A school district in Santa Barbara County may go bankrupt because of the charter chain absorbing revenues from its schools.
“One Santa Barbara County school district says keeping a local charter school open could cause them to go bankrupt.
“California’s Department of Education recently decided the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District has to help fund Olive Grove Charter School, a public school with six different locations.
“Olive Grove Charter Schools have been in Santa Barbara County since 2000, originally chartered by the Los Olivos School District. In 2014, Los Olivos decided it no longer wanted to oversee the schools.
“The only district willing to speak with us was New Cuyama so we did get authorized with the state board and New Cuyama paid us in-lieu funds at that point,” explained Laura Mudge, Executive Director of Olive Grover Charter School.
“Then the laws changed, and they were back at the drawing board.
“So the California Department of Education was hoping everyone would be able to get to an agreement, especially since Olive Grove had been authorized and in the county since 2000. It didn’t go that way, so we went back to the districts, back to the county and back to the state and then got authorized,” Mudge said.
“Now, the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District is stuck footing the bill – one that’s so high, they say it could lead to bankruptcy.
“We received notification from the Department of Education in December that we’re going to owe $696,000 to help fund Olive Grove Charter. That was just based off the beginning of the year attendance. If you listen to projections coming from the executive director of Olive Grove, that number will be closer to $1-1.2 million come the end of this school year,” said Scott Corey, superintendent of the Santa Ynez Valley Union High School District.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Okay, in California, we’ve now got …
pro-public school Governor Newsom
pro-public school State Ed. Supe Tony Thurmond
pro-public school State BOE President Linda Darling-Hammond
(NOTE: the first two defeated school privatization candidates who outspend them by tens of millions, with those privatizing opponents funded by money form both in-state and out-of-state billionaires out to profit from the privatization of education, and from the elimination of as many — eventually hopefully ALL — public schools as possible.
Oh, and the third was just appointed by the first, Governor Newsom.)
So, to you three folks above, let’s please fix this sh– that’s going on in Santa Barbara County.
Voters have woken up to what the privatizers’ motives ($$$) and endgame are.
You’ve been given a mandate from these same voters. Use it!!
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Well, what’s the problem? Everyone will have to go to one of the charter chain schools- either that or have a larger group of under-enrolled and under-funded and fragmented schools with fewer in-school choices and options for classes and levels.
“Plus/and” is a fantasy. Trade offs will have to be made. Pretending schools aren’t systems in a given geographical area comes with consequences. “Choice” comes with risk, and risk brings possible downside. That’s never mentioned in ed reform, but it will have to be, as the downside becomes more and more apparent.
When Betsy DeVos talks about the single-sex blended learning charter that is located on a barge she’s ignoring the comprehensive public schools down the street. She’s pretending public schools aren’t universal systems. That’s delusional. There will be trade-offs to fragmenting and privatizing, because there have to be. 100% of students in a given area is a finite number. It’s not an unlimited to unknown number. They’re not adding. They’re dividing.
It’s dishonest to tell people they can retain the same benefits that public school systems provide and also have everything they want in charters and private schools. That’s not true, and the risk will FALL on the public schools.
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yes
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Can someone give ed reformers this math problem? Say I have 1000 possible public school students in a given school and area and I introduce 3 charters and 2 publicly funded private schools.
Now I have a much smaller public school with 500 students, and 500/5 for the “choice” schools.
Should I tell the public school families their school will remain THE SAME as far as funding and programs and offerings WITHIN the public schools? Or should I instead face reality and tell them “choice” comes with a downside, and they will be bearing it? Completely. Because they’re the comprehensive schools so they’ll be taking the hit, and getting narrower.
The answer is it really doesn’t matter if I tell them or not. They’ll figure it out when they see it. And they are. Hence the pushback.
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For me, I measure how much ed reformers value existing public schools (and students) by how cavalierly they assume they’ll always be there, operating as some kind of taken-for-granted backup to the experiments.
They’re usually addressed in the last paragraph of editorials extolling “choice” – “of course, people will still be able to choose their traditional public school” as if our schools are this static resource to be tapped only as a last resort.
Duncan went even further. He announced that “15%” of schools would be charters, while utterly and completely ignoring the made-up “default” public school share, which I assume was 85%.
It’s so much a part of the mindset I can predict when I get to the “of course, public schools…” part of the choice promotion. Always last. Completely taken for granted and devalued, and they like to pretend these are buildings, but of course they’re not “buildings” anymore than a charter or private school is “buildings”. They are public school students and families. Only our schools get the dismissive brush-off of “buildings”
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I have been aching from reading all bad news about how gullible all CALIFORNIAN politicians ans corrupted corporate who consistently make the WORST decision in DESTROYING PUBLIC EDUCATION.
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE from New Yorkers who made the BEST DECISION TO SAVE their taxpayers funds. Please read two articles and my analysis:
From NYT articles on Friday, Feb 15th, 2019
New York Returns 25,000 Jobs to Amazon
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
As the company cancels its plans for a major Queens campus, anti-corporate activists got what they wanted at a great cost.
NOTE: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
Amazon’s plan to build a sprawling complex in Queens in return for nearly for $3 billion in government incentives had come under fierce opposition from local lawmakers.
3 BILLION= 3,000 MILLION= 3,000,000,000.00 OR $120,000.00 ANNUALLY per worker
THAT MEANS FOR 100.000 WORKERS, each can earn $30,000.00
Therefore, ONLY 25,000 JOBS, THERE WILL BE $120,000 ANNUALLY FOR ONE WORKERS AMONG 25, 000 WORKERS.
In short, all conscientious people in California have opposed CHARTER SCHOOLS from the beginning of the Republican government and corrupted corporate like Bill Gates, …who have enthusiastically promoted and supported CHARTER SCHOOLS in CALIFORNIA PLUS many other states like Houston, Texas; Virginia, Nevada, Ohio…
Yes, citizens pay heavy burden taxes, so that all previous and current Republican and Democratic presidents, Governors, Bill Gates, Cory Booker, who support Charter schools, MUST PAY THEIR “smart ass” DECISION. Yes, as per their MOTTO “NO EXCUSE”, they must face their own mistake. Period, “Un point final”. Back2basic
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This is happening in smaller districts as charters spread pass the large urban areas and invade the one or two high school size districts. The smaller districts can not absorb the costs like the large urban distrcts can. They go up the chain for approval to the county then state and in CA the charter association is strong and they get approval with disregard for the finances of the smaller districts.
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