Anti-charter bill runs into trouble
Financial impact would become factor
A bill sponsored by the California Teachers Association to radically change the state’s charter school law and give districts unappealable power to reject charter petitions failed to win majority support of the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday.
That doesn’t mean the end of AB 1172, but its author, Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, a Democrat representing Whittier and Norwalk, will have to make changes he so far hasn’t agreed to if it’s to stand a chance. Only two Democrats on the 11-member committee voted to support the bill.
The bill, which raised the charter community’s threat alert from orange to red, would make three major changes. It would:
- Enable a district for the first time to reject charters based on the district’s financial condition;
- Prohibit county offices of education and the State Board of Education from approving charters on appeal, based on the merits of the application;
- Remove the counties’ and the State Board’s ability to approve charters of countywide and statewide interest.
Pieces of the bill have been introduced before, but AB 1172 is different in its full-scale assault on the charter law. In 2006, the Legislature passed a bill that would have given districts the right to deny charters based on negative financial impacts. In his veto message, Gov. Schwarzenegger wrote, “While I understand the plight of school districts faced with fiscal challenges of declining enrollment and other management issues, I cannot condone allowing them to deny parents and students their rights to petition for the establishment of a charter school.”
Mendoza was an elementary school teacher for a decade and a CTA and National Education Assn. representative before turning to politics. In a statement and a press release, he said that giving local districts more oversight would help achieve the original intent of the law, to encourage charters to become laboratories of innovation and share best practices. He said charters have strayed from this mission, although successful charter groups like Aspire, KIPP, and High Tech High would assert they are both innovative and different from district schools. There’s no question that there are tensions with charters in many districts; it’s not clear how AB 1172 would improve relations, other than to guarantee there would be far fewer charters in the future.
Appeals process gives charters a fair shake
The charter law created an appeals process because legislators recognized an inherent conflict in having school trustees decide charter proposals they viewed not as an exercise in parent choice but as theft of their students. Some districts are outwardly antagonistic to charters and make up reasons to deny petitions, as San Jose Unified did several years ago in rejecting Rocketship Education’s first school. Were it not for Santa Clara County trustees, who gave the proposal a second read, one of the state’s most innovative charter organizations might not have gotten off the ground.
Some county offices of ed are also anti-charter, which is why the State Board of Education is the final arbiter. It has not abused its power, approving 20 charter petitions and three charters of statewide interest.
The bill would remove the power of substantive review by a county office and State Board and permit overriding a local district’s charter denial only on the grounds of a procedural violation. And then the charter would be sent back to the local district to fix the violation.
Charter law also permits county offices and the State Board to grant charters of countywide and statewide interest, respectively, if the charters would serve students or provide a distinct program beyond a single district or county. The CTA challenged the authority of the State Board to issue statewide interest charters; an appeals court sided with the CTA and has ordered the State Board to define statewide interest in regulations. AB 1172 would abolish the authority.
In its bill analysis, the Education Committee staff recommended an amendment to restore the current appeals process and the provisions authorizing charters of countywide and statewide interest. Mendoza rejected the amendment.
Bright line excluding financial impact
The charter law excluded the potential financial impact of a charter on a district as grounds for denying a petition, although some districts have rejected charters on that basis, without saying so explicitly, for years.
Charter advocates argue that parental choice should be the first priority and that districts must learn to adapt when dollars follow the child. And some dollars remain in the district anyway; charter schools aren’t entitled to parcel taxes and some categorical program money.
But, particularly in districts with declining enrollments, with successive years of state cuts in education, the loss of tuition of hundreds of students can have a substantial effect, contributing to districtwide layoffs and loss of programs. Although it’s hard to quantify the impact, charters overall have admitted fewer special needs students, who cost more to educate.
Franklin-McKinley in San Jose is a 10,000 student elementary district that has welcomed high-performing charters like Rocketship. Superintendent John Porter says the district can accommodate four or five charters, but only if they are phased in, to avoid putting the district at financial risk.
Mendoza’s bill lacks subtle distinctions. Most, though probably not all, districts would be able to cite a negative financial impact as reason to reject a charter out of hand.
