Has This Charter School Met The End Of The Road?

“Start looking for a new school.”

– Teacher’s advice to NVMI Student

The North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) was running on borrowed time even before it enrolled its first student. Dubious of the chances for its success, the LAUSD Board was set to reject its initial charter until Jerry Brown stepped in with some high-pressure lobbying. When the first years of operations fulfilled the District’s predictions of failure, the Board took the rare step of rejecting NVMI’s renewal. The Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) Board, then led by Mark Ridley-Thomas’ appointee, overturned the LAUSD’s decision over the objections of its own staff.

Not surprisingly, NVMI has continued to fail under the watch of the County. LACOE’s charter school staff has cited the school for ignoring a memorandum of understanding signed as a condition of renewal, a “lack of compliance with state and federal special education laws” and “Non-compliance and errors in financial reporting.” The school seems to be in a perpetual state of financial distress and has in the past relied on student fundraising to keep its doors open. NVMI was at one point so desperate for cash that they illegally charged students to attend summer school.

During the renewal process, NVMI was rated as “two (Developing)” in Governance. This development does not seem to have progressed very far since the charter school was saved by LACOE. In the past several months Dr. Mark Ryan, the school’s “Superintendent” has careened widely between schemes to keep its doors open.

Earlier this year Ryan was in Washington D.C. attempting to get federal approval for his Sepulveda Basin project. Under this plan, the campus would have moved to the area currently occupied by the National Guard in the area designated as a flood control basin. Instead of being overseen by LACOE, NVMI would have become a Department of Defense school operating outside the state’s jurisdiction. While he maintained that all this required was an Executive Order from the President of the United States, his meetings revealed that at least two laws would have to be passed to gain approval.

When the Sepulveda project fell through, Ryan announced a plan to move to the campus of Los Angeles Mission College and convert the school structure to one based on a “Middle College” program. While he hoped to have the approvals for this ready in time for the next school year, the approval process is not progressing as quickly as he had hoped.

On April 1, the school’s governing board was provided a PROP-39 offer by the LAUSD that would maintain its current placement on the Valley Oaks Center for Enriched Studies and Mount Gleason campuses. Since there is not enough room on these two campuses to provide the space that NVMI says that they need, additional space would also be offered on the Sepulveda Middle School campus. The deadline for accepting this offer is May 1.

The governing board was supposed to meet on April 22, 2023, presumably to discuss this offer, but was forced to cancel the meeting when the school’s management team neglected to post the agenda in advance as required by the Brown Act. The school then attempted to reschedule the meeting for April 29 but was not able to achieve a quorum. The Executive Committee met instead, making it clear that no action would be taken and only discussion would occur.

At the beginning of the meeting, it was made clear that the “Middle College idea is off the table,” although the management team is still in negotiations with the Los Angeles Community College District to relocate to the Los Angeles Mission College campus. However, any agreement that is reached will not be considered by the Community College Board until at least June 7. Presumably, NVMI would then have to submit a material revision to the County, a formal process that could take months to complete. It, therefore, seems unlikely that approvals could be obtained in time to begin the 2023 - 24 school year.

With no place else to go, it would seem likely that NVMI would be forced to accept the LAUSD’s final offer. However, the NVMI Executive Committee decided (without a vote) to instruct Dr. Ryan to reject the offer and ask, once again, for placement on one campus. This request does not comply with the timelines set by the Ed Code and should result in a rejection by the LAUSD, moving the VOCES community one step closer to ending the nightmare that has been the NVMI co-location.

The Executive Committee’s action moves NVMI one step closer to a shutdown. Adjectives like “precarious” were used liberally by those on the board and the parents and teachers who provided comments during the meeting. A belief that “everyone is out to get us” was a common theme, but in reality, the school’s management should shoulder the blame as the LAUSD and the Community College Board have no responsibility to dig NVMI out of the hole that they dug for themselves. The warning signs of the school’s eventual failure were present from the beginning.

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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.