The public schools in Livermore, California, got a big surprise when more than 500 students fled the district’s two charter schools to return to the public schools.
On the first day of school, more than 500 new students swarmed into Livermore public schools, the vast majority fleeing the city’s two embattled charter schools in light of a litany of accusations ranging from fiscal mismanagement to criminal wrongdoing.
The Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District got nearly double the number of new students it was expecting as parents a few weeks ago began pulling their children out of Livermore Valley Charter School and Livermore Valley Charter Preparatory.
The company that runs the charter schools, the Tri-Valley Learning Corp., is facing allegations of financial mismanagement; illegally charging foreign exchange students tuition and transferring them to a school in Stockton against their will; an investigation by the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office for potential criminal charges; and, most recently, hiring a principal who made an online reference to empathizing with mass shooters.
The charges prompted state Superintendent of Education Tom Torlakson to meet privately with charter school parents and school district officials Thursday.
“It’s the most serious set of allegations against a charter that I’ve ever seen,” Torlakson said.
Yes, students withdrew from the Livermore charter schools and returned to the public schools, and no wonder: the place is a mess.
Mercedes Schneider tells the story here.
It recruited 60 foreign students, charged them $31,300 each for tuition and boarding (which is illegal for a “public” school), reassigned two of them to another charter school in the same chain without the permission of their parents, and had more problems.
The district attorney is investigating the charter operator.
John Oliver was right.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
John Oliver may have been right but he only told half the story. Schools are systems. Public school students in this system are directly harmed by the refusal to regulate charter schools. The public school students didn’t choose anything and their school is now thrown into chaos.
What about their rights? Where are their advocates? Why were they not even considered ? Why are they taking the downside of this experiment?
There are TWO PARTS to choice. Designating the public system as the disfavored backup to the choice system is not fair to public school students.
Yes! Well said!!! This is my total issue with Charter school’s: how they affect traditional schools is shameful.
What about all the ones that are running unexposed. Stealing tax dollars from right under our noses. Shielded from scrutiny by private sector. This charter school initiative is a monstrosity causing more harm than good!
Thank you Chaira…exactly…where are their advocates? Tilson today shreds the latest Ca. Supreme Court action to not accept Vergara for another round, leaving it a dead issue, at least for a moment.
But, but, but, competition, choice, parents will vote with their feet, no harm done to the district schools, free market solutions, limited government, personal responsibility, blah, blah, blah, deblah. The charter cheerleaders constantly claim that charter schools do no harm to the real public schools but it’s all a lie. Even under the best of circumstances, charter schools drain funds and resources from the district schools but in circumstances like this in Livermore, CA, it’s an absolute disaster and trauma for all concerned.
“no harm done to the district schools”
Well, maybe, but we don’t know none because of the data-driven scientists bothered to look.
People who spend a lot of time talking about “systems thinking” and “scaling up” somehow missed half the equation. Big omission, don’t you think? Telling one too.
Trump said “we’re going to have school ‘choice'” — and made air quotes.
He’ll fit right into the echo chamber in DC. He passes the litmus test for employment.
Failing, failing, failing public schools and super-de-dooper charter schools. Repeat every 30 seconds. He’s singing from the hymnal.
On that score, watch this video of Sue Altman, a teacher, who flattens Chris Christie at a New Jersey town hall as Christie parrots the “Charters are awesome, while public schools suck” party line.
This video, posted by Katie Quinn, is not on YouTube yet.
At a New Jersey town hall, teacher Sue Altman takes
on Chris Christie, and fights him with facts, facts, facts …
Christie just parrots the cliches and smears against public schools, and Altman counters him again and again. She’s poised as hell and not intimidated in the least, as she blasts his plan.
Unfortunately, it cuts off just as it gets really good.
You have to watch it on Facebook (link ABOVE).
This story is almost unbelievable! Except that I live in the Wild West. Here in California, anything goes as long as charters deliver high test scores. The pressure on elected officials to look the other way has made them deaf and blind. If they see or hear anything negative about a charter, their opponent will suddenly feel the grace of millions of dollars in campaign donations.
Yesterday, I attended the LAUSD school board meeting. Revocation of a charter for massive financial improprieties was considered and will be decided at next month’s meeting. But my guess is that the LAUSD school board that oversees the charter board, which was AWOL during the hearing, will buckle to pressure to secure their own re-elections. It’s easier to pass the buck and let the police cart off the criminal than to perform its oversight duties on behalf of the public whose money is being siphoned out of the public school system to pay for this folly.
