Legal Clips, [September 2007]Some California charter school operators are up in arms about a pending state bill they say will limit the ability of new charters to open across the state. The legislation restricts the authority of the California State Board of Education to approve new charter schools, instead ensuring that power rests primarily with local school boards. The effect, charter advocates fear, is that they will have little recourse in districts where the local school board is hostile to the entire concept of charters, regardless of the merits of a particular application. But they are particularly incensed by what they say is a tricky political maneuver by lawmakers, who included $18 million in the bill to fund facilities grants for charter schools in low-income areas. That means if charter school advocates who oppose the policy change are successful in defeating the bill, they end up cutting their own funding. "This is just a sneak move," says Mike Piscal, founder and CEO of Inner City Education Foundation, which runs nine charter schools in South Los Angeles. "It's a move designed in that part of the bill to punish the highest-performing charter management organizations—the highest-performing organizations that have been serving the poor."
Under current law, local school boards have the primary responsibility for charters, but the state board can approve "statewide benefit charters" without local approval under certain conditions, such as a determination that the schools provide an overall statewide benefit and draw from a student body in more than one district.
Some state legislators believe the current "statewide benefit" provision is a loophole that charter operators are exploiting in order to allowing them to go to the state board to avoid dealing with local boards that are hostile to the concept of charter schools. "I believe firmly the way charter schools are approved is through local districts," says California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez. "I don't have a problem with charter schools—I support them. But I don't like local governments to be circumvented." Right now, there are only two charter school operators that have been approved for statewide benefit charters. But organizations such as the California School Boards Association, the California Teachers Association, and the Association of California School Administrators say that in one of those cases the state board overstepped its authority. "Nothing in the petition reveals a 'statewide benefit' defined by the Board's own regulations," the groups wrote. "This is simply an effort to avoid the 'bother' of having to apply to local school districts for approval and endure monitoring by local officials." Roger Magyar, the state board’s executive director, says the board has been careful to limit how many statewide benefit charters it approves, and it only allows those organizations to start two new schools per year. Gregory McNair, head of Los Angeles Unified School District's charter school division, says he doesn't expect the bill to impact the district significantly. "First of all, the state board does not really charter many schools …," he says. "Second, the qualifications for being a statewide charter are very high." Charter operators say going to the state board simply allows them to avoid having to deal with multiple local bureaucracies. "It's not about whether local districts are willing to approve charters," says Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Association. "It's about making sure you can quickly replicate high-quality schools according to a consistent model."
Contra Costa Times By Harrison Sheppard
[Editor’s Note: The first article below reports on the indictment of the founder of a large California charter school network on charges of grand theft and misappropriation of funds and on some of the strengthened state accountability efforts that have resulted. The second article describing the increasing popularity of charter schools in New Mexico reports that the state legislature last session amended that state’s charter school law to allow applicants to go directly to the state to seek a charter.]
Los Angeles Times By Maeve Reston & Mitchell Landsberg
Santa Fe New Mexican By John Sena