Charter School Parents Kept In The Dark

“You take no interest, no opinion's too dear

You make the rounds and you try to be so sincere

You guard your hopes and you pocket your dreams

You'd trade it all to avoid an unpleasant scene”

– Billy Squier

Reacting to a post on the Facebook page Parents Supporting Teachers about the arrest of a former Granada Hills Charter School coach for “multiple counts of lewd acts with a minor,” a person describing themselves as a parent at the school says that “The school did not send any info to the parents about this!” This lack of disclosure was no surprise to another commentator who stated: “That’s Granada for you. They hide a lot from parents and the community in the name of optics and PR.”

Gabriel Chavez was arrested last week for what the Los Angeles Police Department calls “Penetration of a Foreign Object of a Minor.” Detectives are searching for other possible victims as Chavez not only coached at Granada but also “had a history of employment and volunteer work at various youth programs throughout the city.”

While Chavez’s employment ended in January, it has not been “specified if he was fired or quit.” As the authorizer of the charter school, the LAUSD needs to begin an immediate investigation into the circumstances of the separation and find out if the school appropriately notified authorities of any suspected illegal or inappropriate activities in a timely manner that would reduce risks to other victims. It also needs to be determined if parents of children who were exposed to Chavez were kept appraised of the situation to the fullest extent allowed by law.

This is not the first situation where Granada parents have expressed frustration that the school’s leadership did not provide them with complete updates about incidents involving student safety. Last November, Granada students “watched in horror as a female student with special needs was brutally beaten during class by another student, a male senior at the high school.” It is alleged that “the teen victim’s adult aide and the classroom teacher allegedly did nothing to stop the incident”. In the aftermath, parents complained that the school only provided them with general information about the incident and did not keep them appraised of the results of an investigation into what went wrong.

In 2017, a notice of violation was issued by the LAUSD alleging that Granada had built facilities on its campus that endangered the “health and safety of students, staff, and other individuals”. These included building a classroom in the gymnasium that left “openings for conduit and pipes [that] are not properly caulked and sealed for fireproofing” and converting handball courts to weight rooms without installing “fire alarm devices.”

While LAUSD policy required Granada to notify parents of the violation issued by the District, the school instead sent a watered-down letter that stated that the district, as the owners of the property, had found violations of the “Sole Occupant Agreement (SOA)”. No mention was made of conditions that jeopardized the students’ health and safety. The school was never held accountable for this lack of notification and was granted a renewal of its charter despite the fact that some of the conditions outlined in the Notice of Violation had not been fixed.

Granada is also not the only charter school that has neglected to inform parents about hazards faced by its students. In 2019, the North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) quietly settled a lawsuit alleging students were victims of “abhorrent child sex abuse”. The alleged perpetrator was an administrator at the publicly funded private school who lived with its Executive Director, Mark Ryan. Neither NVMI parents nor the community of the Sun Valley High School campus where the charter is co-located was informed of the incidents.

Parents do not sign away their rights when they send their children to charter schools. The LAUSD Charter School Division should be doing more to ensure that families are notified immediately about threats to their children and shut down any charter school that refuses to comply.

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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs. 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.