Unregulated charter states occupy a huge section of the country.
They’re always presented as “outliers” but if the “outliers include CA, FL, AZ, OH, MI and PA we’re talking about a huge swathe of the country.
Ed reformers have this backward. REGULATED charters are the outliers- NYC, Boston and DC.
Our politician are drinking the Charter school kook aide .
At a small meeting yesterday, some of the writers here discussed a local charter situation, and today Carl Peterson who is running for LAUSD BoE against the most vicious and manipulative pro Charter, pro Deasy and Austin, pro Eli Broad and his crew of oligarchs, long time incumbent, Monica Garcia, wrote this clear assessment of what is going on in LA.
—————————————————————————
Carl J. Petersen posted this message on Basecamp.
In Los Angeles the Unified Silence is Deafening
The LAUSD School Board and the press seem unfazed by allegations of financial impropriety by a charter’s management
http://thewire.k12newsnetwork.com/2016/08/24/in-los-angeles-the-unified-silence-is-deafening/
And here is Rupert Murdoch’s FREE MARKET view as expressed today in his Wall Street Journal.
“California denies a constitutional challenge to failing schools.”
Aug. 22, 2016 6:56 p.m. ET
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/students-lose-liberals-elated-1471906567-lMyQjAxMTE2MjIyMzEyNTM0Wj
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Livermore is a small group of 500 students who are fleeing the charter, compared to LA which has 654,000 students, and about 110,000 in local charters. The Broad vultures are pushing to take another half of the public school students away from LAUSD through his Great Public Schools Now sham…which of course would finish the district and send it into bankruptcy…from which Eli and Rupert and the Waltons and the Wassermans would profit.
Thank you all.
Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
Finally, Charter Schools are exposed.
The innovation we were looking for.
Come on what did you expect?
Innovation in education. That takes time, expertise, and careful examination prior to growth. All we are getting is a shell of an education system accompanied with massive growth and marketing propaganda.
Where are the union haters? I’m sure they will find a way to blame this on the teachers’ unions. The unions forced these charter schools to have a litany of accusations ranging from fiscal mismanagement to criminal wrongdoing, even though these schools are non-union. The unions made me do it, boo hoo. That’s what the union hating reformers might say, not I.
Years ago I naively believed that if the truth were known the powers that be would act on the info and do the right thing.
Was I EVER NAIVE!!!!
I live in this district. Since my first child is approaching Kindergarten age, I’ve made reading about primary education my hobby. I have been following this situation closely, and my first comment on this blog was actually to ask if someone could point me in the direction of what might actually be going on with the charter.
Some pieces not in that post above:
Last night, the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District (LVJUSD) ratified a Notice of violations addressing things such as, but not limited to:
-Removing the principal of the K-8, who was previously the principal of the HS, and also involved with forcibly detaining and relocating foreign exchange students without informing their parents
-Paying off their considerable debts
-Ensuring that CalSTRS payments were all made
-Getting a proper audit done, since the state rejected their last audit.
-Forming a new governing body with no common personnel between the new and old body.
Unfortunately the meeting minutes aren’t online yet.
Here’s the real kicker that I kind of understand, but don’t really understand:
The district has neighborhood schools with open enrollment, space permitting. It has a 2 K-8 schools for people who want that. It has a Spanish immersion program. It has an IB program in one of the K-8, and IB in one of the HS. Even for those people who judge schools based solely on test scores, the district schools are mostly pretty good, and some are really good (lots of 7-8 on Great Schools, a few 9s, a couple lower). Why the insistence on the charter schools, which are on the very far edge of town, in a business park? They have a couple of 8-figure bonds, and they still need the parents to come in to pull weeds on the campus? They run bingo every Sunday, and have a suggested donation of $1000 either per student or family per year, I’m not sure which. If these people put this energy into their neighborhood schools, most of which are very good or excellent, we’d have 10 amazing schools in town. My, perhaps not very charitable take, is that because there’s a lottery for admissions, and a waiting list, it’s viewed as scarce and therefore more valuable, so people value those schools more than the district schools.
Thanks anyone who listened to me rant.
I forgot to add that the uncertainty facing these schools is causing some to switch to the district schools, which was mentioned in the article, but many parents dual-enrolled their children, and I think a good portion didn’t tell either school which they were going to attend until they showed up with their kid the first day. From what I hear, the district _can_ absorb the full number, though they might have to add portables or hire more teachers. A lot of the charter parents want the district to form a new charter, or maybe a magnet, of course keeping the current student body intact. Because that’s fair.
