Is There A New Sheriff In Town?

“a charter school that is not fulfilling its agreed legal obligations of repaying their debt to LAUSD students as a consequence of taking away much-needed space should face consequences, such as having their [charter] petition revoked.”

- Dr. Rocio Rivas

The millions of dollars that the charter school industry has spent on LAUSD political campaigns over the years has allowed its publicly funded private schools to operate within the district with limited oversight. This has endangered the health and safety of students attending public schools and reduced the funding available to those with special education needs. It has also had an effect on the district’s finances.

One example of the lack of oversight by the Charter School Division (CSD) can be found in the failure to collect overallocation fees from charter schools that co-locate on LAUSD campuses under PROP-39. Under state law charters that overestimated their incoming attendance enrollment and, therefore, take more space from their host school are supposed to be assessed a specific penalty. However, under the leadership of Jose Cole-Gutierrez, a former staff member of the California Charter School Association (CCSA), the CSD has allowed millions of dollars to go unpaid.

Last April, Cole-Gutierrez reduced the balance owed by 37 charter schools by $7,678,022. While the Director of the CSD did not provide any public explanation as to why the district was allowing these charter schools to receive a reduced fee, a note on the spreadsheet provided by the district noted that these schools had “committed to pay [the] total amount owed for FY 2015-16 through FY 2020-21 in multiple installments via a payment plan.” This suggested that some type of agreement had been arranged where the district reduced what was owed in exchange for the reduction. It is not clear if this arrangement was legal given that the formulas used to assess these fees are set by state law.

Cole-Gutierrez’s plan had some immediate success with 12 of the 37 schools paying off the reduced balances in full. Unfortunately, in the last report provided by the CSD, three of these schools once again had a balance due last September. They were among the 27 charter schools assessed a penalty on August 12, 2022, for having “generated less in-district classroom average daily attendance (ADA) than it projected for the Applicable School Year” in its PROP-39 application. While the letter they received from the LAUSD specified that payment was required within 30 days, none of these schools had paid any of the newly assessed fees.

In all, ten of the schools that had been given Cole-Gutierrez’s gift allowed their balances to increase between April and September of 2022. Two of these schools did pay their older balances in full but did not pay any of the new assessments. The other eight had their balances increase by a combined total of $852,796:

Another five schools did pay their entire balance between April and September leaving ten charters with balances but seemingly paying a total of $728,223 on a payment plan. It appears that five of the schools, including the Citizens of the World franchise that occupied Shirley Elementary School, negotiated to pay 1.97% of the original reduced debt every month, giving them 46 months to pay. Another three are paying 3.24% of the reduced amount every month and will be debt free after 26 months. New Heights Charter School is paying off its debt over a period of 13 months. The Citizens of the World franchise in Silver Lake is paying 4.8% of its reduced debt every month.

With the charter school industry’s loss of a majority on the board, the schools they operate should lose their ability to cheat the district without consequences. To fulfill the promise of accountability, the board needs to take the following steps:

• Demand a full accounting of the reductions that Jose Cole-Gutierrez gave to charter schools with a past-due balance.
• Insist that the public be kept up to date on the amount due by charter schools for overallocation fees. Transparency is reduced when the last update was provided over three months ago.
• Charter schools with a past-due balance should be considered financially insolvent and should have their charters revoked at the end of the school year if they have not paid what is owed under state law.
• The operations of any school that habitually overestimates its enrollment should be investigated.

Overestimating the amount of space that charter schools are entitled to take from a public school under PROP39 harms the students at the host school. It leaves less space available on these campuses for special education therapy rooms, parent centers, music rooms, and space for other programs that make a school special that are considered to be “empty” because there is not a rostered teacher assigned to them. When paid, approximately ninety percent of the overallocation fees are given directly to the affected school.

The children who attend LAUSD schools have been waiting for over a decade for the charter schools that invade their campuses to be held accountable for the damages they cause. They should not have to wait any longer with a board that has promised to support the public schools they attend.

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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He was elected to the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and is the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.