UTLA released its study on the fiscal impact of charter schools on May 10.

Six weeks ago LA teachers union officials told the LA Unified school board that independent charter schools were costing the district about $500 million each year.

School board member Monica Ratliff called on Superintendent Michelle King to provide the board an analysis of the union-funded study on independent charter schools from which the figure was derived. But the board has met as a full body at least four times since the report was released and has yet to discuss the report publicly. The board meets again today.

A district spokeswoman has been unable to say when the board will discuss the report.

An internal district document obtained by LA School Report shows that district officials have disputed some of the findings of the union’s study.

The union’s report was immediately criticized by district staff and others, as both inaccurate and an attempt to divert attention from far larger drains on the district’s finances. District officials were directed to refrain from commenting officially.

After LA School Report obtained the interoffice correspondence, King released a statement. The interoffice letter, dated June 14, was written by the district’s Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly, Associate Superintendent Sharyn Howell, who oversees special education, and Jose Cole-Gutierrez, director of the district’s Charter Schools Division.

“The information that both our labor and charter partners have brought to the forefront regarding our financial situation is informative, valuable and appreciated,” King’s statement reads in part. “Our team will continue to scrutinize these reports as we create strategies for a successful future and the growth of a variety of high-achieving schools.”

The California Charter Schools Association issued a 10-page response to the UTLA study a week after it was released and sent it to King and members of the school board. The group called the union’s report “riddled with inaccuracies.”

“It draws sweeping and often irresponsible conclusions based on limited information and obsolete data,” the CCSA said.

An initial analysis by the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), the district’s bargaining unit for middle managers, also found inaccuracies in the report.

UTLA said in a statement in the days after the report was released that it stood by its data used in the study and said the information was provided by the district.

The 46-page UTLA study was conducted by MGT America in December and January following the release of a report by the Independent Financial Review Panel in November.

The Independent Financial Review Panel projected that the district would face a $450 million deficit in three years, driven primarily by pension and healthcare costs.

In the 14-page interoffice letter, titled “Preliminary Review of UTLA MGT Report: Fiscal Impact of Charter Schools on LAUSD,” the district responds to each of the 12 findings in the UTLA report.

The first finding from the UTLA report is that the annual oversight revenue collected from independent charter schools does not cover the annual budget of the district’s Charter Schools Division, which is responsible for overseeing charter schools.

The district responded that the oversight fees generated this year will reach $9.4 million, while the Charter Schools Division expenditures are projected to be $8.3 million.

Days after the UTLA study was released LA School Report reported a similar finding that when the Charter Schools Division presented its budget in January, it showed that the department was collecting about $500,000 more from charter schools than it spends.

The union’s study included the cost of the office space that the Charter Schools Division occupies in the district’s headquarters at the Beaudry building as a cost that the revenue from oversight fees does not cover.

“Currently, no division is charged for the costs associated with facility use of the Beaudry building,” the memo says. “Staff will explore the possibility of charging a pro rata share of debt service costs for occupancy of this space.”

The study claimed that funds for oversight action by other departments within the district were not paid for through the oversight fees collected from charter schools, but the district response showed that nearly $1.4 million from the Charter Schools Division budget is allocated to the Office of the General Counsel, Data and Accountability, Accounting and Attendance and Enrollment for those departments’ costs.

One highly contested issue addressed in the report involved whether the district can charge a 3 percent oversight fee to the 56 charter schools that operate in district facilities.

State law limits the amount of money the district can charge an independent charter school for oversight fees to 1 percent of the school’s revenues. If the school receives “substantially rent free facilities” from the district, the district can charge a 3 percent oversight fee.

The district charges all charter schools a 1 percent oversight fee regardless of whether the schools are located in buildings owned by the district. It also charges charter schools located in district buildings a “pro rata share” of facilities costs.

LA Unified officials said the district collected $8.1 million during the last school year from the 1 percent oversight fee and the pro rata share. If the district were to collect 3 percent without the pro rata share, it would receive $4.6 million, according to the letter.

CCSA said in its response to the study that because the district charges a pro rata share, the facilities are not substantially rent free and the district cannot charge a 3 percent oversight fee.

The study pointed out that there are indirect costs to the district for independent charter school operations. The study estimates those costs reach $13 million.

“Staff will explore the feasibility of conducting a cost analysis to review indirect cost allocations,” the letter says.

The district did agree with some of the UTLA study findings, many of which were state funding issues. For example, the district agreed that it has a significantly higher proportion of special education students compared to independent charter schools.

CCSA contested this finding.

“The report uses a number of outdated and erroneous statistics that paint a misleading picture of both the proportion of students with disabilities in charters schools and the fiscal impact on the district,” CCSA wrote in its letter.

LA Unified has more charter students than any other district in the country, with 101,000 students in 221 schools, making up 16 percent of the district enrollment. Over the last decade, the number of charter schools has more than tripled.

The union report assumed that all students who attend independent charter schools would have attended LA Unified schools. However, a charter school can attract students from other districts, and some LA charter school students could have otherwise attended private schools or moved to another district.

The Independent Financial Review Panel’s report attributed half of LA Unified’s enrollment decline to charter schools. The rest of the decline was caused by demographic changes such as the drop in the number of children born in LA, it stated.

“Even if LAUSD had no more new charter schools, its enrollment would continue to decline due to demographic factors, factors that are not within its control, and that are unlikely to reverse in the coming years,” the panel concluded.

Marguerite Roza, a research professor at Georgetown University and director of the Edunomics Lab, wrote an op-ed in the LA Times following the release of the union’s study that advocated for districts to build their budgets based on the number of students it serves so that budgeting would be “inherently responsive to enrollment changes.”

“It’s hard for a district to shrink,” Roza said in an interview. “It doesn’t have much trouble growing. It’s harder to take away staff or contract.”

Castelar Street Elementary School backers protest against co-locating with a charter school. (Credit: Martin Wong)

Angelica Lopez Moyes is amazed that her 1st-grade son can speak Mandarin. But she is concerned that his dual-language immersion program at Castelar Street Elementary School could  be jeopardized if a charter is co-located on the campus.

Castelar, founded in 1882 and the second-oldest school in Los Angeles, has 570 students and is at about 75 percent capacity. Under Proposition 39, passed in 2000, the remaining space can be given to a charter.

Some of the rooms at the Chinatown school identified for charter use include two science labs and a room used for special education students. The parents at Castelar have gathered more than 2,400 signatures in a petition and lobbied to keep those classrooms from being shared.

“I have nothing against charter schools, and I don’t have a problem with sharing space that we don’t need, but there is a problem in this district with the process of designating an under-utilized classroom and allowing a charter school to take it over for their use,” Moyes said. “We have poor students who do not have access to computers, and taking over our labs will hurt the school and affect our future programs.”