NEO-LIBERAL E-CON policies and President Obama’s use of the Presidential Bully Pulpit have pushed CHARTER SCHOOLS despite the cherry-picking of advanced kids skewing outcomes. That undermined the radical U.S. commitment from colonial times to PUBLIC EDUCATION as the bedrock of an informed democratic body politic. NEO-CONS embraced FREE TRADE FUNDAMENTALISM pushed by NEO-LIBs since the REAGAN REVOLUTION.
Nixon Conservatives such as speechwriter Pat Buchanan who ran as a Republican for President himself multiple times and advocated protecting U.S. factories and workers by strengthening tariffs and keeping capital flight a felony instead of a business incentive from de-regulated government is now called a PALEO-CON. Just as Liberals who once backed Labor and the Working Class in policy-making instead of privileging un-fettered capital investors are now called PALEO-LIBs.
So now that there are no Commies left to compete with ideologically, we can throw our homeless and maladjusted veterans of foreign wars of Empire out under overpasses and into septic systems because there are no more “hearts & minds” to win over in any Cold War.
The new loyalty litmus test of the NEO-LIB\NEO-CONsensus is supporting every PUBLIC INTEREST-undermining global trade deal that privileges trans nationals and un-fettered capital over local government and ultimately undermines national governments and judicial systems as the so-called FREE MARKET IS RIGGED TO BENEFIT THE OLIGARCH CORPORATE CARTELS. Corporate cartels can hardly be depended on to back policies that increase competition!
Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower said it best criticizing the latest Obama so-called FREE TRADE AGREEMENT known as TRANS PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP (dba TPP). For some reason GOP\Tea Partiers have voted in big majorities in Congress to back the Obama 2012 KORUS, FTA and the new TPP. Only self-serving Blue Dog Dems looking for cush jobs after leaving their country club congressional seats have supported Obama’s 2012 Korus, FTA or the now pending Mother of All Trade Deals, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Look up on non-profit PUBLIC CITIZEN’s bi-partisan online ‘zine called COMMON DREAMS the TRADE DEAL SCOREBOARD outcomes as of MAY 2015 for the first Obama trade deal called KORUS, FTA sealed in 2012 and already ballooning the U.S. TRADE DEFICIT with South Korea’s feudal family-owned trading giants like Samsung, Hyundai, Kia Motors, Air Inchon and all of the Seoul-flagged barges ferrying steel\iron to dump at sub-market prices on North American Pacific ports.
Per Jim Hightower’s College & Community Radio syndicated commentary named the HIGHTOWER REPORT: “THOSE NOT SEATED AT THE TABLE FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE DEAL NEGOTIATIONS ARE ON THE MENU!”
Even so-called INDEPENDENT politicians who leave the self-serving RepubliCrat Duopoly like billionare term-limit waiving NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg make sure that all solutions to market-created problems are limited to market-based contracts to private profit-maximizers rather than government the nominal defender of the PUBLIC INTEREST over PRIVATE INTERESTs.
From Neo-Liberal Public Education Destroyer Arnie “Slam Dunk” Duncan to 2nd Term POSTER HEIRESS FOR CORPORATE WELFARE AND BAIT & SWITCH OBAMA’S CHOICE ALL ALONG FOR SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, DAME PENNY PRITZKER. Wikipedia these key OBAMA DOCTRINE CABINET APPOINTEES. HYATT HOTEL HEIRESS PRITZKER with her record-setting private contributions to the Obama Presidential campaign and her off-shoring tax haven grand-dad and Shadow Banking pedigree to match her HYATT-MARRIOTT fortune that needed bailing out when she opened her SUPERIOR BANK. The Duncan Education legacy of the Obama Doctrine being more use of the bully pulpit to sell investors on charter schools and pay-to-play trade schools like the recent corporate bankruptcy protection sought by the 55-campus collapse of CORINTHIAN COLLEGES.
All those CORINTHIAN COLLEGES (another visit to Wikipedia to brief you on what the Evening News has no time to follow-up on and cover in as much granular detail as another kind of trade school, TRUMP U.) that are leaving tax-payers and heavily indebted while no more hire-able students on the hook for life-crushing debts that are not forgiven like corporate bankruptcy.
