Will School Board Protect Public School Students?

“In allocating space to a charter school, pursuant to applicable law, the District must consider the impacts on other public school students, both those attending District schools and those attending other charter schools requesting space.”

– Proposed Proposition 39 Charter Schools Co-Location Policy

Unable to secure a speaking spot at the February 14, 2024, LAUSD School meeting where they would vote on a proposed Proposition 39 Charter Schools Co-Location Policy, I wrote the following letter imploring them to fix flaws in this proposal:

To the LAUSD Governing Board:

I attempted to sign up for public comment for this item but apparently speaker slots went quicker than Taylor Swift concert tickets. Despite logging in exactly as sign-ups became available, my speaker form was rejected. When I retried the item was maxed out. Perhaps it is time to revisit my proposed “Board Meeting Accessibility to the Public” resolution.

It is deeply disturbing that, if passed, the PROP-39 co-location policy will not take effect until the 2025-2026 school year, leaving LAUSD students unprotected during the next year. The Superintendent knew months before the September 26, 2023, meeting where the Goldberg/Rivas resolution was passed that this action was being contemplated. He said at that meeting that he would not need the full 45 days to present a policy. Yet it took 140 days for the policy to come before the Board. Perhaps I am being overly cynical, but it seems that the bureaucracy purposely ran out the clock so that charter schools would get one more year of operating outside the control of the Board.

One of the first things that I noticed about the proposed policy is that it allows charter schools to continue picking the schools that they would like to take space from. Nothing in the text of PROP-39 mandates this. The process should be changed so that a charter school can only indicate that it needs the District to provide space within the geographic area specified by its charter. The Charter School Division would then be directed to find space that would be the least disruptive to District students without regard to the preferences of the charter school.

Continuing through the policy, how is it that the section titled “Supporting the District’s Most Fragile Students and Schools, Key Programs, and Student Safety” does not make any reference to children with Special Education needs? In fact, the words “special education” only appear once in the entire policy and that is only as part of a list of the types of rooms that are analyzed by the District.

Children with Special Education needs are among those most victimized by the LAUSD’s current policies for implementing PROP-39. These students, our most vulnerable, have at times been forced to receive vital services in closets and stairwells when the classrooms they previously used were turned over to charter schools. We found out in September that José Cole-Gutiérrez and the Charter School Division had been lying that this was required under the law. The Special Education community needs immediate assurance directly from this Board that, starting today, space used to provide Special Education services will be protected during the PROP-39 allocation process.

My final concern about the proposed policy is that it does not go far enough to protect public school students from the non-payment of over-allocation fees by charter schools. Past actions by the Board have guaranteed that students at affected schools receive 90% of these fees in compensation for the damage they incurred by having given more space to the charter school than it was entitled to receive under the law. However, to receive these funds the charter school must pay what they owe under state law.

The last time the Charter School Division updated the public on the status of overdue over-allocation fees was June 30, 2023. At that time, delinquent charter schools owed the District $3,708,006. While the proposed policy says that, starting in 2025, these fees will be “monitored, enforced, and reported,” it does not specify what will happen when charter schools refuse to pay. An amendment is needed to make it clear that these balances must be cleared before space can be requested for the following year. Furthermore, continued refusal to pay should be treated as proof of financial insolvency subjecting the charter school to closure.

Not included in the above balance is the $7,678,022 forgiven by the Charter School Division. According to Board Member Schmerelson, this was done without notifying the School Board. The resolution considered today should be amended to require an investigation of this action. If it is found to be improper and done without the consent of the Board, the bills should be reinstated.

In closing, I would like to remind the members of this Board that your most important obligation is to LAUSD public school students. You were elected to represent these students, not those in charter schools that have their own independently operated governing boards. Please keep this in mind as you vote today.

Sincerely,

Carl Petersen

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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.