The district deems classrooms that aren’t assigned to a specific full-time teacher as under-utilized space and therefore eligible for Prop. 39 charter use. The dual-language program wants to expand, and has the demand for it, but needs qualified teachers who can also speak Mandarin.

Angelica Lopez Moyes with the #SaveCastelar campaign.

Martin Wong, who started an online petition, said, “If children from the charter school want to attend Castelar, they should come. We have awesome kids, excellent teachers, and that amazing Mandarin dual-language program which actually needs the extra space to grow.”

Wong and his wife Wendy don’t consider themselves activists, but they grew up in the neighborhood near downtown LA where they ate dim sum with their families and went to see cool punk bands. Their daughter Eloise has thrived at the school, and they said they were shocked by the “insane idea to have a charter school occupy the unused classrooms at our daughter’s campus. Most of the space is utilized by Chinatown children for music, art, science and P.E. Two schools on one campus would be a logistical nightmare, as well as an unhealthy environment in which the school and students on either side would be in constant measurement and competition against each other.”

Prop. 39 requires school districts to make “reasonably equivalent” facilities available to charter schools upon request. In past years, the California Charter Schools Association has had to sue LA Unified to comply with the state law. That has led the district to determine that essentially if the classroom is not assigned to a full-time teacher, it is considered under-utilized. CCSA continues to closely monitor LA Unified’s use of Prop. 39 to make sure it is fair and equitable toward charter schools.

• Read more about Prop. 39 from CCSA and United Teachers Los Angeles.

Castelar is one of three LA Unified schools offering a Mandarin-immersion dual-language program. It has a 50-student waiting list but not enough qualified teachers for the classes, which are also taught in Chinese. Other classrooms are used for art, dance and P.E. programs.

The parents took their concerns to the district offices, to school board committees and to board member Monica Garcia’s office along with UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl, who met with the parents and offered support.

Po-Wen Shaw speaking to the school board.

“Our members believe that holding charter schools accountable is a top priority, and UTLA is working with the district to make sure that the Prop. 39 regulations are being followed and that charters are paying their fair share,” Anna Bakalis, UTLA communications director, said in a statement.

Moyes and the parents said they are also concerned that charter schools may take classrooms away from the school but then not meet their enrollment requirements. “What happens to our school then?” Moyes said. “And the charter schools are supposed to pay that money back to the district, but the district has never collected on it.”

Ellen Morgan, of LA Unified communications, said in an emailed statement: “When a charter school fails to meet its average daily attendance projections, a school district may seek reimbursement from the charter school for the shortfall. There is a complicated regulatory formula for making this determination and the reimbursement rate is set by the California Department of Education and changes annually. For the past several years all of the district’s Prop. 39 communications have included specific language informing charter schools that they could be subject to over-allocation if they fail to meet their enrollment projections.”

Although LA Unified has not sought to be reimbursed by the charters, Morgan said, “The district has not waived any rights to seek reimbursement for the last two school years (2013-14, 2014-15). It is also important to remember that each charter school co-location situation is unique and needs to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.”

One of the schools that wanted to co-locate at Castelar was Metro Charter, with about 205 students. A spokesperson from the school said that its leadership decided not to go to Castelar and will look for another site in a year.

At a school-wide demonstration of a dragon dance this week, Castelar principal Sum Shum told the parents that Metro would not come to the campus.

Wai-Ling Chin tells the school board of her concerns for Castelar.

“When principal Shum was given permission to announce that Metro Charter would not be occupying our classrooms, everyone could really feel the room brighten, lighten and practically elevate,” Wong said. But the parents remain concerned.

“We love Castelar and don’t want to be invaded by outsiders or create a sense of separation like a second class,” parent Wai-Ling Chin told a meeting last month of LA Unified’s Budget, Facilities, and Audit Committee.

“The fight is not over, there could be another charter school that comes in,” Moyes said. She said the school is planning a demonstration on May 1 to protest any future plans for co-locations of charters on their campus. She also said she plans to bring the issue to the school board at their regularly scheduled meeting April 12. “There is a larger picture, they need to look at their methodology.”

Po-Wen Shaw, the parent of a first-grader, added, “I am not out to denounce charters, but we have a very unique school and close community. We have almost an equal mix of Latino, white, Asian and African-American children, and they all speak flawless Chinese. I’ve heard them!”

Citizens of the World, Mar Vista

The LA Unified school district is analyzing why certain charter schools operate on split campuses. In a report being presented to the school board at a meeting today, the staff found 24 charters using shared facilities on two traditional school sites, and one-third of them are divided among three sites.

Representatives of LA Unified charters are saying the number of charter schools sharing multiple sites has increased to 24 from 19 in just a year, a trend driving complaints from the state charter schools association.

“The district has failed year after year to try to find more classrooms for charter students so that schools can remain on one campus, and this trend is unacceptable,” said Phillipa L. Altman, the senior litigation counsel for the California Charter Schools Association. “This is a district with declining enrollment, and they are making statements without any clear transparency.”

The analysis is the district’s way to comply with requirements of Proposition 39, which allows charters access to available space in traditional schools. The district report explains why these 24 charter schools cannot be housed in one location, and the reasoning must be filed with the state.

Of the 211 independent charter schools operating within LA Unified, 95 have requested facilities under Proposition 39. The district said 148,697 students enrolled in charter schools this year, which is 5,722 more students than the previous year.

“It is very difficult to divide a campus to two sites, much less three sites,” said Laura J. McGowan-Robinson, the Senior Vice President for Regional Advocacy for CCSA, who also started her own charter school. “When you draft a budget, you do not plan on two or three sites. In that situation, you have to have more supervision and have an administrator at each site. You have split staff.”

Currently, eight charter schools are using classrooms at three locations.

For example, the Citizens of the World Mar Vista charter school is asking to move to extra space located at Webster Middle School. The charter school is legally allowed 20 teaching spaces, and it draws its students from 73 potential local schools.

The district says it has no available classrooms at Webster, but is offering rooms at three separate locations: Shenandoah Street Elementary School, Baldwin Hills Elementary School and Windsor Hills Elementary Magnet.

Last year, charter schools sought 101 facilities under Prop 39; this year, there were 96 requests.

McGowan-Robinson said, “Having schools split on different sites also open the schools up to safety issues, where one child has cross multiple streets, or teachers have to get in a car to travel from one place to another. Even if it is a few miles, in this city, it could be a real burden.”

Charter schools are asking for input into getting their fair share of LA Unified’s bond program funding.

The dispute is particularly about the reallocation of $339 million after the planned Mandarin Foreign Language Immersion Program Elementary School project was cancelled. The district board voted last week to use the money for upgrades to school facilities to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and to expand wellness clinics as well as installing air conditions in some gyms.

