Carl Petersen, a veteran of the charter wars in Los Angeles, writes her about the serious defect in the charter reform law.
The law finally allows local school boards to determine whether proposed charter schools will damage the fiscal stability of the public schools, a welcome change.
But it also allows the unelected County Board of Education to overturn the decisions of the elected district school board. If the elected school boards determine that the proposed charter will damage the district, the unelected County Board can reject the decision of the local elected board. That is just plain wrong.
And nowhere is it wronger than in Los Angeles, where Corporate Reformers funded by billionaires fight to control the LAUSD school board. When the public manages to get the upper hand, the decisions of the school board can be overruled by a charter-friendly unelected county school board.
The county board in LA is dominated by phony Reformers, including the candidate who lost to George McKenna, a true friend of public schools, and Kate Braude, the executive director of astroturf Speak Up, the voice of the charter industry.
Elected officials should have the last word, not charter shills.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Speaking from California: I’ve wondered if there’s been a deliberate effort to pack county school boards with charter cheerleaders. Even high-information voters don’t pay that much attention to who’s on their county school board (as opposed to their local district school boards), in my observation, so it would be easy peasy to buy those seats.
I’m in San Francisco, where I’m happy to say that’s not an issue, because S.F. is a contiguous city and county, and the S.F. school board also serves as the county school board. BUT the determined, well-funded would-be charter operator can still appeal to the state Board of Ed, which is less packed with charter insiders than it used to be, but still views charters warmly.
The new law is still a bit of a step, even just recognizing that local school boards should have the right to reject a charter because of its detrimental financial effect on the other schools; and some would-be charter operators do give up once the local school board rejects them — I’ve seen it happen a number of times. And as someone who has followed the charter story for 20 years, just seeing charters no longer universally hailed as miracles run by saints designed to rescue children from evil public schools and lazy greedy unionized teachers is significant. Let’s hope the law turns out to have some effect.
The L.A. county board has been taken over by the charter industry.
I think that’s true of the Santa Clara County BOE too (the southern part of Silicon Valley, where sprawling San Jose is located). And for a while there was a rising star in Bay Area ed “reform” and there was big ballyhoo when he was triumphantly elected to the San Mateo County BOE (the northern part of Silicon Valley), only he got entangled in a personal scandal and abruptly removed himself from the public eye and from rising “reform” stardom (this is not known to the outside world; I know the person he got entangled with). I watched this all happen, and that’s how I recognized that the “reformers” were targeting county BOEs this way.
TARGETING. It is so very precise.
Say this over and over again, “Charters are BAD, and about Jim Crow.”
Follow up with “Public Schools & Public School Teachers are 2 of America’s Treasures. Support these gems.”
Charter inversion
Bug or feature?
Flaw or virtue?
Charter creature
Will invert you
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Featured snippet from the web
Los Angeles County Board of Education: maintains the policies for governance of the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) and appoints the Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools. It is composed of seven members who are appointed by the board of supervisors to two- and four-year terms.
The five County Board of Supervisors in LA County is elected. The next election is November 3, 2020. Supervisors are limited to three consecutive four-year terms.
While the Los Angeles County Board of Education is not directly elected; and while folks are lobbying for a change in State Education Code, the same folks would be wise to mobilize public education defenders to elect members to the County Board of Supervisors in November 3, 2020 that are committed to public education, not privately managed education paid by the taxpayers of Los Angeles County.