fiscal mismanagement.”  But by scrutinizing the financial health of the overall charter management organization, the district has tread into uncharted territory for an authorizer.

“This is an emerging issue, and my guess is a lot of legislatures will have to address this in the near future,” says Kathy Christie of the Education Commission of the States, which compiles research on charter school practices nationally.

The school closures followed a District audit that not only examined Magnolia Science Academy 6 and Academy 7, both high-performing schools, but also MPS as the parent group. The audit found among other things that MPS met the IRS definition of being “insolvent” as of June 2013, that it owed millions of dollars to the schools it oversees and that it transferred money between schools. It also found that it paid millions of dollars to a third party non-profit, Accord, for educational services with little accountability.

All that, the audit said, “not only raises significant questions about the governance and overall health of the organization but . . . of its future likelihood of success.”

As a result, LA Unified is expanding its investigation into the district’s other MPS schools, Superintendent John Deasy told LA School Report last week.

MPS disputes the findings of the audit and denies any fiscal malfeasance. (MPS is in court today, asking a judge to block the district’s effort to close the two science academies. See story here.)

One of the central questions for the district is the structure of governance: the Magnolia network runs its 11 schools under an “umbrella model,” using a single, tax-exempt non-profit status, under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and one governing board.

And even as California continues to strengthen laws that govern the accountability of individual charter schools, the effort does not extend to the parent organizations, which answer to the IRS, not to the school districts. Thus, contracts between the parent company and third parties, as well as money transferred between the parent and the schools, is hard to track and not necessarily in the purview of the local school district.

Kim Onisko an accounting consultant for MPS defends the umbrella practice, saying it is perfectly legal and vastly more efficient for the schools. “Otherwise, you would need a board for every school,” he told LA School Report.

While other charter operators use the same approach, many do not. One of the largest networks in LA Unified, the Alliance for College-Ready Schools, applies a different model. Says CFO David Hyun, “We don’t want to run the risk of jeopardizing the whole network for one school. Let’s say you have a catastrophe at one school, you don’t want it to circulate through the whole system.”

For the Alliance, which operates 22 high-performing charters serving high-needs students in Los Angeles, separating each school’s operations makes good business sense, Hyun said. Each school is run as an individual non-profit, with a separate governance structure and separate programmatic and financial accountability.

That model is gaining favor in some states. Colorado, for example, passed a law last year that requires each individual charter school to be organized as a nonprofit corporation, separate from its management organization, so that the schools are more accountable to the district.

But in California, short of an operator electing to run its networks that way, the relationship between a school’s finances and the finances of its parent company remains undefined.

In fact, there is even confusion over whether a district can require a charter applicant to provide any information about its parent organization, according to Alice Miller of the California Charter School Association, which is helping MPS protest the closures.

“That’s not covered by charter law,” she said. “A [Charter Management Organization] has the option of providing, or not providing the information. The law has never been expanded to include that requirement. It may never have occurred to anyone when charter law was created.”

Previous Posts: Magnolia going into court to keep 2 of its charters open; Magnolia charter troubles having an impact beyond LA Unified; JUST IN: LAUSD expands probe into Magnolia charter schools; oanaokcn

Magnolia Public Schools (MPS) is going into a Los Angeles superior court tomorrow to ask a judge to keep open two of its schools that LA Unified wants to close.

The district denied the renewal applications for Magnolia Science Academies 6 and 7 after an independent audit determined that MPS is insolvent. The audit uncovered a number of fiscal management violations.  

The hearing, before Judge Luis Lavin, involves Magnolia’s request for a preliminary injunction; lawyers for Magnolia are not seeking a decision on the merits of the District’s claims. Magnolia is asking the court to allow it to continue to operate pending the outcome of the case.

The court has scheduled an Oct. 14 hearing to consider setting a date for trial.

Meanwhile, the California Charter Schools Association says Magnolia parents are planning to protest at the courthouse tomorrow morning in support of keeping the schools open. Tomorrow’s hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m.

Previous Posts: Magnolia charter troubles having an impact beyond LA Unified; JUST IN: LAUSD expands probe into Magnolia charter schools; ‘Fiscal mismanagement’ cited in closing 2 Magnolia charters