Winston Stromberg an attorney who is representing the California Charter School Association, presented a letter to the school board last week, asking the school board to delay the decision so that the public and other interested stakeholders could have their input.

In the letter, obtained by the LA School Report, Stromberg said that the superintendent’s staff “unnecessarily and unlawfully seeks to fund a substantial portion of the structural changes using nearly $90 million of bond funding designated for charter school facilities that the voters approved when they passed Measure Q in 2008.”

The letter said that the district rushed into “a major financial decision that could impact future facilities options for thousands of public school students attending charter schools.”

Stromberg said, “There has simply not been enough time to fully understand all of the issues implicated by the proposal.”

The decision, according to CCSA, “will take away nearly 20 percent of charter school facilities under Measure Q.” The letter  declared: “Staff’s proposal is unlawful.”

LA Unified has more charter schools than any school in the country and that nearly 20 percent of the total student population attends charter schools, a number that has been increasing every year. “Unlike LAUSD,” the letter says, “charter schools cannot tap into the local funding sources in the same way as school districts. Charter schools do not have the power to issue general obligations bonds, levy fees on new real estate developments, or ask local voters to approve taxes.”

School board president Steve Zimmer said he disagreed that the board’s unanimous vote was illegal. “We are following federal law and the statement that it is unlawful is what I challenge profoundly,” he said.

Sarah Angel of CCSA told the board that she had hoped to have a meeting with district staff before the decision was made or that the board would reconsider the issue. She said that charters have applied for the bond money but were told to come back another time.

“In the spirit of collaboration the board of education should have a hearing,” Angel said.

Myrna Castrejón, acting chief executive officer of CCSA, said, “If the LAUSD board wants to make sure all students receive a great public education, they should be focused on supporting and expanding schools that are demonstrating success like charter schools – not trying to undermine them.”

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Steve Zimmer about nine hours into the meeting.

The LA Unified School Board convened at 10 a.m. and didn’t adjourn until more than 12 hours later yesterday, in a series of meetings that ran the gamut from moving forward on finding a new superintendent, to confronting ugly budget realities to diving into the minutiae of charter school applications. For background information, each member had 1,209 pages of supplemental paperwork at the ready.

Yes, it was long and tedious, and bleary-eyed members were begging for adjournment.

They had it better than some members of the public, eager to share their views with the board. Outside district headquarters, Maria Hernandez stepped in line with her 3-year-old at 5:30 a.m., ready to talk about how great her Celerity Rolas Charter School has helped her 7th grade son. She was flanked by Myra Guttierez who has a son and daughter in the school, and Kenja Jackson, who attended the school and is now in college.

They finally got to speak at about 9 p.m. when school board president Steve Zimmer took pity on the families with small children who waited for so long to speak.

“I never thought that higher education would be for someone of my kind coming from south central,” Jackson said. “I was bullied in 6th grade and then it was like family going there in 7th and 8th grade and they inspired me.”

But their school was denied a charter petition, as was Celerity Himalia Charter School, because the LAUSD staff recommended against it.

After presentations on the superintendent and financial issues, the charter discussions seemed endless, even with the two hot topics of the day/night not even discussed. Scott Schmerelson introduced a resolution against the Eli Broad Foundation’s plan to increase charter schools in the district, designed to put the board on record against all initiatives “that present a strategy designed to serve some students and not all students.”

And Mónica Ratliff initiated a measure that would ask for charter school transparency, which is almost identical one that was proposed and defeated last year by ousted school board member Bennett Kayser. It asks for charter schools to comply with state guidelines for open meetings and inform parents about school-related items like traditional school do.

Those two plans will be up for discussion and vote at the next meeting, on Dec. 8.

The board approved five-year renewals of 14 other charter schools, interspersed with hearing from parents, teachers, students and administrators talking about the benefits of the schools. When the board voted (mostly unanimously) for approval, the audience erupted in applause.

Two applications ran into trouble. Zimmer also weighed in on a charter proposal for the Oso Elementary School that was abandoned in 2003. He said, “There are few things I’m more ashamed of than how we left that campus.”

Yet, the school board voted to turn down a plan for El Camino Real K-8 Charter School to bring 525 students there and redevelop the run-down site. Why? The district wants to develop a school for students who are autistic and highly gifted.

Superintendent Ramon Cortines said that he told the El Camino Real petitioner, David Fehte, about the plans for the LAUSD-owned property at a recent meeting. Fehte seemed angry when the petition was voted down, but had another proposal for the abandoned Highlander Campus, which was closed in 1982 and vacant since 2004. Neighbors such as Jackie Keen said they looked forward to the abandoned building becoming a school again.

But, Schmerelson said he met with the local district superintendent who had plans for the campus. Fehte said that was news to him.

When there are waiting lists at high performing schools that are bursting at the seams it does not make sense to use taxpayer’s money to start a new charter school at LAUSD-owned sites, Schmerelson said. “I do not want to waste the petitioner’s time,” he added.

Ratliff asked to delay the petition proposal for the site until next month. Fehte reluctantly agreed.

Charter school advocates not only spoke up in favor of school petitions, but against some of the bond money being spent that should be shared with charter schools.

An attorney representing the California Charter Schools Association, Winston Stromberg, suggested that one of the bond measures to improve sites for students with disabilities was rushed through without stakeholder input. He recommended that the school board postpone action on the reallocation of the bonds.

Zimmer sounded insulted about the lawyer’s statements and said, “Saying that we are not following federal law and that this is unlawful is what I’m challenging profoundly.”

Sarah Angel of CCSA asked the board for a meeting before the vote. “We would ask that you table this at this time and move it to the budget committee to figure out priorities,” she said. “In the spirit of collaboration, the board of education should have a hearing. Charters have applied for this money and have not had traction.” In fact, she said the district facilities administrators told them to come back later with their requests.

Cortines said he wouldn’t approve any new construction in his last few months with the district unless there was a plan. He said he didn’t have any projects from charter schools with specific plans. He said, “I want to be collaborative, but kicking the can down the road is not going to do it.”

Ref Rodriguez recused himself from the discussion of renewal for Partnership to Uplift Communities charter schools, which he co-founded. There was some discussion in denying one petition because of an attorney general’s investigation into a mismanagement issue and conflict of interest.

Schmerelson said, “I don’t want to be the bad guy but need to protect the taxpayers and the PUC organization has to behave itself like every other organization has to.”

Cortines said, “We must be careful not to penalize the students and staff where there is a good education.”

Kenja Jackson speaks for a charter school that got denied.

The board voted unanimously to approve the two renewal requests.

