California claims to have tightened up its charter school law, but huge loopholes remain. For example, state money goes to charters that offer religious education to home school students, as well as to private businesses.
Patrick O’Donnell, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, thinks that oversight is needed.
Private businesses and religious organizations have been getting public school dollars through charter schools that allow home-schooling parents to use state funds to pay for certain services for their children — a practice some lawmakers want to rein in.
Parents in certain home school charters get as much as $2,600 a year, money that has gone to Disneyland, religious educators, private businesses and others who provide educational, enrichment and recreational services for children.
“It was never the intent of the state legislature to pass dollars through online charter schools to private vendors or religious organizations,” said Assembly Education Committee Chair Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, in an interview. “This highlights a bigger issue that we’ve been grappling with in Sacramento for many years … that the charter school law, when it was originally written, was wide open.”
Another state legislator, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, says she plans to bring forward a bill in the new year that would require state oversight and rules for charter school vendors.
She expects the bill will have guidelines about what kinds of vendors would be allowed to receive public school funds. She said her bill was partly inspired by The San Diego Union-Tribune’s reporting on home school charters.
It’s important “to make sure we are allowing (charter schools) to have the freedom that they were given, without it being abused and without it turning into a system where we’re privatizing education and taking advantage of loopholes,” Garcia said during an interview.
“We keep going to the fact that there hasn’t been enough oversight as to how charter schools are using the dollars,” she said. “I think we’re seeing through this reporting that there’s a lot of blurred lines, and we need a lot more transparency and a lot more accountability.”
Legislators can reasonably anticipate that the powerful, well-funded California Charter Schools Association will fight relentlessly against any regulation, oversight, transparency, or accountability.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I recommend reading the article which is in the San Diego Union Tribune. The reporter, Kristen Taketa, has been doing a masterful job following up on independent study and homeschool charters ever since the A3 scandal was made public. She also refers to Inspire Charter, another huge network at the center of the homeschooling controversy.
Thanks for identifying and praising the journalist.
One of the article’s commenters at the Tribune evidently doesn’t know the flood gates of money to religious schools that could open up with the Espinosa v. Montana Supreme Court decision.
Taketa should interview legislators about the potential ramifications of the case and the fact that 66% of Americans support separation of church and state. She could look into the political activities of the Catholic state conferences and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops e.g. their Amicus brief to the court in Espinosa.
Sheesh. Read the article. Reveals another whole networked layer of unmonitored shenanigans to grab taxpayer $ under lax charter law. & since so many states have lax charter laws, makes you wonder whether this is going on in many other places…
Public education, America’s most important common good that drives GDP and is the foundation for unity in a diverse country- two Calf. Democrats on the correct side of history, O’Donnell and Garcia.
CAP be damned.
I do not disagree with anything here, but just want to remind Ms. Ravitch and her readers that these schools are authorized by DISTRICTS that are raking in extra funding and not doing the job required for receiving that funding. If they were, these schools would not have gotten away with this as long as they have. In addition, not all charter schools operate that way, and MOST are doing a fabulous job of partnering with districts and filling in gaps to serve diverse communities.
Terri,
How about A3, which raked in $50 million in fraudulent profits, sometimes in collaboration with small rural districts? What job were they doing?
My point, exactly. If those districts did their job, and were not also misappropriating and embezzling funds, then A3 schools could not have existed.
The charter law in California is an invitation to corruption. Free public money with no accountability or oversight.
And why in the world should home schoolers get public subsidies?
If they want to have school at home, they should not expect public money.
So, are you saying all independent study programs should be shut down? I can’t speak for districts outside California, but I do know that the majority of districts within California have independent study programs…where students learn at home. While I am just as appalled as you by the lack of accountability of some home-school charter schools, I do believe there is a need for the flexibility and versatility offered by most home-school charters to provide support and monitor student progress. I am equally frustrated by parents who choose a “school” because it offers more money and less accountability. I agree, those folks should not be subsidized.
Isn’t our goal as public educators to guide our youth in developing academic, social, and economic skills to become informed and responsible adults? If families can provide a more modern, nurturing, and challenging learning experience than what they children were getting in a site-based school, why wouldn’t we want to provide guidance and support to ensure those goals are met?
I am saying that parents have the right to school their children at home, but they don’t have the right to expect the government to pay them to take trips to Disneyland.
