On Friday union President Alex Caputo-Pearl called for a halt to new charter schools in the district. It’s the latest escalation in the union’s anti-charter rhetoric.

“It’s time to invest in our existing schools,” said Caputo-Pearl, who heads United Teachers Los Angeles. “This unregulated growth is something that affects the long-term sustainability of the district. … This is about protecting the civic institution of public education.”

Charter supporters take issue with the union’s targeting. They say charters have provided valuable educational choices and have proved popular with parents.

L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner on Friday said it was wrong to characterize the dispute “as a referendum on charter schools.”

In an interview on Spectrum News, a cable channel, Beutner said “all schools should be looked at with the same tough set of standards.” For the teachers union, he said, “the difference is charter schools don’t have UTLA members, traditional public schools do.”

About 1 in 5 Los Angeles public school students now attends a charter. L.A. has more charters and more charter students than any other school system in the country. This growth has been substantially fueled by federal grants and donors, who include conservative and anti-union forces as well as some independents and Democrats.

Charters are privately managed and while most are nonunion, Caputo-Pearl said that his union represents about 1,000 charter-school teachers and that existing charters that are struggling with enrollment also are being hurt by the “grow at any cost” strategy of some charter advocates.
UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl calls for a cap on charter schools.

He also noted that because funding follows the student, charter expansion has drained funds from L.A. Unified, which also is losing enrollment based on unrelated demographic trends.

Fewer students means fewer teachers. And while a drop in enrollment should lower district expenses, the district has had a hard time shrinking and also is burdened with fixed costs for such things as school maintenance and retiree health benefits.

Union leaders “reason that the dramatic expansion of charter schools in Los Angeles over the last decade — an expansion fueled by funding from [Eli] Broad, the Walton Family Foundation and the Gates Foundation — has heightened instability and undermined the capacity of the system as a whole,” said UCLA education professor John Rogers. “UTLA leadership envisions creating a new reality on the ground that will change the dynamics of education in Los Angeles.”

The district also has a new reality in mind — a still mostly confidential plan to divide the nation’s second-largest school system into about 32 networks. The limited disclosure has exacerbated union fears about the goals of Beutner, a successful businessman without a background in working for or managing a school district.

While Beutner has called for a coming together with teachers, he’s also made comments that increase their anxiety.

“So [if] it’s the flexibility of charter schools that’s allowing them to excel, let’s bring that flexibility into the traditional school classroom,” he said in the TV interview on Friday.

But charter school growth and reorganization plans are not part of contract talks.

In its proposal to the district, the union devotes one page to charters — specifically to what happens when a charter shares a campus with a district-operated school.

These sharing arrangements, called colocations, are required by state law. But they frequently led to disputes over space as well as to protests against a charter’s presence.

The union proposal calls for notice by Nov. 15 of the preceding school year when a charter applies for space. UTLA also wants to establish a colocation coordinator who would get a $2,000 stipend and be involved in all discussions regarding logistics. In addition, the union wants an advisory panel at each affected campus that includes teachers, parents, the plant manager and the principal of the traditional school.

They are the union’s response to complaints from staff at traditional schools, which have had to surrender space set aside for computer rooms, tutoring and extracurricular programs.

L.A. Unified has opposed the union’s colocation proposals without much explanation. But there could be concerns about creating a new, potentially cumbersome bureaucratic layer or about letting the union interfere in district administrative decisions. That’s an issue the district has raised about many of the union demands.

Some district officials, notably school board member Nick Melvoin, have sought to ease tensions over campus sharing by sponsoring something very close to group therapy. Using donated funds, Melvoin organized a summer retreat at a local resort hotel that brought leaders of charters and district-operated schools together to get to know each other and talk.

To be sure, many union activists don’t particularly want to get along with charters. They see the charter incursion as too much of a threat.

A strike, if it happens, won’t be over a charter moratorium. But by bringing up the issue now, the union is taking advantage of the sudden spotlight turned on by the strike threat.