As time wore on, Ratliff suggested the board consider breaking the meetings into two Tuesday nights to reduce the size of the agenda. George McKenna said, “Aren’t we just going to have two long meetings anyway?”

Zimmer seemed frustrated at the length of the meeting, and his accommodations to allow everyone in the audience to speak.

When board executive officer Jefferson Crain asked to extend the meeting yet again, the board sounded a collective groan.

“I have to go home and feed by dog,” said board member Richard Vladovic.

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UTLA’s call for protest at Broad Museum

A few days after the posh parties with the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Orlando Bloom, Ed Ruscha and Frank Gehry to celebrate the opening of the new Broad Museum, the LA Unified teachers union, UTLA, is planning a protest at the museum on Sunday, aimed at its namesake: Eli Broad, one of LA’s leading philanthropists.

More specifically, the union is demonstrating against a plan by several foundations, including his, to create more charter schools in Los Angeles.

“We are protesting Broad’s plan to pull half the students out of public LAUSD schools and put them in unregulated schools that are not accountable to the public,” UTLA said in a press release. “The students left behind would suffer greatly. There simply would not be enough funding to go around.”

Broad has become a major target of teacher unions for his efforts nationwide to reform public schools through charters and an academy that trains executives to run them. The former LA Unified superintendent, John Deasy, was a Broad trainee.

The union also contends that Broad of “secretly funded groups” that tried to defeat Proposition 30, a state tax initiative that has generated millions of new tax dollars for California public schools.

“Broad and his billionaire pals wreaked havoc on public education in New Orleans,” UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl said in a statement. “His education ‘reform’ there resulted in massive inequities and civil rights violations for students. Segregation was reinforced and special education students were left behind.  We do not intend to stand by and let him do the same thing in Los Angeles.”

One speaker scheduled speaker at the protest, according to the union, is “a parent from New Orleans who knows firsthand how Broad and his billionaire pals can destroy a public school district because they did it in New Orleans.”

Whether Broad and other reformers involved in New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 “wreaked havoc” or “destroyed” the school district is a matter of perspective, according to at least one study.

After the storm, the public school system was effectively dissolved and control of most of the city’s schools was placed into a state agency. Under the new agency, all the teachers were fired — most of them were union members — and management of most schools was turned over to charter organizations. The Broad Academy trained some of the people who were in charge, and most of the union teachers were replaced by young and inexperienced teachers from outside the state, none of whom worked under a union contract.

In his study, Douglas N. Harris of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans argues that while many of the lowest-income and minority students did not return to New Orleans after Katrina for a variety of reasons, academic performance in the city schools rose among those who remained.

Another study found academic performance “has improved significantly — particularly among the schools that were once among Louisiana’s lowest-performing campuses”  but also said “far too many New Orleans charter schools are not yet adequately preparing students for college and careers. There is much work to be done.”

The California Charter School Association joined the protest against the protest with a press release yesterday, calling for Caputo-Pearl to “stop disrespecting parents who want to choose the best school for their children.”

For his part, Caputo-Pearl has challenged Broad to a “public debate on public education . . . . any place, any time — and that includes outside his new museum on September 20.”

The charter group said, “If Caputo-Pearl wants to debate anyone, he should start by debating the parents of the more than 100,000 Los Angeles students who have chosen charter public schools” in LA Unified.

Whether Broad intends to accept Caputo-Pearl’s challenge remains unclear. The Broad Foundation did not respond to messages seeking comment. Nor has the Foundation made any public comment about its charter expansion plan since word of it leaked last month, except to say some of the descriptions about its intent were incorrect. It has made no effort to correct those descriptions.

The UTLA protest is scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m.

In a conference call with reporters, the association presented data that suggests charters continue to be a valuable option for LA-area parents seeking an alternative to traditional district schools for their children. The association built its case around data provided by the state Department of Education and other sources.

One of the biggest issues addressed was whether the steady loss of students to charter schools puts a drain on LA Unified’s traditional schools, in both numbers and money.

No, said association officials. The CCSA vice president of policy, Colin Miller, said charter school money does not come out of the district’s budget and up to 3 percent of charter schools revenues go back to the district for oversight costs.

“The decline in enrollment at LAUSD is not due to charter schools,” Miller said, alluding to one of the chief reasons district officials cite as a cause of the district’s budget deficit. In the past decade, LAUSD enrollment dropped by 194,251 students and charter school enrollment increased by 106,710 students, according to state figures. He said that leaves 87,541 students  — or 45 percent — of the decline that isn’t accounted for by charter school enrollment.

The association also focused on how more English learner students are enrolling in charter schools in urban areas — and actually thriving in some programs. And, the district is working closer with charter schools in handling more special education students.

Gina Plate, the senior special education advisor for CSSA, said the charter schools do not take away funding from LAUSD’s special ed programs, and although there are more children with special needs in traditional schools (about 1.9 percent more than in traditional district schools), the numbers enrolling in charter schools are increasing.

“Parents (of children with moderate to severe disabilities) are jumping to the charter sector now,” she said, pointing to 20 programs that LAUSD charters schools have in place. “The district is asking if they can buy or reserve seats in some special education charter programs. That’s a great message. We’re working close with the LAUSD.”

Plate added, “There are more children with disabilities going into charter schools than going out of charters.”

Dominic Zarecki, the senior analyst for Achievement and Performance Management at CCSA, said not only do charters schools have more English learners than traditional schools, but they are performing better at charter schools.

He pointed to state data that shows the average Academic Performance Index score for English learners at independent charter schools (748) exceeds that at traditional schools (688).

And Ricardo Soto, CCSA’s senior vice president for Legal Advocacy and General Counsel, said laws governing charters are “quite stringent.” He said that charter schools are held up to greater accountability standards, and the students still must take all the standardized tests.

“The scores for the schools are public and available for parents to see,” he said.

With LA Unified now seeking a new superintendent to work with new board president Steve Zimmer, one of the association’s strongest critics during the campaign for its work to unseat former member, Bennett Kayser, CSAA officials were asked what it would like to see in the next district leader.

“We don’t want him or her to be just for charter or traditional, or pilot or trade schools,” said spokesman Jason Mandell. “We want the new superintendent to fight for all kids. That is our main goal.”

The report, “Success for English Learners in Charter Schools,” found that throughout the state, independent charter schools are serving nearly 2 percent more English learner (EL) students than traditional schools.

And, in LAUSD, autonomous charter schools serve 1 percent more EL students than traditional schools do, according to the report.

“There is a misconception that the charter schools are not serving the hardest to reach students, particularly in urban communities, and this report shows that’s not true,” said Jason Mandell, spokesman for the charter association. “This shows that the California charters are serving the EL community better.”

