Transcript Balancing Act: A Board’s Role in Charter School Oversight Presented by: Sue Ann Evans, Dannis Woliver Kelley Moises Aguirre, San Diego Unified School District.

Balancing Act: A Board’s Role in
Charter School Oversight
Presented by:
Sue Ann Evans, Dannis Woliver Kelley
Moises Aguirre, San Diego Unified School District
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What is a Charter School?
• Public school that operates:
– independent of the chartering entity
– exempt from most of the Education Code
– exempt from laws applicable solely to school
districts
– under chartering entity “oversight”
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The Charter Schools Act of 1992
• Purpose -- to provide opportunities to establish and maintain
schools that operate independently from the school district to:
– Improve school learning
– Increase learning opportunities for all pupils, with emphasis on
academically low achieving
– Encourage innovative teaching methods
– Create new professional opportunities
– Provide parents with expanded choice within the public school system
– Hold charters accountable for meeting pupil outcomes
– Provide vigorous competition to stimulate improvement
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“Charter schools are grounded in private-sector
concepts such as competition-driven improvement
..., employee empowerment and customer focus.
But they remain very much a public-sector creature,
with in-bred requirements of accountability and
broad-based equity. Simple in theory, complex in
practice, charter schools promise academic results in
return for freedom from bureaucracy.”
(Wilson v. State Board of Ed. (1999) 75 Cal.App.4th 1125.)
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Boards are called upon to answer the BIG
questions:
• Should this petition be granted to establish an independently
operated school within our boundaries?
• Should this school be converted from a school of the district to an
independently operated charter school?
• Should this charter be renewed?
• Should we take action to revoke the charter?
• How will we allocate space to the charter school and maintain
district programs?
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The BIG questions are often emotional, invoke heated
debate, and can be very divisive - and it all unfolds in
front of you…
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• Should this petition be granted to establish an
independently operated school within our
boundaries?
– Legal Standard for Review of Charter Petitions:
The Charter Schools Act provides a governing board may
not deny a charter petition unless it makes written factual
findings, specific to the petition in question, setting forth
specific facts to support one or more of five listed findings
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• Five findings for denial of a charter petition:
– Petition presents an unsound educational program
– Petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to successfully
implement the described program
– The petition does not contain required signatures
– The petition does not contain required affirmations
– The Petition does not contain reasonably comprehensive
description of all required elements
• Invokes the board’s discretion
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• Considerations:
– Is this educational program good for students?
– Do the petitioners understand what it means to run an
educational program?
– What impacts will there be on district budget/programs?
– Do we want to be the oversight agency?
– As an oversight agency, do the terms of the charter provide us
with the means to objectively measure performance?
– Does our community want this and if so, why?
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• Should this school be converted from a school of the
district to an independently operated charter school?
– Same legal standard for evaluating the charter petition,
but also consider:
Has the petition been signed by not less than 50 percent of
the permanent status teachers currently employed at the
public school to be converted?
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• Considerations:
– Can the program offered by the charter provide more and/or
better opportunities than what is offered by the school under
the district’s control?
– Do the petitioners/teachers understand the change in terms and
conditions of employment and loss of union representation?
– What impacts will there be on district budget/programs?
– Do the teachers at the site and our community want this, and if
so, why?
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• Should this charter be renewed?
Legal standard for Renewal Petition: same legal standard for
consideration of a charter petition but also consider:
– Whether the charter school is eligible for renewal (Ed.
Code, § 47607 (a).)
– Legislative intent to “hold the schools …accountable for
meeting measurable pupil outcomes, and provide the
schools with a method to change from rule-based to
performance-based accountability systems.” (Ed. Code, §
47601 (f).)
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S.B. 1290 (2012)
“The authority that granted the charter shall
consider increases in pupil academic
achievement for all groups of pupils served by
the charter school as the most important
factor in determining whether to grant a
charter renewal.”
(Ed. Code, § 47607(a).)
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Considerations:
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Has the charter school’s past academic, operational, and fiscal
performance (as opposed to plans for future improvement)
demonstrated the ability to effectively provide a quality education to
students in compliance with law and the charter?
Has the charter school increased student performance?
Has academic performance increased for all groups of students served
by the charter school?
