Charter School Votes To "Suspend Educational Operations"

“All those individuals and organizations who have opposed NVMI are a matter of public record”

– NVMI “Superintendent” Mark Ryan

For weeks, the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) has been warning the North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) that it did not have the Certificate of Occupancy it needed to operate at the facility it leased in Van Nuys. Instead of recognizing its failure and informing its families that NVMI would not be opening for the new school year, the leadership at the charter publicly insisted that it had all the required permits. It also obstinately refused to meet with city officials to get their input on how to negotiate the permitting process. This gave LACOE no other choice but to issue (another) Notice of Violation threatening revocation of the charter if the outlined conditions are not rectified by August 30, 2023.

According to a letter sent to the “NVMI Hawks Family” by NVMI's "Superintendent," Mark Ryan, when he finally spoke with city officials on August 17, 2023, they “confirmed that [the school] would be required to get a Conditional Use Permit... and that process (even when expedited) would take at least nine months.” In this same letter, Ryan rallied against "the evil people and organizations who have orchestrated the closure of NVMI," claiming that their rhetoric "frightened some politicians…into opposing NVMI." However, it was not "anti-charter and anti-military forces" that created NVMI’s violations but the incompetence of their leadership team. It is not "evil" to enforce the law, especially when dealing with rules that are meant to ensure that students attend school where safety is a priority (1).

Ryan's angry rhetoric continued with the distribution of the agenda for a special meeting of NVMI's Board of trustees held to "consider a resolution to permanently or temporarily close the school." Attempting again to deflect from his own failures, Ryan blamed "the evil people and forces" who "have won this particular battle.” Instead of recognizing military culture's responsibility to follow the rule of law, Ryan pledged that "the war with the anti-charter and anti-military factions of our society is not yet over."

Despite numerous warnings from LACOE about not complying with the Brown Act, the meeting held on Saturday included multiple violations of California's open meeting law. The most serious was the inclusion of Board Members whose terms expired on June 30, 2023. The chair also did not ensure that the public had access to all of the meeting sites listed on the agenda or ask for public comment before the vote was taken on the agenda item.

Since students and staff had already been informed that the school would not be opening for the current school year, NVMI Trustees could have used their vote to give some closure to the community. Instead, they continued to provide false hope by choosing to pursue a "suspension of operations" from the LACOE Board. Under this proposed scenario, the county would suspend efforts to revoke the charter while the school pursued the permit application process with the City of Los Angeles.

The Trustees voted to pursue this concept of suspending operations without any discussion of how this would affect the budget that has already been submitted to the county. The school has already received its first payment from the state for the new school year and will have to pay this back since they will not have any students. Unfortunately, they have already spent these funds to pay for last year's expenses. The school has a balloon payment of $1,361,334 due to Mission Valley Bank on September 30, 2023. Lease payments, storage fees, and security will continue for a fleet of passenger vans, even if there are no longer any students to transport. The $1.7 million payment the school anticipates receiving from the Employee Retention Credit program (ERC) is under review by the IRS and the $1.3 million ERC already received may need to be repaid. Simply put, NVMI does not have the ability to survive another year.

While the NVMI Board would like to pretend that the only thing keeping them from opening is the lack of occupancy permits, the LACOE Staff has detailed an extensive list of the charter school's operational failures, including:

• Finding 1: Material Violations of the Conditions, Standards, or Procedures Set Forth in the Charter
• The late submission of the material revision violates NVMI’s charter and is inconsistent with the law as it proposes to operate before the 60-day timeline, which does not allow the chartering authority time to properly review and act upon the material revision.
• Finding 2: NVMI failed to meet or pursue any of the pupil outcomes identified in the charter.
• In reviewing academic outcomes…NVMI continues to underperform in almost every comparison.
• Of the 12 MPOs with publicly verifiable data, the school is only meeting three outcomes.
• NVMI’s plan to improve fails to have specificity, lacks timeliness, and is inadequate.
• Finding 3: NVMI failed to meet generally accepted accounting principles, or engaged in fiscal mismanagement.
• Of the nine possible indicators of fiscal mismanagement, NVMI has engaged in at least six:

Unreliable or insufficient budget development, monitoring, or updates.

Inadequate cash management.

Continuing deficit spending.

Inadequate fund balance and reserve for economic uncertainty.

Ineffective internal controls and fraud prevention.

Inattention to debt and risk management

• Numerous late submissions of financial reports that contained material errors.
• Understated payroll expenses by $1 million in its Adopted Budget.
• NVMI’s structural deficits were further masked by overstated revenues and understated expenses.
• Throughout 2022-23, NVMI maintained less than 17 days of operating cash balances which included borrowed funds from Mission Valley Bank.
• As of June 30, 2023, NVMI had a combined cash balance of only $2,936, or less than one day of operating expenses.
• Due to its continuing cash deficiencies, NVMI was unable to meet its financial obligations.
• The fiduciary oversight bestowed on the NVMI Board lacks consistent internal controls
• Fiscal policies that are not followed: The most current fiscal policies include the use of a Chief Financial Officer or CFO, yet the school no longer employs the Chief Financial Officer.
• A Finance Committee that is inconsistent and/or non-existing: The NVMI Finance Committee does not meet consistently and has not met since January 2023.
• Leadership was unaware when a payment to CalSTRS was missed.
• Finding 4: NVMI violated the law.
• By failing to complete the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), NVMI has violated EC 47605.5(a)
• The school failed to submit a completed LCAP per EC 47606.5 for the 2023-24 school year. Most notably, the Budget Overview for Parents is missing.

None of these violations were discussed by NVMI's leadership during Saturday's meeting. Ignoring these issues will not make them go away. It will just add credence that allowing this school to continue in any capacity will not change the eventual outcome.

(1) This is a good place to remind readers that the charter school industry has successfully lobbied politicians to keep themselves exempt from the Field Act, the law that ensures that public school students remain safe during earthquakes.

(2) Mark Ryan and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees were asked for an explanation of how they complied with the Brown Act. As of publication, an answer had not been received.

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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, who serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. 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.