Scores analyzed included those from the Academic Performance Index (API), Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives (AMAO) and the California English Language Development Test (CELDT).

Francisco Rodriguez, vice president of the California Federation of Teachers and member of the English Language Learners Committee, said it is not surprising that some EL scores are better at charter schools, but he also points to increasingly higher scores of EL students at independent schools.

“It is not a surprise that a charter school that comes into a community specifically helps English language learners and the results of their scores are a little higher,” said Rodriguez, who works in Watsonville and Pajaro Valley in Santa Cruz County, where schools are 80 to 90 percent Hispanic with up to 24 percent EL students. He said that some of the report’s findings do not comport with what he has discovered in his community.

“The strategies they are using seem the same in the charter schools and independent schools, so I’m not really sure why test scores would be different,” he said. “But ultimately, if (traditional) schools received all the funding they needed from the state, there would be better results all around.”

Rodriguez mentioned that some charter schools require a level of parent volunteerism, which some EL families cannot provide because of multiple jobs by working parents.

The CCSA said it doubts that the parent volunteerism requirement is much of a problem.

The report says many families of EL children have misconceptions about charter schools, thinking they are hard to get into or are expensive. But, the report contends that when the families have good word-of-mouth in a community, the charter school’s EL enrollment thrives.

Overall, the report supported two major findings:

• Across several data sources and over several years, EL student performance is higher at charter schools. While some of the differences were modest, the consistency of this finding was striking.
• In general, EL enrollments are lower at charter schools than at comparable traditional public schools. However, different disaggregations (by charter type, urban-rural, grade level and region) show varying sizes in the gap (with the gap closed in some instances).

The report from the Center for Popular Democracy, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and Public Advocates estimated the state would lose $100 million this year from fraud, waste and mismanagement at charter schools and called for a number of changes, including regular state audits of every charter school.

In a statement released on its website, the CCSA said, “While we don’t presume to understand the motives behind this report, we do know that California is a state where the charter school sector, authorizers and legislators have come together to put into place real solutions. It is unfortunate that we continue to have similar distractions for a sector that the report itself suggests is demonstrating to be responsible users of precious public funds in addition to serving a half a million public school students well.”

The CCSA was particularly critical of the amount the report attributed to fraud, waste and mismanagement, saying, “The report’s estimate of charter fraud by simply applying a 5% assumption of fraud based on some ‘global assumptions’ without any specific analysis, simply calls the whole report into question.”

In response to the call for more financial oversight of charters, the CCSA said the report “does not do justice to the system already in place and that is actually more rigorous for charter schools” than other education agencies, in the state, including school districts.

The report pointed to several examples of past documented fraud or waste at some charter schools, but the CCSA said the examples cited were old and out of date.

“The majority of the examples cited in this report are old, from schools that have since closed, and reflect old laws that were updated to provide even greater protection,” the statement said.

Click here to read the full statement from CCSA.

After days of silence, the California Charter Schools Association is defending a controversial campaign flyer targeting Bennett Kayser, who is running for reelection for the LA Unified District 5 board seat.

Kayser, too, is speaking out about the flyer for the first time, calling its portrayal of him “a pack of vile misrepresentations.”

Paid for by an independent expenditure group affiliated with the association to support a challenger, the flyer accuses Kayser of supporting policies that negatively affect Latino students. Critics have characterized the flyer as racist in nature.

An arm of the California Charter Schools Association‘s political action committee has unleashed the first campaign attack with a full color, glossy flyer aimed at District 5 board incumbent Bennett Kayser.

The message targets a very specific demographic: Latinos.

It features five sad looking brown-skinned kids with their heads in their hands. Above them: “Bennett Kayser tried to stop Latino children from attending schools in white neighborhoods.” On the other side, it says, “He’s not for us.”

The flyer was paid for by “Parent Teacher Alliance in Support of Rodriguez, Galatzan, Vladovic, and McKenna for School Board 2015” — a reference to a Kayser challenger, Ref Rodriguez; and incumbents Tamar Galatzan, Richard Vladovic and George McKenna, who are also running for reelection.

As an offshoot of the association’s PAC, the group was formed specifically for these elections.

Kayser did not immediately respond, but one of his colleagues did.

In a news release this morning, McKenna expressed outrage that his name appears on the flyer, saying the “literature is misleading and racially inflammatory in nature.” McKenna also makes clear he has not sought the group’s endorsement.

“I reject the statements, accusations and positions promoted by this group as it relates to Board Member Kayser, whom I strongly support for re-election,” he said.

He continues: “I was not consulted prior to the release of this literature nor did I give Parent Teacher Alliance permission to use my name. I request that their endorsement of me be withdrawn and that my name and/or title not be used by them in any of their literature.”

Throughout his time on the board Kayser has been openly and staunchly anti-charter, voting against them whenever possible. So it comes as no surprise that CCSA’s political arm would go after him. As of today it has spent $55,424.40 trying to defeat him, while no money has been spent to oppose any other candidate.

The CCSA group has also spent another $28,574.80 supporting Rodriguez, a pro-charter challenger and PUC charter school founder.

Meanwhile, Kayser, a former teacher, continues to benefit from his ties to the teachers union. He is UTLA’s strongest ally on the board and the union’s political action committee, PACE, has spent $13,831 on phone banks and canvassing efforts to get him re-elected.

Kayser has also been endorsed by SEIU 99. It is the first time the service workers union with approximately 30,000 members working for the district, has thrown its support behind him, largely due to Kayser’s yes vote to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2015.

In effect, the proposal would insinuate UTLA into areas now the sole province of the board and LA Unified administration, giving the union greater influence in how all district schools would be managed and run.

The proposal also seeks to eliminate major administrative differences between the district’s traditional and charter schools, many of which operate with rules different from those governing traditional schools. For example, independent charters are not required to hire union teachers. The union proposal would require that all district schools be “held to the same standards of accountability, educational quality, equity, and transparency.”

While the district has not flat out rejected the request, made in October, it responded with a detailed memo last month that argues that the union’s proposed changes would violate state laws and create new burdens on the district.

“The proposal raises a number of major legal, jurisdictional, political and operational challenges,” the memo said. “It conflicts with existing laws, policies and established decision-making authority, creating a thicket of confusion, duplication, conflicts and litigation among the District, the County, and the Charter Schools. The Proposal would require creation of a significant new bureaucracy and legal team to administer and defend its dubious assumptions of authority.”

In an addendum to its response, the district expressed a willingness for further discussion on the union’s desire to improve overall educational opportunities and outcomes; and those, the district said, “will occur within the collective bargaining meetings and within the consultation process as appropriate, and will involve use of sub-committees and focus groups as needed.”

In an email to LA School Report, UTLA spokeswoman Suzanne Spurgeon insisted that the union’s demand for the full slate of changes “is still on the table.”