There may be reasons to offer independent study programs in certain situations. Los Angeles Unified(LAUSD) high schools all have continuation schools on their campuses which fill some of those needs. They also run special schools(Queen of Angels) throughout the district that also offer independent study. However, the way independent study charters are being run, there is little to no oversight provided by the authorizing district, county or state. FYI…..LAUSD has refused to authorize any independent study charter.
I’d like to remind Terri about the estimated taxpayer loss of $1 bil. from Ohio’s ECOT. If Terri read more she would know about the private planes and luxury cars bought by charter operators which were charged to the taxpayers as school expenses.
Interest in charters would dry up, if the money dried up.
I do read, and I am aware of the ECOT debacle. Again, if the authorizer, in this case ESCLEW, was doing its job, ECOT would not have been able to get to that level of criminal activity.
Are you suggesting money should “dry up” for any educational entity in which someone somewhere has misappropriated or embezzled funds? If so, then every public school and district, private school, college, and university would have to close, because there have been several incidences in which some greedy unethical moron in each of those types of institutions has robbed the public. You might consider doing some reading yourself.
Terri,
I disagree. Any industry that exists on public money but is protected from public accountability, public transparency, and public oversight is certain to attract an unusual number of thieves and grifters in search of free public money. The charter sector is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse because it defined itself as exempt from regulation and oversight. Sorry, but that’s a truly dangerous combination.
Charter schools are not the only education institution to experience “thieves and grifters.” They are no more “rife with waste, fraud, and abuse” than other public schools we hear about across the nation. While I can only speak to CA charters, I can report they are not protected from public accountability, transparency, and oversight…as long as their authorizer (aka district) is doing its job. The charter schools I operate practice more transparency than any other education institution I have come across in my thirty years in education, including the district that authorized one of them years ago (which just so happens to be the same district that authorized two A3 schools and two Inspire schools). Is it right that a school following all the rules and best practices be shut down because the district changed superintendents and stopped practicing responsible oversight when two shady operators came to town? Our schools are now authorized by the county office and enjoying a quality authorizer. Families enrolled in charter schools providing a quality program under the oversight of a quality authorizer should not be the ones to bear the brunt of organizations like California’s A3 and Ohio’s ECOT. It’s not a charter school thing, it is a character thing; and there are bad characters everywhere, even where there are more rules and regulations.
Charter schools provide a welcome mat for grifters. That doesn’t mean that everyone who runs a charter is a grifter. But it means that grifters are welcome. Where else would non-educators get millions of public dollars to run schools and have the freedom to choose their students?
Where in the public sector have you heard about a school superintendent or principal who was indicted for stealing $50 million? What “lessons” have charter schools taught public schools? How to select your students? How to exclude those you don’t want?
I am glad that Ms. Novacek is receiving a nice salary, over $225,000(incl. benefits), an increase from the previous year of about $50,000 according to the latest 990s. Her schools have a high white population, low poverty and practically no Eng. language learners.
It would be interesting to find out why she closed Dehesa Charter and apparently transferred students to Dimension Collaborative.
Last, is San Diego County BOE a good authorizer as she claims?? The recently passed CA bills point out the need to have charters authorized locally to improve oversight. Yes, local authorization may or may not produce the best results, but having far flung authorizers is the worst case scenario as evidenced by the recent scams, such as A3.
What Novacek failed to mention was that the laws for denying and revoking charters are incredibly weak and are often up to interpretation. For that reason, authorizers face the possibility of having to defend themselves when sued by a charter which is receiving financial support from CCSA(CA Charter School Association).
Sorry, Ms. Novacek, the system is rigged in the charters’ favor at least for now.
As you seem to state, all that matters to you is that you run a good charter. Maybe you do, but the problem here is that all those fraudulent charters are pocketing millions of our precious tax dollars, which negatively affects funding for all CA schools, even yours.