Federally-backed student loans remain on the student-borrowers’ records until death, while the paper mill schools and online scams like TRUMP U. or CORINTHIAN COLLEGES or UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX can seek corporate bankruptcy protection and actually have their corporate officers run for PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. after DEFAULTING ON VENDORS, STUDENT LOANS and CREDITORS!
Along with Chicago School of E-CON partner in HOUSE OF CLINTON & HOUSE OF OBAMA\CLINTON White House Chief of Staff turned Neo-Liberal Market-Based MAYOR OF CHIRAQ & Charter School Solution bringer RAHM EMANUEL. Mayor Emanuel whose hand-picked “CEO OF CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS” Dame BARBARA BYRD-BENNETT plead guilty in record time to taking bribes from GARY SOLOMON’s SUPES CON-sultans who, while African-American school children were losing access to textbooks and their de facto South Side Y’s & Health Club Community Centers as the CPS school buildings were sold off leaving already dangerous African-American neighborhoods even more dangerous. While these high paid SUPES CON-sultans were using tax-payer money in bankrupt CHIRAQ teaching Chicago PUBLIC SCHOOL principles to act MORE LIKE CORPORATE CEO’s and the VULTURE FUND INVESTORS WHO BEGAT the CHARTER SCHOOL business model!
Isn’t that Boss Trump’s playbook, to run government like a corporate hierarchy? So much more efficient to have a selected CEO rather than an elected President, to live in a stable Plutocracy with Super Delegate Representation rather than in a French Revolutionary democracy…Un-tether that global capital some more Grand Lexus and Olive Tree Pundit Wizard and Neo-Liberal bringer of market-based solutions.
We need an intervention from any more Neo-Liberal market-based solutions to market-created socio-E-CON problems.
According to the CHICAGO TRIBUNE EXPOSE on CPS CEO DAME BYRD-BENNETT and her schmearer GARY SOLOMON CEO OF SUPES that never quite made the NATIONAL NEWS AGENDA, not unlike the Flint, Michigan public water contamination scandal so well-covered locally but not elevated to NATIONAL SECURITY RISK level until the cloistered NY TIMES MARKET-BASED SOLUTION SEEKERS noticed their readers and advertisers were going to THE REAL NEWS NETWORK on YouTUBE and the DETROIT FREE PRESS & NEWS to learn about midwestern INSTITUTIONAL CORRUPTION.
All the while Madame Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (prior to turning into Goldman Sachs confidential consultant turned Presidential front-runner) and her Bush-Cheney-Condi held-over Neo-Con Chicken Hawks Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan were Changing Regimes from Georgia in the Caucasus to Ukraine to Honduras to Libya and Syria all in the service of Market-Based Solutions that have worked so well for the 1/10 of 1% the Whole Wide Troubled World over!
It might not be a wasted vote to VOTE GREEN PARTY if that means the POLITICAL E-CON OF CORPORATE-CAPTURED NEWS MEDIA MAY THEN BE FORCED TO CONFRONT THE NEO-LIB\NEO-CON ORTHODOXIES THAT HAVE RETURNED U.S. TO A (CORPORATE) FEUDAL system benefiting the 1/10th of 1% at the expense of the rest of U.S.
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Mitch Ritter
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa
Nike-Town, Intel-Land LLC
Pheudal Phiephdom of Phil, Ka-ching
In Anti-Trust PERP-E-tuity Throughout the Universe
Thanks for the blog Diane. This is the second one of yours I’ve read. The other mentioned my charter school, American Indian. The Washington Post and U.S. News has our high school ranked number one in CA for two years. We are also a Title I school district. Do you also write about the positive work some charter school districts are doing?
Kraig,
Your school may have high test scores, but as you know, your leader was accused in a state audit of diverting $3 million to his own personal uses and had to step down. Also, while your school is called the American Indian Model Charter School, your leader weeded out almost every American Indian and replaced them with Asian-American students. The stories about AIMS and the leader’s abuse of students are legion. Please give me a different example of good things that your school is doing other than posting high scores.
Update: Public documents found on the Alameda County Court website reveal that Dick Corso, who was an Officer on the board of the charter school, had a mental illness incident where he stuck a loaded rifle in his mouth and threatened to blow his head off. The City of Livermore took his guns away and destroyed them. Apparently no one vetted him for a board position.
Source:
http://www.livermoreparents.org/2018/05/21/tvlc-official-taken-into-custody/