What this all means is anyone’s guess, inasmuch as the negotiators for the district and the union have been at it for months with little progress to show. They remain far apart in salary talks and on just about every other issue. Another bargaining session is scheduled for tomorrow.

While the union proposal frames most of the proposed changes in the spirit of improving overall educational outcomes, the district response was tailored to addressing the potential impact the changes would have on charters by drawing their oversight into collective bargaining. The district identified 16 areas of concern, including:

• Charter school employment policies and practices, including conditions and compensation.
• Employee protections in charter schools regarding due process, union organizing, complaints and administrative influence.
• Surveys, studies and report required for consideration of any new charter or co-located school.
• Approval, removal and recall of charter school governing board members.
• Regulation of conflict of interest by charter school governing boards, employees and agents.
• Location of charter school governing board meetings.
• Charter school compliance with laws.

The district said such “delegations of significant public policy and governance authority” to what is essentially a private organization raises “serious and troubling” issues that would undermine the ability to defend the changes in court. The district also cited the various laws and regulations that preclude the changes sought by the union.

Sarah B. Angel, Managing Regional Director, Advocacy—Los Angeles for the California Charter Schools Association, said the association was heartened by the district response.

“Independence and accountability are key factors in the success of the charter school movement,” she said in a statement “It’s encouraging to see that the district is committed to protecting these values. UTLA’s efforts to seize control of charter schools were clearly way beyond the scope of the law, and would have done nothing to improve student outcomes, and we’re glad that LAUSD has affirmed this.”

The California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) asked students, parents, teachers, leaders and supporters last year to share videos about their charter schools as part of a contest for thousands of dollars in cash prizes.

With the deadline now passed, the CCSA has received 47 submissions and is asking the public to view the videos and vote for winners. The video submissions can be seen here. (See one the the videos attached above.)

The One Movement. Many Voices video contest asked participants to answer the question, “How has a charter school positively impacted you, your family, and/or your community?” The first prize winner of the contest will be awarded a $5,000 prize and $10,000 donation to the California charter school of their choice.

The winners will be announced at the 22nd Annual California Charter Schools Association Conference in March, and the voting deadline is Feb. 5.

Grand opening of the Alliance Alice M. Baxter College-Ready High School in San Pedro (Credit: CCSA)

The Los Angeles region has seen the largest increases in the state in new charter schools this academic year, with 33 new charters opening, according to data released today by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

With the growth in LA and elsewhere, California remains the state with the most charter schools and students in the nation.

Across the state, 87 new charter have opened this school year, 34 have closed, and enrollment has grown by seven percent, resulting in an estimated 547,800 students enrolled charter schools in California, the data showed. There are also 91,000 students on the waiting list of charter schools in California, according to the CCSA.

“Year after year, we see parents demanding high quality school choice options for their children. This year is no exception,” Jed Wallace, president and CEO of CCSA, said in statement. “And more new schools are opening as independent charter public schools, making the most of the flexibility and autonomy that charters offer by doing whatever it takes to meet the individual needs of their students.”

LA Unified oversees about 250 independent and affiliated charter schools serving over 130,000 students, about 20 percent of all district students, making it the largest charter school authorizer in the nation, according to the district’s website. 

Valley Prep Charter in Van Nuys is not overseen by LAUSD

A tiny, rural school district in northern Los Angeles County is under growing scrutiny over its approval of more than 20 new charter schools in the last few years, the majority of them serving students outside of its own district boundaries. At least three are within the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The small district, called Acton-Agua Dulce Unified (AADUSD), is home to just three traditional schools, 1,100 students and one site-based charter school that opened just this year. The district is teetering on the brink of insolvency: it has seen a sharp drop in enrollment in recent years and not enough revenue to meet its budget needs of $10 million – all of which have contributed to its unusual charter policy.

“I’m not denying there is a financial component,” says Acton-Agua Dulce superintendent Brent Woodard, referring to the charter approvals. “But bottom line is I’m an advocate for kids.” He says the district has little choice because of its dwindling resources.  Approving the slew of new charters is good for the charters and good for his district, he says, which has charged up to a 7 percent fee to manage.

“We’ve been called rogue,” he said. “I would disagree.”

Charter schools are independently run but publicly funded schools, typically authorized by local districts that are responsible for overseeing operations and performance. The vast majority of the 1,200 charter schools in California operate within the boundaries of the districts that authorize them.

The large-scale approval approach taken by Acton-Agua Dulce has raised the ire of neighboring school districts, including Los Angeles Unified — where three of those charter schools, Valley Prep Academy 9-12, K-5, and 6-8 opened in the valley at the start of this school year.

Both LAUSD and another neighbor, Newhall Unified, have filed lawsuits to stop the charter schools from operating. According to Sue Ann Salmon Evans, a lawyer representing both LAUSD and Newhall Unified, these out-of-district approvals are a misuse of the charter school act, which states a charter should be located within district boundaries unless it is unable to do so. Those cases are considered “exceptions.”

“Just because they don’t have a building, should they be allowed to pepper the state with charter schools? That’s inconsistent with the charter school act,” she said.

Last month LA Superior court Judge James Chalfont partially agreed, ruling that a newly opened school in Newhall Unified, Einstein Academy, did not have a valid charter and must return to AADUSD to be re-authorized by early next year. The reason: more evidence is needed to establish that the school could claim an exception. The ruling also forbids AADUSD from basing its charter approvals on whether they generate revenue. But the judge allowed the school to continue operating without interruption.

LAUSD is awaiting action by the same judge, perhaps as early as this month.

Part of the issue can be reduced to accountability: while charter schools operate under plenty of scrutiny, their authorizing bodies, primarily school districts, have limited oversight.

“There is very little commonality,” says Myrna Castrejón of the California Charter School Association (CCSA). “There are districts that overreach; there are others that do a very poor job authorizing. We think its time to take a close look at the quality of charter authorization oversight.”

The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) is one entity that oversees school districts, but it does not have authority to tell a district what to do — and can only intervene if a district is financially unstable.

“We count the beans; we can’t tell them what to do with the beans” says Kostas Kalaitzidis, spokesman for the office.

In the case of Acton-Agua Dulce, an independent audit requested by LACOE found the district to be in near insolvency. Among other issues, the report questioned the high fee the district claimed to oversee the charters. In August it directed the district to cut that fee by $740,000, as well implement cost-saving measures such as layoffs.

But the county does not have the authority determine whether or not Acton-Agua Dulce’s proliferation of out-of-district approvals is a valid practice. That is up to the courts or the legislature.

In September, a bill intended to address the issue went to Governor Jerry Brown, but he vetoed it, saying that “while this bill attempts to solve a real problem,” it was written too broadly.

