Is Jerry Brown Twisting Arms For A Law-Breaking Charter School?

“Always provocative, Brown…argued against more controls over charter schools.”

– EdSource, 1/6/19

As the North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) Board of Trustees met two days before the school was scheduled to appear on the agenda of a Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) Board meeting, they seemed surprisingly combative. Paperwork had been released prior to the meeting stating that LACOE Staff had found that the charter school had not complied with the requirements outlined the previous week and that on August 15, 2023, the LACOE Board would vote on revocation. While a conciliatory tone seemed necessary for any chance at survival, NVMI’s “Superintendent” referred to LACOE’s actions to fulfill its obligations as a regulator as “illegal and immoral.”

Perhaps the source of NVMI’s bravado was the knowledge that former Governor Jerry Brown was about to once again ride to their rescue. Reports are now surfacing that Brown has called several Los Angeles County officials to tell them to stop scrutinizing NVMI. It is said that in at least one call, Brown bragged that some County officials were already expressing a willingness to bend to his request.

It is unclear at this point if Brown is ignorant of the accusations made against the school, including “fraud, misappropriation of funds, or other illegal fiscal practices” and allowing the “abhorrent child sex abuse” of students. Does it not bother him that a member of the school’s Board of Trustees advocated being more selective about the students who are allowed to remain at the school or that “Superintendent” Mark Ryan threatened to eliminate special day classes for children with moderate to severe disabilities if enough students did not enroll to make them financially “viable”? Brown did nothing to remove the charter school industry’s exemption from laws ensuring the safety of students during earthquakes, so it is not surprising that he is advocating for NVMI despite the fact that the building they are planning to use does not have the certificate of occupancy needed for a school.

Brown’s bullying of County officials appears to have worked in the short term as the item was pulled from the August 8, 2023, meeting. However, the revocation is still set to be heard next week, at least for now. You can make your opinion known by reaching out to your Los Angeles County Supervisor using the following contact information:

• Hilda Solis 1st District : [email protected]
• Holly Mitchell 2nd District : [email protected]
• Lindsey Horvath 3rd District : [email protected]
• Janice Hahn 4th District : [email protected]
• Kathryn Barger 5th District : [email protected]

Information about your Supervisor, along with other vital neighborhood information, can be found on the Los Angeles City website.

Before the item had been pulled from the agenda, I sent the following email to the LACOE Board. It emphasizes that the failure of NVMI to secure a campus for the upcoming school year by the published deadline is enough to revoke the school’s charter. It also details yet another operational failure by NVMI’s Board of Trustees:

While all of the other evidence presented against the North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) is damning and helps prove the case that it is failing operationally, it is all just noise when it comes to the decision you must make at the meeting on August 8, 2023. The rules published by LACOE are clear: “The charter must secure a facility 60 days prior to the start of school and provide LACOE with a signed lease agreement by July 3, 2023, for the 2023-2024 school year.” It cannot be denied that the leadership of NVMI missed that established deadline putting the ability to start the school year as scheduled which threatened to interrupt the education of its students. This board must make it clear to the families at this school that the charter will be revoked and they should immediately begin finding a new school.

While the leadership of NVMI and their apologists on this Board complained last week that the charter school was only given two days to correct the conditions outlined by LACOE, this ignored the fact that in compliance with the Brown Act, these requirements were publicly released days before the meeting was held. Additionally, the charter school has been continuously warned by LACOE staff that it was not in compliance. None of the required actions should have been a surprise.

Since this Board voted down an effort to extend the deadline for compliance, it should have been clear to the charter school that August 3, 2023, was a hard deadline. Instead of ensuring compliance, NVMI’s Board of Trustees waited until August 6, 2023, to hold a meeting to rectify board-related issues. The agenda for this meeting was not publicly released until August 5, 2023, in an email.

In this meeting that “Superintendent” Mark Ryan described as “being held to combat the illegal and immoral effort by LACOE's Charter Office and Board to revoke the NVMI charter”, its Board of Trustees attempted to hold the votes required to bring it into compliance. However, errors in the construction of the agenda void the legitimacy of these votes:

On June 30, 2023, the terms of Matthew K. Smith, John Pruit, John Martinez, Rocky Huynh, Cesley Frost, and Julie Ward expired. Additionally, the minutes of the May 10, 2023, meeting indicate that Dr. Daniel Villanueva resigned as of June 30, 2023.

Despite their terms having expired, all seven of these former Trustees are listed on the July 16, 2023, agenda, and their presence counted towards establishing a quorum. The fourth item on this agenda proposes “Extending terms of board members Smith, Pruitt, Martinez, Huynh, Frost, and Ward through June 30, 2025,” but it was moved by Smith and seconded by Ward, two members of the public who had no standing on the Board. The votes of Smith, Huynh, Frost, Ward, and Villanueva were recorded even though their terms had already expired on June 30th. The only member of the Board in good standing who voted to approrove the measure was Lanny West. It should have been recorded as a “fail.”

With the LACOE staff having flagged the July 16 meeting for violations of the Brown Act, the NVMI Board was forced to vote again on any item considered during that meeting, including the faulty vote to “extend” the terms of the board members whose terms had expired. However, this was scheduled as the seventh item on the agenda, invalidating any vote taken before this action including the approval of the Facilities Lease. Once again, former members with no official standing were counted toward the establishment of a quorum and were allowed to vote on the “extension” of their already expired terms.

To add insult to injury, this cash-strapped school hired an attorney to be present for its entire meeting. Surprisingly, she did not notice such a blatant violation of protocol.

Instead of working to solve the issues outlined by the LACOE staff, NVMI’s leadership continued to dispute the fact that they are in violation of the rules. While a representative of the Los Angeles City government confirmed that “there is no certificate of occupancy indicating E-occupancy for public K-12 education” at the proposed location, the school maintains that the current S-1 (for occupancy for Sunday School type class) is good enough. Guided by their petulant obstinance, “as of August 1, 2023, there was no application for a conditional use permit (CUP) on file.”

NVMI has a long history of complaining about unfair and unlawful treatment when they do not get their way with their regulators. It is clear by their responses to serious allegations that they have no interest in running an organization that complies with the law. With the conditions to avoid revocation not met by the hard deadline set by this Board, the protection of NVMI’s students demands that the process move forward with a vote on revocation taking place next week. This is an action that is long past due.

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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.