Any district with a negative or qualified financial certification could reject a charter; currently about 10 percent of districts, including Los Angles Unified, have that status, and that number will grow with further state cuts to schools. Some of these districts have been mismanaged or, as Schwarzenegger said in his veto message, failed to make “tough decisions” – and shouldn’t be rewarded at parents’ and students’ expense.
Any district that could prove financial distress to the county office of education could cite a negative financial impact, as could any district with declining enrollment that plans to close a school that a charter has identified as a site.
Determining the financial impact of a charter school is complex and disputable, which may be a reason the drafters of the charter law created a bright line excluding any consideration of it. Mendoza’s bill, at the CTA’s urging, would wipe out the bright line. That gave most members of the committee pause.
What this proves is that our elected officials and the teachers unions don’t give one iota about the students. This is all about traditional schools being union strongholds whose only concern is revenue flow, which charter schools threaten. This has NOTHING to do with the education of children, as they are so quick to say.
There are a slew of issues in education that this legislature could do something about (which has nothing to do with charters), but alas, it’s more politics as usual. Just like the legislature advancing gay/lesbian legislation during this crisis. I’m in favor of gay marriage, but how can these idiots say that was the most pressing educational issue that required action? It’s all politics.
No wonder California is imploding.
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The fiscal distress standard in AB 1172 was subtly very low. The district would merely need to demonstrate “fiscal distress” (an undefined term) relative to the regulatory standards and criteria that govern school district budget review.
These include a 5-page list of standards and criteria. Nearly every district in the state could demonstrate this given current economic conditions and the huge number of factors listed in the 5-page criteria and standards regulations. These include spending down cash reserves, not making contributions toward deferred facilities maintenance, anemic revenue growth, and other practices that apply to nearly all of the state’s school districts.
Though the legislature has rejected this particularly silly over-reach by CTA, other virulent anti-charter measures are moving quickly through the legislature. One such measure, AB 925, would impose most of the laws governing classified employees in school districts on charter schools, including granting “permanent status” (tenure) to those employed for 12 or more months and dozens of other provisions that ham-string the management of vital support staff. Several other anti-charter measure are also pending including ones that would impose complex restrictions on governmental entities–these would create a confusing legal minefield for charter schools that must also follow the laws governing similar topics for nonprofit corporations.
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I object to the portrayal of school board members as though they have some inherent unfair bias against charter schools. Until we live in a time when all our schools have all the money they need, no one who cares about kids and schools could object to allowing “districts the right to deny charters based on negative financial impacts.”
Conscientious school board commissioners look at the best interests of their district, schools and students overall. Many school board members believe that approving charters, in many cases, tends to work against the best interests of their district, schools and students overall. How is that not a valid, sound viewpoint? How should it not be respected? How should outsiders (as I’ve said before, I especially single out newspaper editorial writers) believe that they know better and have the right to brand these school board members as having an unfair bias?
Some (an unknown number, to me) California charter schools benefited from an unfair advantage in funding until that was remedied with legislation in 2006. The old structure required districts to fund charter schools at a certain level, even if that was more than their own schools got. Here in San Francisco, that meant that charter high schools got ~$800 more per student per year than public high schools — subsidized at the expense of the public high school students.
What school board member of conscience and principle would approve a charter high school under those circumstances? Rhetorical question.
Yet even then the editorial boards and other charter boosters were yelling when BOEs voted down charters.
It’s the role of a school board commissioner to act in the best interests of the entire district. It’s just wrong to limit their right to do so and attack them for doing so.
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The allegedly-unfair funding differential for charter schools serving elementary versus high school grades continues under California’s General-Purpose Grant system for chartered schools.
This differential is designed to reflect the typical differences in spending in a typical California school district where most districts spend less per student at the elementary level versus the high school level. As such, the charter funding rates vary by grade span. Charter elementary schools get a lot less per student than a K-12 district, and high schools get more. The local school district is allowed to pocket the additional funds related to charter elementary students and must pay the differential for charter high school students.