Both are considered high-performing schools; MSA-6 is a middle school in Palms serving about 140 students, and MSA-7 is an elementary school in Van Nuys which serve 300 students.

The document was sent by the district on June 27, to the schools’ non-profit parent organization, Magnolia Public Schools (MPS) which operates 11 schools across the state, some of which have also been subject to scrutiny.

Mehmet Argin, Chief Executive Officer of MPS says the decision by LAUSD to rescind their charters came with no warning, leaving families with few options. “Shocked. I was just shocked and surprised,” he told LA School Report.

In the letter, the district outlined the results of its recent audit that found ‘significant’ problems including what it said was a state of financial insolvency, accounting and reporting irregularities, and governance issues. In all, the district says the schools were “unlikely to successfully implement program[s]” and therefore did not meet the bar for their conditional renewal.

According to the letter, the audit revealed that:

• The parent company, MPS, met the IRS definition of being insolvent as of June 2013 and owed money to its schools. One of the schools Magnolia 6, also met the definition of insolvent, the other, Magnolia 7, operated in a deficit mode.
• The parent company did not document what the letter calls ‘inter-schools borrowing.’ The district said it was “not aware of any other CMO (Charter Management Organization) that borrows substantial money…from its schools.”
• The parent company paid more than $206,000 in immigration fees and lawyers in the past four years for non-employees.
• The parent company paid another non-profit called Accord $3 million dollars to carry out services, what it says is a third of its budget, and which has overlapping responsibilities with the charter operator such as accountability, curriculum development and professional development.

In response to the closures, MPS filed for an injunction last week in LA Superior Count to block the closures of the schools. A hearing is scheduled for July 24.

LAUSD would not comment on the letter due to the pending court hearing, and would not make the actual audit available to LA School Report for review.

Argin, Magnolia Public Schools CEO, said he was surprised that the district acted so swiftly in shutting down the schools. He says the district issued the notice of non-renewal just a day shy of the deadline, leaving the schools with no opportunity to discuss or appeal the decision.

“It was impossible for us to respond. To explain that they are wrong,” he said.

Argin categorically disputes all of the district’s material findings as they have been reported to MPS. In a letter to the district, MPS refutes the findings, arguing:

• The parent company is financially solvent, has nearly $5 million in net assets and expects to have $7 million by the end of the year. MPS contends the district is mistaken in evaluating the financial health of the individual schools because the parent company files a single consolidated tax return that includes the eight charter schools in LA Unified. With that understanding, a consolidated audit that was commissioned a year ago by Magnolia “clearly demonstrates that there is no danger of insolvency.”
• As for the the practice of inter-school borrowing, MPS does not classify the exchange of money as “loans,” but rather as “advances.” As such, it maintains there is no need for documentation.
• MPS does not deny that the non-profit Accord, provides instructional support and curriculum development for its schools. But MPS says the $3 million it paid Accord represents only 2.75 percent of the organization’s $110 million consolidated revenues, not the 30 percent the District alleges.
• The district’s allegation that the two charter schools paid more than $206,000 in immigration lawyers and fees in the past four years is completely unfounded. “To state or imply immigration related expenses were paid with school funds for non-school related activities or costs is factually incorrect”.

“We have no idea how they arrived at these numbers,” says Kim Onisko, MPS’s accountant, expressing frustration over not being able to access LA Unified’s internal audit. “Nowhere in their books and records could they tie out to that number.”

“These are not schools that are on the verge of shutting down. This is a company that is doing very well,” he said.

The abrupt nature of the closures is “highly unusual,” according to Ricardo Soto, general counsel of the Charter School Association. While both schools had been awarded charter renewals in a March meeting of the LAUSD school board, those renewals were contingent on one ‘condition’: that the schools undergo and pass a fiscal audit.

In recent memory Soto says he has “never seen a charter school have their renewal rescinded base on district staff determining that a condition hasn’t been met.”  If a district finds reasons to close a school it would typically start the process of revoking its charter, a sometimes lengthy process that allows feedback and is overseen by state law.

New Village Girls Academy

The problem for girls is boys.

Several years ago Elizabeth Hicks, a counseling coordinator for LA Unified, had an idea, to open the first all-girls traditional public school in California in more than a decade.

It would be a rigorous STEM academy, requiring girls to take science, math and computer classes from sixth grade through high school, and based in one of the district’s neediest neighborhoods. It would be a place where girls would learn and practice social and emotional skills and be encouraged to develop as independent, analytical thinkers — just as her daughter had become at a tony all girls private school.

But that idea, which was formalized into an application for the Girls Academic Leadership Academy (GALA) as a district experimental Pilot Schools, has been in legal limbo two years running.

“The stumbling block and the reason we’ve been stymied is the fear that there might be a lawsuit,” a frustrated Hicks told LA School Report.

Despite support from Superintendent John Deasy and at least one school board member, Hicks says, “I believe that the district’s legal department is afraid that we would have a challenge from some outside entity or internal entity that would say, you have to have an all boys school as well.”

That’s not the only problem.

It appears Hicks and a group of eight LA Unified teachers, administrators and data analysts who are behind the effort to launch the new academy have stumbled into a legal hornets nest of conflicting federal, state and local policies on the issue of single sex schools in a public school system.

While the federal government encourages them, the California State Board of Education has adopted regulations saying they are prohibited, except for rare instances in which they can demonstrate serving “students with similar therapeutic and educational needs,” according to a 2006 legal opinion from the Board, which sets policies that the California Department of Education (CDE) carries out.

But CDE officials say school districts have the autonomy to open a single sex school.

“That’s because California is a local control state,” Tina Jung, a CDE spokeswoman, said. “So that means the local education agencies, in this case school districts, have more authority to run their own operations than we do here at the state.”

No one at the state or the California Charter Schools Association could say precisely how many single sex schools are operating in California. One, the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area Community School, a public charter school in Oakland, operated from September 2012 through February of this year, when it closed due to financial problems.

The New Village Girls Academy, believed to be the first all girls school in the state opened as a charter school in Los Angeles in 2006 to provide college preparatory work for girls from underserved urban settings.

Jung said the standing ruling on the issue by the State Board of Education is governed by the 2006 legal memorandum.

“This is the latest document we have and it’s up to date so we’re still following what’s in this memo,” Jung said.

New Village said it was told by the State Board the principal legal barrier to opening a single-gender school is California’s Proposition 209.

Passed by voters in 1996, the law says “the state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

However, three months after the legal memo was written, the U.S. Department of Education amended Title IX laws to allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes as long as enrollment is voluntary, eliminating the requirement to demonstrate a specific need.

