Paramount Collegiate Academy in Sacramento, California, closed its doors in mid-February. Parents received notice on the same day that the school closed, leaving students to find another placement in mid-year.
The charter school had been turned down by the school district, turned down by the county board of education, but approved over their objections by the state board of education, which has never seen a charter it can’t approve.
Parents started showing up at San Juan Unified School District asking to enroll their children after they received a letter from the El Camino Avenue school announcing it would be closing that same day. The letter said the school board was initiating bankruptcy proceedings…
The letter said that the board voted to close the school in a special meeting because of financial problems caused by low enrollment and undisclosed issues with a new landlord.
Fortunately for the students, the public schools are available to take them back. They would have little chance of getting into another charter in mid-year.
California needs a governor who will appoint a state board of education that is not a doormat for charter operators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m sorry, I guess this is victim blaming, but what the hell kind of parent enrolls their kid at a school that was turned down by both the district and the county? Don’t these parents do any kind of due diligence? Or are they so brainwashed by the anti-public school PR that they think anywhere is better? I guess I’m left with little sympathy for the parents, although I do feel bad for the kids.
A lot of people in Ohio don’t really understand charter schools- what they are.
I’ve met lots of people who think they are “magnet” public schools- selective. There’s another whole group who think they are part of the school district. Our public school fields tens of calls a year from people who have complaints about online charters. They don’t know how the schools are governed, or even who is in charge.
“Public schools” have been around so long people have a frame of reference they put them in- they assume they’re locally run as part of a district.
I’m not sure I agree with either Dienne or Chiara on this one. The school was turned down by district & county because its education plan was deemed & unsound & likely could not be implemented as claimed. If I am a parent whose kid is floundering in the local district school I might feel things are already unsound & let’s at least try something different. I might feel quite differently if I were privy to the charter’s own financial projections – if I knew that even if enrollment increased from 50 student in ’15-’16 to 80 in ’16-’17, it would likely close mid-year ’17-’18 if it didn’t see enrollment of x students. Or not, maybe 2 yrs of something different would be a net gain.
It seems the biggest failure in communication/ parent understanding stems from the murky veil over charter financing. If parents understood thoroughly that a charter is a small bus start-up like any other, they would get that the 1st 3 yrs are make-or-break as in any small bus. And that might work for them anyway, as that might be the couple of yrs’ change the kid needed.
And if the wider tax-paying community understood the small-bus nature of charters – had specific fin figs on the proposed charter, as well as historical trends – they would better grasp the risks of waste/ loss of their hard-earned $ involved in ‘school choice.’
As you point out, start ups take time to find their footing or they fail. As a parent, I would never entrust my child to a start up school because the school has no e perienced teachers, no reputation, no culture. Parents should not take risks with their children.
Ditto, Diane. Just trying to put my heads where theirs are (parents making these choices). I’m guessing it’s people who feel overwhelmed by the pubsch sys & advocating for their kids. I had to fight very hard for mine, & it did work out as I learned better what to ask for & how. I wonder if pubschs could be more proactive in reaching out to parents of struggling kids & helping them explore the choices available w/n the district…
But that may just bubble-thinking: ours is a wealthy district continually developing more choices. Districts in states where charters are expanding are hobbled by slashed budgets/ leeched enrollment funds and govrs pushing faux, shaky ‘choice options. If district taxpayers had local budget control, taxpayers would see thro this stuff quicker.
Chiara: you have put your finger on a crucial part of the “charter sell” by the corporate education reform crowd—
Use words and phrases like “public schools” and “charter schools” in ways that are understood in certain ways by the general public while consciously neglecting to explain that they mean something very different by those same words and phrases. And when things, predictably, don’t work out, blame it on everyone else.
I am reminded of LA. During the John Deasy interregnum when huge rheephorm failures like iPads and MISIS were being carried out, I wrote on this blog that the time would come—probably all too soon—when the willing enablers of such predictable catastrophes would blame them on—
The public schools and their supporters. And so it came to pass. Particularly galling to read was the immoral irresponsibility of the LATIMES, backing Deasy and his policies until the damage had been done, and then afterwards neglecting to remind one and all that the LATIMES played a critical role in enabling what they themselves ended up calling disasters and catastrophes. And just who was responsible for all that irresponsible behavior? Why, the supporters of public schools. So no time to back off of creative innovation and disruptive creativity and privatization and charters and lack of regulation blabhblahblah.
You can’t learn from your mistakes when you don’t own them.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
If I may present your most excellent point in it’s most general, formal, mathematical embodiment:
The charter sell depends on Reformean Logic (aka, Foolean Logic)
It is worth noting that “mean” is an integral part of Reformean (or as you might spell it, Rheeformean, which hits all the high points of “Reform” — or low points depending on one’s perspective.)
Also, Foolean refers to the fact that it’s primary purpose is to fool ( and also that it is perpetrated by fools)
Of course, Rheeformean is rheedumbdant, but sometimes rheedumbdancy is called for in order to drive a point home.
There are no under-enrolled charter schools. There are only failing public schools that people “escape” and then mobs clamoring to get into charter schools.
This is a scientific fact in ed reform.
you are Not correct in that assertion. Obviously you aren’t an educator, you got it all twisted.
Chiara was poking fun at charter cheerleaders. Charters never accept their faults, their countless faults, their counterproductive essence built on fault.
Charters have so many faults that it’s a wonder the earthquake geologists have not taken to studying them.
The San Andreas Fault seems to be running right down the middle of the whole charter landscape.
More stealing and moving on. Good grief.
The Sacro Board of Ed’s. announcement includes this howler:
x x x x x x x x x x x x
“These decisions were not rendered easily or hastily,” the letter said. “Quite the contrary, the board understands the great levity of this decision and its consequences for all students and all staff.”
x x x x x x x x x x x x
I presume that it was meant to read that “the Board understand the gravity of this decision … ”
Perhaps they think that saying “great levity” means she same thing as “gravity” … with “gravity” contraction of the two words “great levity” or something?
Unless they mean that the whole thing’s big joke to them … which, when it comes to the way that bad actors in the charter industry are enabled, might actually apply.
That’s quite a gaffe coming from a department in charge of education.
That’s true, california’s State board is corrupt and needs to be replaced. The same people that bought them, bought lausd.
2018 is going to be an extremely important election year in California. Villaraigosa and Marshall MUST be defeated or state policy is going to go from Wild West to, well, whatever’s worse than Wild West.
Tuck. Marshall Tuck, that is.
I’d vote for Marshall Tucker any day of the week.
Jerry Brown’s largest blemish on his spectacular political career, is his obliviousness to just how damaging charter schools were and are.
Yep.
This blog already carried this story on Feb. 14.
Thanks for the reminder. I have too much on my late. I was supposed to fly to Kalamazoo tomorrow and just learned that my flight was canceled due to the snow storm.
So many closings and so many sound like the same story, again and again.
The glory of it all is that you can keep posting the same post and continue to be both accurate and timely.
“The Glory of Deform”
The glory of Deform
Is only names have changed
The failure is the norm
And story is the same
Ca to appoint another group of people to do nothing but lose more money? Ca government hasn’t done anything good in how many years? All talk and Nothing to back it up with positive actions.