One can argue over whether the size of the differential is appropriate, but I’m not aware of any rational school district business official who objects to the fundamental policy of differential funding based on grade span. FWIW, this differential was put in place at the urging of many of California’s K-12 districts and is based on statewide average funding rates for school districts.
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I definitely can’t claim expertise in school finance. But there was a bill by Carole Migden that changed that particular differential situation — signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger because he feared that the increased burden would discourage school districts from approving charters.
I believe that Novato Unified was the primary force behind that bill. Novato had two public high schools and, at the time, Envision’s Marin School of Arts & Technology charter — so with the two public schools getting the $800 less per student than MSAT, the situation was really clear-cut — that is, with only three schools.
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Charter schools require time on the part of school district officials…time they have to take away from thier district, their kids, thier mission. This is the oversight responsibility written into law. In some cases, districts do not have the manpower of the expertise to oversee a charter, such as would be the case when the State practically forces a district to accept a charter that operats outside the District’s scope (K-12 charter in a K-8 District).
As far as special education goes, it is a joke to say that charters provide any special education services at all. While some may, most defer these services on the District (the charter’s choice, not the District’s). If enrolled in a District, special education children generate unrestricted dollars in addition to sepcial education dollars. If enrolled in a charter school, the unrestricted dollars goes to the charter school that does not spend one dollar for the child that generated the dollar, and the special education dollar goes to the district, who now has to spend “it’s” unrestricted dollar” taking it away from it’s child. As an example: the revenue limit amount per child is $5000; the special education catagorical money is $800 per child. An enrollee in a district generates a maximum of $5800 to provide a service that may cost up to $12,000/child. If the enrollee is at a charter, the $5,000 goes to the charter to do with as they please, and the District gets $800 while being forced to provide $12,000 of service. I’ll leave it to someone to figure out the “undefined fiscal distress” on a District.
Charter schools receive a catagorical block grant for catagorical programs and many do not apply for federal caagorical moneys that they qualify for because they do not wnat to be accountable for the federal restrictions…so much for “the catagorical programs for which charters are not entitled”.
Charter schools, while separate entities form Districts, continually are lumped into the District’s stattitics by the State. While this is fine for District-run charter schools, it is slanderous for “independent” charter schools over which the district has no control. In many cases the high number of dropouts attributed to a district belong to the charter school over which the disttict has no control.
And charter schools are not that innovative and their educational program is not necessarily superior to that of the District.
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It proves that we see how charter school cause segregation and if they kick your kid out because he or she has special needs you’ll find u have zero recourse. deregulation and privatization through charter schools is damaging and should stop. check out these links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVY6tOXjUto
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_HwI6S92Eo&feature=related
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Caroline says:
<i>Until we live in a time when all our schools have all the money they need, no one who cares about kids and schools could object to allowing “districts the right to deny charters based on negative financial impacts.”</i>
Until we live in a time when the Post Office has all the money it needs, no one should object to the fact that local Post Office employees are given the power to block FedEx and UPS from serving any customers in a given town. They’re just looking out for the customers (really!!! we swear!!!) when they vote to block customers from having any choice that might mean the Post Office (which happens to be themselves) getting less money.
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The equivalent of Caroline’s position:
Until we live in a time when the Post Office has all the money it needs, no one should object to the fact that local Post Office employees are given the power to block FedEx and UPS from serving any customers in a given town. They’re just looking out for the customers (”really!!! we swear!!!”) when they vote to block customers from having any choice that might mean the Post Office (i.e., themselves) getting less money.
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Caroline,
>I object to the portrayal of school board members as though they have some inherent unfair bias against charter schools
Surely your joking. To those who are interested in union corruption of school board elections I deeply recommend http://www.tinyurl.com/teacherunions The conflict of interest is inherent, obvious, and proven. Just look at states where the LEAs are the primary chartering authority. Amazing how few charter schools you see.
