The strike by the UTLA in Los Angeles just claimed an important victory. As California law now is written, the grant of a charter is not supposed to take into account the fiscal impact of a new charter on the fiscal condition of the district where it is located.
Thanks to the UTLA settlement, Governor Gavin Newsom has directed State Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond to appoint an independent panel of experts to review exactly that: what is the fiscal impact of charters on the public schools of their host district?
The panel will have four months to look at the issue, and to report back to Newsom by July 1. Thurmond has not yet announced who will be on the panel, but its formation raises the likelihood that California’s charter school laws may undergo revision over the coming year. This would be the first time there has been an in-depth look at the financial impact of charter schools since passage of California’s first charter law in 1992.
The issue was a concern of Newsom’s even before the L.A. teachers strike, said Newsom spokesperson Brian Ferguson.
“As Governor Newsom stated in his first budget proposal, rising charter school enrollments in some urban districts are having real impacts on those districts’ ability to provide essential support and services for their students,” he said.
Under a 1998 state law, districts are not allowed to take into account the financial impact of a charter school on a district in deciding whether or not to grant them a charter. Charter advocates fear that removing this prohibition could have a dramatic impact on slowing charter school school expansion in the state.
Newsom’s creation of a panel to look into the issue appears a responseto a resolution approved by the Los Angeles Unified school board last month as part of the agreement it reached with the United Teachers of Los Angeles and its striking teachers last month. The resolution called for a “comprehensive study” of various aspects of charter schools in the district, including their “financial implications.”
The resolution also called for an 8-to-10 month moratorium on new charter schools while the study was being conducted. So far, however, Newsom has been silent on these latest calls for a moratorium.
In a statement, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, representing 33,000 teachers and other staff in the district, “applauded” Newsom for recognizing what it said was obvious: that L.A. Unified and other districts across the state are being “financially strangled” by what it called the “unmitigated growth” of charter schools.
But it questioned the need for a panel, saying that an “immediate cap on charter schools is urgently necessary.” Large urban districts, it said, were “well past the saturation point for charter school growth.”
Similar calls for a cap or a moratorium are coming from other districts with a large proportion of students in charter schools. In Oakland, where teachers appear to be on the verge of a strike, the school board also has set as one of its priorities convincing lawmakers in Sacramento to impose a moratorium on charter expansion. And in the nearby West Contra Costa Unified District, which includes Richmond, the board will consider a resolution this week calling for a statewide charter moratorium.
This is a tremendous setback for the charter industry, which has taken advantage of the opportunity to expand without regard to the cost of local public schools, even if it sets them on the path to insolvency.
Last May, Gordon Lafer, a political economist at the University of Oregon, produced a report for “In the Public Interest” estimating what charter schools cost three local school districts. When a student leaves for a charter school, the student takes his or her tuition money but the school still has fixed costs (or “stranded costs”) that cannot be cut, like custodians, transportation, maintenance, and utilities. To break even, the district must cut its budget, lay off teachers, increase class sizes, and eliminate programs. Thus, the majority of students suffer deteriorating conditions so that the charter schools may increase enrollment.
It’s long past time to take a look at this issue and establish accountability, transparency, and limits to charter school expansion in California.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Diane Of course, this is no surprise to most of us here. I would also add
a note to the text where it says: charters “take advantage of the opportunity
to expand without regard to the cost of local public schools, even if it sets
them on the path to insolvency.”
It’s not only expanding “without regard to the cost of public schools,” but
for many in the charter “industry,” it’s BECAUSE of the cost to public schools
and BECAUSE it sets public education on the path to insolvency.
It seems there is a movement afoot manufactured by those who would
like nothing better than to privatize everything in sight. (I have a stock phrase
for these folks, but I cannot use the whole thing here; however, it begins with
“greedy.” CBK
I hope this commission also uses its power to get some hard numbers on the number of students who leave charters to return to public schools and whether some charters are being run in a way that would discourage certain students from enrolling or remaining at the school if they did enroll.
NYC: Yes–it’s much bigger than money. CBK
The 1998 law should be changed as it represents the influence of corporations and the 1% on legislation. Newsom should realize that it was the people that put him in office, and they are calling for changes to the state’s rigged charter laws.
It still amazes me that states set up systems of state schools and did NO analysis of how that affects their existing public system.
The public school students apparently had no one at the table, at all.
They’re actually lucky it wasn’t worse, given that they gave absolutely no thought to the effects on 80%, 60%, even 40% of students.
It’s odd, how they completely took the public system for granted. As if there was no POSSIBLE downside because public schools (and public school students) had ZERO value.
That’s nuts! Yet the echo chamber went marching along yapping about “data” but ignoring 80 or 60 or 40% of the picture.
It’s still the rule at the federal level. DeVos waves her hand at public schools as if “oh, THOSE, well, THEY’LL still be around, I guess”.
In order for public schools to benefit from ed reform ed reformers probably have to assign our schools SOME value, and they don’t.
Chiara Yes, your note speaks to the subversive and long-term power of the 1%. And it
also speaks to our own long-term assumption, shared with well-meaning teachers, that
public education (or anything) is a given and that everyone in government and business
just want what is best for all of the children, not to mention for the health of the democracy.
Ha. CBK
I actually saw this disregard in action at the local level. Ohio promoted online charter schools – all of the national ed reform leaders did- but no one considered the effect on local systems.
About 5 years into it our school superintendent said she was inundated with issues relating to students dropping in and out of the online charters, to the extent that it was negatively affecting her steady attendees- the students who DIDN’T drop in and out. This policy that was pushed thru with no regard for public schools was harming public school students, and no one seemed ready to even admit it, let alone address it.
The public school students were considered the default, and they would just have to take second place to “choice”. They would bear the risk of any unintended consequences, because after all, they’re the public system! They exist to serve the “back up” needs of the choice system.
Appoint a board and nothing will happen for 5 years.
If I had a magic wand, I would flood every member of congress with information on the destructive force of charter schools and choice policies that mean schools and education service providers choose their students. The big players in the charter/choice industrry are using FrameWorks to sell their wares with sweet talk. I would ask that they refuse federal funding for charter/choice schemes which also contribute to increased segregation.
Here’s an out-of-the-box solution (perhaps crazy): charterize the public schools. That is, free them of all regulations. Free them. Free them from Common Core and testing and quotas on suspensions. Our public school staff feels crushed and helpless under all these top-down requirements. If were were liberated, we could powwow in the staff room, brainstorm our dream school and set about building it. Our sense of agency has been destroyed by the Era of Reform. Let’s reform Reform.
Do public schools get to be “free” of the regulation to teach all students?
How many 5 year olds is a public school system allowed to be “free” of? What if every teacher gets to identify the 10 Kindergarten students in each class she believes will not help her class be all that she knows it can be and dump them and the school system’s responsibility is now done?
And this would be done for all grades. Each teacher can identify 10 students in each class as “unworthy” and that’s it. No appeal. You might be 5 and struggle to learn how to read, but by golly you aren’t helping to make your school look good and that means you don’t deserve to be in the public school system anymore.
I should have said “partially” charterize. We couldn’t exclude kids. We’d still allow collective bargaining.