The only caveat — and this the problem for the Girls Academic Leadership Academy — is that districts launching these schools “must also make coeducational schools and classes of substantially equal quality available for members of the excluded sex.”

The amendments were designed to allow more experimentation in public schools under No Child Left Behind and several states have embraced the opportunity.

New York was the first, establishing the Young Women’s Leadership Network — a network of five schools all girl schools throughout New York City. Texas then launched the Foundation for the Education of Young Women, setting up schools in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Lubbock, and Houston.

Both of these efforts serve middle and high school girls and have impressive academic records. Students at the schools score among the highest on their respective state proficiency exams and the campuses that have expanded to include a senior class  report 100 percent of graduates are accepted into college.

That inspired Hicks and her team at LA Unified to model their pilot school,  GALA, after them.

Hicks says the proposal to start the school has had “no real objections” from the Pilot School Steering Committee or Donna Muncee, who heads LA Unified’s Intensive Support and Instruction.

“Everyone tells us, this is a good idea. That it would be awesome for our girls which data shows take a nose dive in math and science when they hit middle school,” Hicks said.

Data from LA Unified’s 2011-12 state standardized test scores shows the percentage of girls ranked proficient or advanced in science drops from 54 percent in the eighth grade to roughly 27 percent a year later.

That trend continues through high school and on Advanced Placement exams in math and science. Fewer girls than boys take the tests that could earn them college credit, and fewer still achieve a passing score.

Critics dismiss these types of findings as junk science and argue single sex schools reinforce gender stereotypes, and the district may be fearful of lawsuits. Several are in the works.

Earlier this week, for example, the ACLU filed a complaint with the federal Department of Education against Hillsborough County in Florida, saying its single-sex classrooms violate federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in schools receiving public money.

But Hicks says the benefits of the school would outweigh the misgivings. Over the last two years, while waiting for a definitive answer from LA Unified, she has been cultivating potential partnerships.

UCLA’s School of Computer Science, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and the National Center for Women and Technology have expressed interest in developing a curriculum for the school.

She adds, “We have a lot of independent companies that would like to invest. We have a relationship with the National Women in Technology. We’ve made a lot of contacts. We’re ready to launch. We’re ready to provide a lot of resources for the girls. We started to reach out to anybody we could think of and asking, If we launch this will you be a part of it? And we have yet to hear a no,” she said.

But Hicks is running out of patience. She says she’ll give “the pilot thing” one more chance, which would mean GALA, won’t open it’s doors until the 2015-16 school year. After that, she says she’ll consider trying to start the school as a charter.

“It’s just so sad,” she said, “that this this great thing is ready to happen but we’re just waiting.”

In LA Unified, the largest district in the state, an estimated 36,300 students are hoping to get a spot in either an affiliated or independent charter school next year, according to the report. The average number of students on a wait list for one of the 249 charters available to LA Unified students is 146.

Statewide, the number of students on charter wait lists is 91,000 —  an increase of 13,000 over last year — and the number jumps to 164,000 taking into account students who are on more than one wait list.

“Year after year parents are making their voices heard and they want to send their kids to charter schools,” Jed Wallace, president and CEO, California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) said in statement.

“And each year the California Charter Schools Association works harder to ensure that no barrier – at the state or local level – prevents us from making good on our promise to provide a high quality public charter school education to all students in California.”

Statewide, CCSA, estimates more than half a million students are enrolled in California’s 1,130 charter schools, 104 of which opened for the 2013-2014 school year.

They filed an appeal with the LA County Board of Education and now have a public hearing scheduled March 18, with the board’s vote expected on April 15.

“We have gone through appeals processes before, and we are confident that the county will approve these charters, given the great success that these schools are having in serving students and families in Huntington Park,” James Willcox, Chief Executive Officer of Aspire, told LA School Report.

“We remain committed to keeping these schools open and serving our students. We expect approval of both charters, just now under a different authorizer.”

The two Aspire schools serve predominantly low-income, Latino students — and serve them well: The latest API score for AMLA is 835; for Ollin, 803.

Yet despite their strong academic performances, the LA Unified board voted against the renewals, 4-2, because of the schools’ refusal to provide special education to their students by going directly through an LA Unified-administered services plan.

Each California school district is required to provide special services to schools through what’s known as a SELPA – Special Education Local Planning Area — with state money for services flowing through the district to the local service providers and specialist.

Since 2010, however, the state has given charter schools the right to seek services from an outside SELPA, in effect, going around LAUSD, depriving the district of funds and oversight.

Board member Steve Zimmer said the same issue was raised last year.

“We need to be assured that all charters are under this SELPA – and that is my only objection,” he said at the time, adding, “We are taking the advantages that are allied to us by state law in the renewal process to raise questions that have to do with the oversight, which is totally within our bounds.”

Among 12 Aspire charter schools in LA Unified, five do not participate in the district’s special education plan.

Wilcox said participating in the district’s SELPA is uniquely expensive for Aspire and it doesn’t give them the same flexibility or allow them to use all of their resources.

After the board vote, Kate Ford, LA-area Superintendent for Aspire, wrote to parents to explain the situation.

“The four board members do not agree with the way our special education program is governed,” she wrote. “However, by California state law, Aspire has the right to choose the way special education is organized and overseen. In fact, AMLA and Ollin have excellent special education programs and staff, with students who are achieving and being very successful.”

She also reassured parents that school officials would do everything possible to keep the schools from closing.

“If we have to, we will take the appeal all the way to the California State Board of Education,” she wrote. “AMLA and Ollin will go forth doing great things for our students and families.”

Meanwhile, the California Charter Schools Association, an advocacy group that seeks to expand quality charter schools and empower parents and educators to provide high quality education for all children, believes that the school board failed to comply with the law but remains positive that LA County will come through.

“We feel confident LA County will do the right thing,” said Sarah Angel, the association’s regional director.

The state saw the start of 104 charter schools, bringing its total to 1,130. Almost 520,000 California students of more than 6 million now attend charters in the state. Other states with big charter school gains were Arizona, with 87 new ones, and Florida, with 75.

LA Unified continues to lead the growth among school districts, with 32 new charters that serve about 15,000 students, according to the California Charter School Association (CCSA).  There are now 263 charter schools serving 143,580 students in LAUSD. That’s about about 20 percent of the student population.

According to a report issued last month by the CCSA, charter high schools in Los Angeles are outperforming traditional district schools in graduating college-ready students of all backgrounds. Charter schools enroll 19 percent of Los Angeles high school students and deliver 37 percent of the city’s college-ready graduates, the report found.

In California, charters are publicly-funded schools that are generally overseen by local school boards but exempt from some laws governing school districts. While they must operate as non-profit organizations by state law, they receive most funding directly from the state, bypassing the district, thus drawing criticism by supporters of traditional public schools.