Here’s the hard math. Unions win 4 of 5 school board races in which they participate. The odds go down when they actually care about a race. To maintain a reform majority over 10 years would require winning at least 3 board races depending on term lenth. Assuming the optimistic scenario you have 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.2 = 0.008 probability of maintaining a union counter-balance through school board elections, in a decade. That’s 1% in a best case scenario. Which is exactly why Caroline and her pal at PURE and the teacher unions just love school board elections.
http://edobserver.blogspot.com/2011/02/school-board-elections-this-game-is.html
Caroline herself became an activist because she couldn’t stand the idea of her son going Miraloma. By some miracle, she got him into Miraloma . If the money followed the child, as it does today in SFO, do you think the folks at Miraloma should have had a veto? If they were able to say no would you suspect poor judgement or a clear and present conflict of interest? Scenario A, you can say no and fire nobody. Scenario B, you can let Caroline’s kid leave and maybe you’ll need to RIF somebody.
What would have happened if Miraloma staff had been the jury, judge and executioner for William’s future, Caroline? Is William better off because you rejected the school to which he was assigned and moved mountains to find him a better school?
http://reason.com/archives/2006/04/01/the-agony-of-american-educatio
You seem to be OK now with the idea of public school choice from among unionized schools, isn’t that right, Caroline? So it’s really about unions then isn’t it. Ah, the crux of the matter. You just may be smarter than you appear. School board elections provide just the legitimacy that your union run schools need to perpetuate themselves. Socialism laundered by Democracy!
As for funding, what a crock. Rigging special education funding and appeals is alone enough to kill indepenedent California charter schools.
AB1172 is very much alive in the hearts and minds of the CTA, Sacramento’s largest lobbying group. That it will pass is just a matter of time. Tick, tock, tick, tock.
The CTA agenda is alive and well and devastating.
Anthony
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Hmm, that got the privatizers going.
Anthony, I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve in trying to make my activism all about my kids and my personal situation, but it doesn’t really work. For one thing, it’s not about my kids or my personal situation, and for another, you’re writing about it without grasping the situation — the only thing I can figure out is that you’re in a complete muddle.
Stuart, your analogy doesn’t make sense either. My understanding is that school board members in most places are paid the same way SFUSD school board members are — a modest, flat stipend. In SFUSD it’s $500/month. Whether they approve or don’t approve a charter has no impact on that — and furthermore, if they were doing anything for the money, it wouldn’t be holding an office that paid $500/month (especially when, at least in SF, the campaign to get the office costs quite a bit).
For that matter, if teachers were in it for the money, teachers would have chosen another career too — but the fact is that teachers aren’t school boards and have no voice in a decision as to whether to approve or reject a charter school proposal. In fact, it’s illegal for a teacher working in a district to serve as a school board commissioner in the same district (at least in California).
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That’s right, school board members are all in it just for the kids. No self interest at all. Ok, maybe a few are in it a little bit for the power, and the ego gratification, and occasionally for the influence they gain over their own child’s education in the district. Oh, and maybe a few more use it as a stepping stone to higher office, once they convince the key unions and contractors of their fealty. (Note how many Sact’o politicos started in the local school board.) Oh, and maybe a few others just want the generous medical benefits, which in my district allows our part-time board members to get coverage worth 3 times the “allowance” that the teachers get. But other than that, they’re all just in it for the kids. Oh please.
If school districts get to apply any sort of financial hardship criterion to charter approvals, and then eliminate county and state appeals, you can kiss charter approvals and renewals goodbye. Even with these protections, there are districts that have refused and blocked almost every charter application in the last 18 years. We just have to acknowledge that so long as the ed monopoly remains as large as it is, their reactionary opposition to choice will continue to threaten students.
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Jim Mills, I didn’t say that school board members are all in it just for the kids. That’s a straw man.
While they serve for a pittance in my district and I believe in many/most districts, a lot of school board members are hoping to move to further elected office, or may have some other self-interest. School board members do get benefits in my district.
But it’s irrelevant whether school board members are totally altruistic or entirely venal and self-interested. The point is that school board members aren’t personally impacted financially in the slightest when a charter school takes students and resources from district schools — not the tiniest little bit. So any implication that school board members oppose charters due to their own financial interest doesn’t make sense and doesn’t jibe with reality.
I’m just pointing out that Stuart’s analogy doesn’t work. School board members aren’t personally impacted financially when a charter school takes students and resources from district schools.
