The Parasite Tries To Replace The Host

“So I would propose: why don’t you move VOCES onto another campus?”

- Daniel M. Epstein

The hostility that the North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) community shows towards the public school that it shares a campus with was on full display at the LAUSD Board Meeting on January 17, 2023. The charter school’s Treasurer, Daniel M. Epstein, called into the meeting to criticize the Valley Oaks Center For Enriched Studies (VOCES) for being too “woke,” and operating a program that is not being chosen by parents. Epstein did not address accusations from the VOCES Magnet community that the presence of NVMI on the campus is causing some parents to avoid choosing to send their children to this public school.

Even in the best of circumstances, having a charter school co-located on a district campus creates difficulties for a public school. Space in district schools that are used to provide special education services, music classes, computer labs, science labs, and parent centers are considered “vacant” under the rules used to implement PROP-39. As a result, these programs are often displaced when the charter school moves in.

When the charter school is poorly managed, the problems for the public school multiply. Would you want to send your child to a campus where an administrator who lived with the principal was accused of “abhorrent child sex abuse”? Would your concerns be heightened if the charter school still employed a staff member who was named in that lawsuit for allegedly hosting a “school-sponsored party at his home” where the administrator “played a sexualized game of truth and dare” where “students were forced to kiss/lick [the administrator’s] feet and beard”? Or that members of the VOCES community expressed concerns about sexual harassment by NVMI students and the bullying of a child with a disability?

Even with all of these complaints, the LAUSD is still willing to provide space to NVMI under PROP-39. The district’s Charter School Division (CSD) did cite the school in a letter dated December 1, 2022, for providing attendance projections that exceeded “its authorized enrollment per Charter School’s operative charter petition”, but did not use this fraudulent representation to reject the application. Instead, the CSD agreed to provide the charter school with 50 spaces on three different campuses. This arrangement is unacceptable to NVMI. Instead, NVMI’s Epstein suggests that VOCES should be forced to move to another campus.

Surprisingly, this hubris was rewarded with a full-throated endorsement of NVMI by LAUSD School Board Member Scott Schmerelson, who was elected on a platform of supporting public school students. Saying that he “fully support[s] any charter school that has something different for the kids that we in LAUSD do not have for them”, he even asked if there was space to put the school in his board district.

During the exchange with the Director of the CSD, Schmerelson seemed surprised to learn that NVMI is overseen by the Los Angeles County Office of Education and not the LAUSD. Schmerelson should have known about this as he was on the board on November 7, 2017, when it voted unanimously to deny renewing the charter of NVMI. While almost all charters are renewed by the district, NVMI was found to have “an ‘unsound education program’ and substandard academic results”. The CSD also expressed “concerns about its finances.”

When the county Board of Education ignored the LAUSD’s decision and the recommendation of its staff to deny NVMI’s appeal, it took on the responsibility of overseeing its operations. The county’s charter school staff has been kept busy with NVMI facing allegations over the years that it is not operating within the confines of the law. The latest formal Notice of Concern was issued on December 1, 2022, and included a variety of accusations including:

• A lack of compliance with credential requirements. This included instances where the school provided an All Staff Information List that showed five employees who started “prior to receiving clearance from the Department of Justice,” which the school then blamed on a clerical error.

“The School failed to provide copies of credentials for 11 staff members, seven additional staff did not possess the correct credential to teach the assigned courses [and] one staff member had an expired credential.” Also, “six staff members did not have an appropriate EL authorization.”

The school also had “14 staff members [who] had expired tuberculosis clearance.”

NVMI also “failed to provide LACOE with a complete list of current staff” when it was required. Again, “the school stated that this was a clerical oversight.”

• A lack of compliance with state and federal special education laws. The county found that “37 special education students [had] overdue Individual Education Program (IEP) meetings and 15 students with 1,240 minutes of owed services.”

• Errors on required reports. The corrected reports had “34 errors [including] four entries that used the wrong course code, six entries that had the wrong teacher of record, and 24 entries [that] had class setting eros such as coding the class general education when the setting was special education.”

• Non-compliance and errors in financial reporting. The in-house accounting staff filed monthly financial reports that were “late for ten out of 12 months during the fiscal year 2021-22.” These reports were riddled with errors that included “asset, liability, revenue, and expense line items that disagree with the Charter’s accounting records (i.e., general ledgers).” Additionally, there were “also errors related to monthly bank reconciliation reports.”

It was also reported that “the Charter’s submitted statutory reports including the Budget, First Interim, Second Interim, and Unaudited Actuals also contained numerous errors and material overstatement of revenues”.

Concern was also expressed that NVMI “is not adhering to its policies and procedures to carry out its goals and objectives, including…safeguarding public funds.”

It is clear that the concerns that the LAUSD Board had when they rejected NVMI for renewal were well founded. The school has given no indication that it has the will or the ability to turn its operations around and should not be allowed to continue operating.

Board Member Schmerelson should know that he was getting nothing more than a dog and pony show when he toured NVMI’s facilities. Before inviting this school into Board District 3, he should have spoken to the community at VOCES and the staff at the County’s Charter School Office. They would have probably told him something vastly different than what NVMI lobbyist David Tokofsky was whispering into his ear. If Governor Gavin Newsom had not changed the rules midstream, there is a good chance that its charter would have already expired.

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