The Building Boom Continues Despite A Loss Of Students

“The bill would authorize a chartering authority to deny renewal of a charter school upon a finding that the school is demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition due to substantial fiscal or governance factors, or is not serving all pupils who wish to attend, as specified.”

– AB 1505

Decades of changing demographics have left public schools and charters competing for a share of the shrinking school-age population. This shift was predicted by the LAUSD years before it occurred and should have resulted in dramatic changes to how many new facilities the District planned to build. Instead, Monica Garcia led efforts to greatly expand the number of classrooms available in Los Angeles.

Perhaps by design, Garcia's building spree has left charter schools with an opportunity to claim "empty "space on District campuses using PROP-39. At one school I visited during my 2017 campaign in BD2, the campus appeared to be built with a separate entrance for a charter school. The waste of taxpayer money was not an accident.

Over 15 years into the demographic shift, the use of scarce education funding to build more capacity has not stopped. A tour of a neighborhood near the intersection of North Vermont and West 1st Street near Korea Town provides an example.

Before charter schools, this small area had two campuses: Virgil Middle School, which was built in 1914, and Frank del Amo Elementary School. Despite the decades-long reduction in the number of school-age children, the Value chain of charters built a brand new building for the Everest Value School. Across the street, the Central City Value Charter High School was opened in what appears to be a converted commercial space. While enrollment declines are continuing in both public and charter schools, the Bright Star charter school chain is building the Rise Kohyang High School across the street from Virgil.

In addition to these five school campuses that will be located within blocks of each other, the Virgil campus hosts two other separate schools. The Sammy Lee Medical and Health Services Magnet is an elementary school operated by the LAUSD. The Citizens of the World charter chain has also forced one of its franchises onto the campus using PROP-39.

Over the years, Citizens of the World has consistently enrolled fewer students than specified in its charters. In the 2022-23 school year, the Silver Lake franchise enrollment went down by 79 students and had only 60% of its predicted enrollment.

Because the Citizens of the World chain could not accurately predict its enrollment it has taken more space from LAUSD schools under PROP-39 than it was entitled to resulting in overallocation penalties. As of the LAUSD’s last public update on December 31, 2022, this campus alone still owes the District’s students $124,243 for unpaid overallocation fees. This does not include the $355,306 that the Charter School Division credited the campus in 2022 without any explanation. This was part of a $7,678,022 gift to the charter school industry that appears to be contradictory to the California State Education Code.

Comparing the demographics of the Citizens of the World Silver Lake franchise to its immediate neighbors also seems to confirm the accusation that this chain is a “White Flight Charter.” While the percentage of white students in every other school in the area is in the low single digits (ranging from 0% at both of the Value charter schools to just 2.6% at Sammy Lee), the Citizens of the World school has a student body where 30.6% of the students are white.

There are also vast differences in other demographic categories between Citizens and the other five schools. In every other school, at least 91.6% of the children are “Socioeconomically Disadvantaged,” while this is only true for 46.3% of Citizens of the World Silver Lake’s students. It also has the fewest percentage of “English Learners” and students that identify as “Hispanic or Latino:”

The pending addition of the Rise Kohyang High School campus also raises questions about the financial stability of the Bright Star chain of charter schools. Last week Bright Star had an agenda item before the LAUSD Board that would have granted the organization permission to build a middle school. The agenda item was pulled at the last moment. The chain is also seeking to build another school in the Valley on the site where neighbors are trying to preserve green space for a museum and neighborhood park. This building boom seems ill-advised for a charter school that is also having trouble meeting its enrollment projections at several of its schools, including the ones slated to get new campuses:

AB-1505 was supposed to give school boards more control over the charter school approval process by allowing them to take into account not only a charter school’s predicted ability to survive financially but how it will affect the stability of public schools in the surrounding area. With a high school being built in an area already saturated with classroom space, it appears that the LAUSD is ignoring the spirit in which this law was passed.

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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.