But the analogy further doesn’t make sense because teachers aren’t personally impacted financially either, in any direct way, when a charter school takes students and resources from district schools. In an extreme case, a district school might close, I suppose, so you could argue that teachers would fear losing their jobs.
But that still doesn’t improve Stuart’s analogy, because teachers aren’t school board members.
It’s the other district schools and the students in them that suffer the harm when a charter school takes students and resources from them.
As I said, it’s a school board member’s job to make decisions based on the best interests of the district as a whole and all the students and schools in the district. When a school board member believes that a charter will drain students and resources from existing schools, harming those schools and the students in them, rejecting the charter is obviously the responsible thing to do.
Of course, current law prohibits that school board member from behaving responsibly and making the decision based on the best interests of the district as a whole and all the students and schools in the district. I honestly don’t see how anyone rational can defend that.
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The point, Caroline, as Anthony also made clear above, is that school board members are beholden to interests other than the interests of the students in the district, and those interests — particularly the unions — want to maintain the size and hegemony of the district. They fact is that they do often have an inherent and quite open bias against charters. The ”straw man” is suggesting that the issue is about the individual financial interests of teachers or board members. Even though a charter might well be in the interests of the students in a district, board members too often vote to keep the charter out, because the unions who keep board members in office expect that. And they tend to get what they want. It is simply contrary to the data and everyday experience to try to maintain otherwise. Board members don’t need financial excuses. They can simply rely on “staff” analyses that pick apart applications and tally up reams of pages criticizing charter applicants’ proposed education program according to criteria that would never be rigorously applied to the district’s own traditional schools.
Incidentally, almost any school administrator who promoted School Choice or tried to work proactively with other education models outside the district monopoly would also be risking career suicide in most states, certainly here in California.
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I disagree that that even makes logical sense, Jim Mills. To begin with, you’re changing the story that Stuart and Anthony told — though that’s not the important point.
In my district, BOE members vary as to their attitude toward charters. The one who is most consistently skeptical of charters is a veteran member (Jill Wynns) who was supported by the union (UESF) originally but has not won their endorsement the last two elections due (in my observation) to having simply been forced to make too many tough decisions in budget crises during her tenure.
The UESF endorsements in the past couple of elections have included members who were more favorable toward charters. There simply isn’t a consistent pattern of union support=charter opposition, at least not here in SF.
You’re casting about for sinister-sounding motives to ascribe to board of ed members who don’t support charters (”maintain the size and hegemony of the district”). That’s just a way to make it sound like a negative, sinister thing when responsible board of ed members oppose a proposal that would harm existing schools by draining students and resources from them.
What’s the difference between thoughtfully and responsibly opposing a proposal that would harm existing schools and having “an inherent and quite open bias against charters”? Rhetorical question — again, the answer is that your wording is a way to make a rational, responsible, prudent position sound like wrongdoing.
False: ” The ”straw man” is suggesting that the issue is about the individual financial interests of teachers or board members.” That IS the exact story that Stuart Buck told. I pointed out that it was invalid.
I disagree that BOE members vote down charters at unions’ behest, and as I point out, that’s clearly not the case in SFUSD. And, by the way, Wynns is known to scrutinize charter applications more sharply than SFUSD staff does.
This is quite obviously not true: “Incidentally, almost any school administrator who promoted School Choice or tried to work proactively with other education models outside the district monopoly would also be risking career suicide in most states, certainly here in California. ” LAUSD and OUSD have had a series of superintendents and managers who promoted charters. SFUSD’s Bill Rojas in the 1990s was an avid early supporter, bringing Edison Schools into our district. (Rojas was later discredited for the rampant corruption and mismanagement under his regime –concidence? I think not…) Rojas later moved to Dallas and brought charters in there, including a batch of Edison schools, before he was fired. Nationwide, just turn to any district with a Broad-trained manager, though look fast because they keep being forced to leave under clouds too. There are superintendents aggressively charterizing all over the country.
It’s kind of a waste of everybody’s time to make arguments that are so obviously not based on reality.
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I heard this is coming back for a vote.. ?
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