Dear Educator…I would not usually take the time to respond to someone who doesn’t have the nerve to share their name, but your information is so far off base, I do feel a need to inform others of your ignorance. In my seventeen years in this role, I have never seen anywhere near a $225,000 salary and benefits. I received a $2,500 increase (not $50,000) from last year to now for COLA (a smaller percentage than all other employees). We have a low-income population of 40% and a SPED population of 20%. While we have made efforts to reach out to EL student families, many of those families prefer their children attend the neighborhood site-based school (aka school choice). We closed Dehesa Charter to get away from a District authorizer that was no longer operating with a level of integrity that aligned with ours. Dimensions Collaborative is a county-wide benefit which permits us to operate learning centers throughout the county to provide equal access to our program. What affects the funding of all CA schools is the attendance of the students enrolled. Yes, the money follows the student, but then, so do the expenses associated with that student’s education.
Terri,
You are wrong on one point. All the money follows the student but not all the cost. When students leave for charters, the money leaves with them but not all the costs. If 10% of students leave, the school has “stranded costs.” It still has to pay for heating, cooling, grounds, transportation, etc. it has to lay off teachers and cut the budget. Read Gordon Lafer’s study “The Breaking Point,” which describe the many millions of costs that charters impose on public schools. I assume you feel okay about causing cuts that affect most children for the benefit of your charter.
Please feel free to look up “Elements Education, Inc.” on Guidestar or ProPublica Non profit Explorer. This is the CMO for Dimensions Collaborative, the charter that evolved from the Dehesa Charter. Also, anyone can check the most recent demographics for this charter on the CDE(CA Dept. of Ed) website.
You might want to start by spelling it correctly…Element Education. If you are an educator, then you know better than to use only one source of information. Anyone interested in receiving a copy of my employment contract, the primary and most accurate source of information, feel free to give me a call. 619-247-3384
The commenter sent me a form 990 for Dimensions Collaborative charter showing your 2018 salary as $176,036. She also shows links to reports from The California Department of Education showing the demographics of your charter. This is not my fight and I don’t care. Don’t bother to reply.
Question. Schools can be provided for families that are looking for a place that their children may learn to read and write as well as other curriculum. If parents will educate their own, if other type schools are provided, giving families choice, what does it matter to others?
Anyone can choose any school. The public should not be obliged to pay for private choices. Why defund the schools that 90% attend so that a few can have “choices”?
90% is not a valid statistic given the ratio of public charter schools to public traditional district schools. I think it is fair to say the reason the percentage is so high is because the majority of parents across the nation do not have the “choice.” Charter schools are the perfect compromise providing choice, but within boundaries, thus breaking up the district monopolies, encouraging healthy competition, providing strategic partnerships between education institutions, and taking the burden off of schools to have to be everything to everyone. (Any school that says it does it all is kidding itself). As far as “defunding,” welcome to the real world of economics and financial planning. One of our schools lost 50% of its enrollment to a charter school providing gifts of public funds, something we refused to compete with. How is it our small organization can keep afloat under those conditions, but school districts cry robbery when they lose as few as six students to a charter school? As long as irresponsible district administrators, poor performing teachers, and the teachers unions have charter schools as a scapegoat, they will continue to shirk their own responsibility to focus on what is best for children. Charter schools are not private choices, any charter school that pays private school tuition is breaking the law, and any district authorizer that permits it to happen is where you should be pointing your finger.
Charter schools with private boards are not public schools.
Being a publicly elected official does not make you smarter, more qualified, have more integrity, or operate in the better interest of students and society, so I am curious why that would make a difference to you. #school board member misconduct
Sadly, there are always people who are looking for ways to “game the system”, no matter what profession they are in. That is why we need to always attempt to close loopholes and strengthen laws and penalties. The charter industry has taken full advantage of weak or non-existent laws and regulations, that, while touted as giving charters more opportunity to innovate, has instead lead to massive fraud, waste and abuse while few of their operators have been arrested and criminally charged. And, as detailed by Bill Phillis in Ohio, there is practically no chance that misspent money will ever be recovered.
The problems with charter mismanagement are nothing new, but attempts to tighten weak laws have been stopped dead by lobbying organizations like CCSA(CA Charter School Association). Why are they against any tightening of the law? Because it will ultimately reduce the steady of stream of investment opportunities and outright stealing of public funds that is rampant all over the country.
An interesting perspective…that CCSA is against tightening weak laws. I’m guessing you don’t have firsthand information, since so much of their work has actually been around bringing quality and integrity to public education. Public educators, and publicly elected officials, were “taking advantage of weak laws” long before charter schools began.
You just said it: choice.