Has the charter school been cooperative and compliant?
How has the oversight role impacted the district’s budget/programs?
Has the “freedom from bureaucracy” improved student performance?
“… [C]harter schools promise academic results in return for freedom
from bureaucracy.” (Wilson v. State Board of Education.)
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• Should we take action to revoke this charter?
Legal Standards for Revocation: A charter may be revoked by
the authority that granted the charter if the authority finds,
through a showing of substantial evidence, that the charter
school did any of the following:
– Committed a material violation of any of the conditions,
standards or procedures set forth in the charter
– Failed to meet or pursue any of the pupil outcomes
identified in the charter
– Failed to meet generally accepted accounting principles
– Violated any provision of law
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Revocation Procedure
• Notice of violation issued by the Board
• If notice of violation process does not address concern to
authorizer’s satisfaction:
– Written notice of intent to revoke and notice of facts in support of
revocation to charter school
– Public hearing before the governing board with 30 days of notice
of intent
– No later than 30 days after the public hearing, the chartering
authority shall issue a final decision to revoke or decline to revoke
the charter
(Ed. Code, § 47607(e).)
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Notice of Violation
• When is the time right to issue a notice of violation?
• An authorizer should issue a notice of violation
whenever it has evidence to show:
– material violation of charter
– failure to meet pupil outcomes
– fiscal mismanagement
– violation of law
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Revocation Decision
• Where evidence shows that:
– charter school committed material violation of the charter; failed to meet
pupil outcomes; engaged in fiscal mismanagement; and/or violated provisions
of law, and,
– failed to remedy or demonstrate to the Board's satisfaction the ability to
remedy
Decision to revoke may be in the best interests of the students and
the oversight agency.
– students are entitled to quality education in a safe and stable environment
– district may be held liable for debts and obligations of the charter school if it
fails to meet its oversight obligations
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In order for an oversight agency to protect itself
from liability for the charter school’s debts,
obligations, acts, errors or omissions, it must meet
all of the oversight duties including taking action to
revoke where charter school fails to remedy
material violations.
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Considerations:
• Will students be better off even if displaced?
• Do we have systems in place to address transition
including special needs students?
• Are we willing to take on the charter school’s liability?
• Are we prepared to close the school in the face of student,
parent, community upset?
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• How will we allocate space to the charter school
and maintain district programs?
Legal Standard for Allocation of Facilities:
A district must allocate reasonably equivalent facilities to a charter
school that has at least 80 ADA “in-district” students. The facilities
must be reasonably equivalent to the facilities the students would
be provided if they attended the (comparison) district schools and
must be “contiguous, furnished and equipped” as those terms are
defined in statute and the implementing regulations.
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"[W]e conclude a school district’s exercise of its
discretion in responding to a Proposition 39 facilities
request must comport with the evident purpose of
the Act to equalize the treatment of charter and
district-run schools with respect to the allocation of
space between them."
(Ridgecrest v. Sierra Sands Unified School District
(2005) 130 Cal.App.4th 986.)
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"A holding that the District must provide facilities a
charter school requests, on demand and without
regard to overcrowding or the impact on other public
school students, would tip the balance too far in
favor of the charter school."
(Los Angeles International Charter High School v. Los
Angeles Unified School District (2013) 209 Cal.App.4th
1348.)
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• Considerations:
– Does the allocation of space strike a fair balance between the needs of
students attending the charter school and the needs of district students?
– Though maybe not perfect, does the space comport with the size and kind
of space the charter students would be housed in if they attended the
district schools?
– Is this a safe environment for charter students and district students?
– If co-locating, do we have systems in place to ensure cooperative sharing
arrangements?
– What are the impacts on the district’s budget/programs of allocating
space to the charter school?
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• What information should I have to make this
important decision?
– Consider study session for petition review, renewal, and allocation of
facilities
– Clear explanation on the process the district will follow for each of the
areas under consideration before the process is initiated
– Impacts and legal analysis of the specific petition, conversion, renewal,
revocation, allocation of facilities
– Analysis of Board’s options and consequences for each option,
including impacts on district budget/programs
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Sue Ann Evans
Dannis Woliver Kelley
[email protected]
(562) 366-8500
Moises Aguirre
San Diego Unified School District
[email protected]
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