Local battles for charter schools continue in California
by Alice Salles
Watchdog.com
June 22, 2015
While education reform efforts remain strong at the local level in the face of legislation threatening the very existence of California charter schools, the authorization of new charter schools at the local level remains restrictive.
Under state law, only local or county school boards are allowed to authorize the creation of new charter schools. As the Center for Education Reform reports, restrictive authorization rules in California force charter schools to cluster in very few districts where reform is welcomed. As a result, 158,000 California children remain on waiting lists. For Kern County students who reside in Tehachapi, Calif., moving to a charter school has just become a little more difficult.
According to Tehachapi News, the local school district board has denied a charter petition proposed by Steve Henderson’s Flex Academy. Claiming Flex hadn’t “pass[ed] the necessary requirements,” the Tehachapi Unified School District Board of Trustees voted on May 26 to not allow the group to establish its charter school in the region.
With two locations in California, San Francisco Flex Academy is California’s first full-time hybrid school, which blends online learning with traditional classroom education.
Concerns raised by Superintendent Susan Andreas-Bervel involve the petitioner’s lack of documentation on “how they would handle special education students or the new Common Core program.” But that’s not all.
In the proposal, Flex Academy uses ‘California’ before Flex. To Nick Heinlein, the chief administrator of business for TUSD, naming the public charter ‘California Flex Academy’ and having it located within the boundaries of Kern County indicates the group doesn’t want to focus on Tehachapi. According to TUSD, the board members were also unsatisfied with the proposal’s budget numbers and “concerns” about qualified staff members.
Based on what Friedman Foundation’s John Merrifield has written, education regulations like those in California put unnecessary pressure on educators, and as a result, teachers are more concerned about pushing children to do better in standardized tests than actually teaching them.
From the glowing reviews Flex Academy has received, the charter appears to be a strong applicant for authorization.
To a Flex Academy teacher, the school is important to the community because it “offers each student an individualized education that meets the needs of every kid in the classroom.” To a parent whose son has a learning gap, Flex Academy is important because it offers great support to all of its students:
The teachers were enthusiastic and also were advisors for the various clubs and extracurriculars. The hybrid learning concept is fabulous, particularly if your child is highly focused and motivated, as they can move ahead. Some of my son’s classmates graduated early or had extensive credits due to this. The fact that the school can cater to a myriad of abilities is what makes the school great—support where you need it, great advancement for the student who wants it.
To another parent, “[San Francisco] Flex lives up to its name—it is flexible in a way a lot of public schools aren’t.”
However, the school has also received sharp criticism for using public funding to cover marketing costs in other states.
According to the California Charters School Administration, school districts often fail to evaluate charter petitions on merit. In a statement sent to Watchdog, CCSA’s spokesperson said that “even though California law requires every school district to use the same criteria to evaluate the strength of each new charter petition, political and financial motivations prompt districts to deny charter petitions, even strong applications, from highly capable school operators.”
CCSA says that if Flex Academy believes it was treated unfairly, it still has some recourse; petitioners must appeal to the Kern County Superintendent’s Office. If the county schools office grants the organization a charter, California Flex Academy would be California’s third full-time hybrid K-12 school.
The ability of strictly local or county school boards to authorize charter schools is a drawback that charter schools in Indiana, for instance, do not have to experience. In Indiana, charter schools can be authorized by the executive of a consolidated city or the governing body, state educational institutions that offer four year baccalaureate degrees, nonprofit colleges or universities, or the Indiana Charter School Board. Flexibility has helped Indiana to become the number one state in the Center for Education Reform’s Parent Power Index.
While California Flex is the latest to have its petition denied by TUSD, Inspire Charter School recently withdrew its petition prior to meeting with the board. According to Heinlein, the staff had already indicated that it would reject the petition prior to the meeting.