UTLA calls for immediate cap on charter school growth in Los Angeles and to invest in existing schools

UTLA is calling on civic leaders to place an immediate cap on charter school growth within the Los Angeles Unified School District to address the unregulated expansion of charter operators and its impact on the sustainability of existing district and charter schools.

“The need for our students to have a stable public education system in Los Angeles must be a priority over the aggressive expansion of charter school growth, and that means an immediate halt to opening new charter schools,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said.

Los Angeles is home to 224 charter schools – schools that are funded by public dollars but privately managed — more than any other city in the country. Charter schools in LAUSD have grown more than 250% over the past 10 years and siphon more than $600 million from our existing public schools. That explosive growth has happened without oversight or analysis of the educational and economic impact on the community. Schools are being built without simple questions being answered: Does this neighborhood need another school? Can the land be used for something more impactful for the community, such as housing or green space? In addition, Opening new schools has duplicative administrative costs, facility costs, and so on, further reducing money available for students’ needs.

UTLA represents educators who work in district and in charter schools, and the call for a cap was developed in consultation with the UTLA Charter Educator Standing Committee.

“The lack of oversight means an oversaturation of new schools opening in certain areas, and existing schools suffer underenrollment as a result,” said Carlos Monroy Jr., a Resources Specialist Program teacher at El Camino Real Charter High School in the San Fernando Valley. “We simply cannot continue to have the unregulated growth of new charter schools at the expense of our current students. It is not sustainable for existing district schools or charter schools alike. We need to prioritize investing in the schools we have now.”

Declining student enrollment impacts district and charter schools

The unregulated growth of charters has occurred while shifting demographics and the high cost of housing has meant that overall student enrollment in LAUSD is declining, leaving schools to fight for resources and students. In 2002-2003, the total student enrollment in both district and charter schools in the LAUSD geographic area was 746,831. In 2018-2019, estimated total enrollment has dropped to 609,756—despite the fact there are 200 more charter schools now than in 2002-2003.

This summer, a PUC charter school in Eagle Rock closed its doors because of underenrollment on the fourth day of school, without any notice to students and parents. When a charter school closes during the academic year—due to financial insolvency, misconduct, or low enrollment—students’ academics and families’ lives are severely disrupted.

Unchecked charter school growth hits low-income communities facing gentrification especially hard.

“My school is located in Lincoln Heights, and some of our students’ families are struggling with the harsh realities of housing costs rising substantially,” says Sylvia Cabrera, a charter school teacher at Alliance College-Ready Middle Academy #5. “It seems like every week we get an email notifying us of another student unenrolling because their family is being displaced. Between more charter schools being authorized and the impact of gentrification, we are finding it more and more difficult to meet our enrollment capacity with each passing year as the student population in the community declines.”

Expansion pulls resources from public school system

University of Oregon Professor Gordon Lafer, author of “Breaking Point: The High Cost of Charter Schools for Public School Districts,” confirms that the expansion of charter schools pulls significant resources from the public school system. District and charter school funding is largely determined by the number of students enrolled at a school, and that per-pupil funding covers much more than the direct costs of educating a particular student. For every student who leaves a public school, there is revenue lost that is greater than the cost of that student. That translates into cuts in schools to libraries, special education, art and music classes, and other essential student programs

Charter schools drift from original mission of innovation

The mission of many charter schools has drifted from teacher-driven laboratories meant to inform and improve public school education to the establishment of a competing system of corporate-managed schools that too often deprive parents and educators of any real input. These forces, combined with the challenge of inadequate funding, are undermining the educational opportunities of our LA student community and the long-term sustainability of the public school district as an essential civic institution.

Charter industry prioritizes expansion over student needs

The proliferation of charter schools is driven by the California Charter Schools Association; its wealthy benefactors, such as Eli Broad; and the LAUSD School Board members it elects through massive political donations. CCSA’s political support has secured the group and like-minded organizations exclusive access to elected board members. Through a public records request, the news organization ChalkBeat obtained a lengthy digest of emails between former CCSA CEO Myrna Castrejón, her staff, and school board members Monica Garcia and Nick Melvoin.

LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner, a former Wall Street banker with no educational experience, is developing a plan to break LAUSD into 32 networks and build a so-called portfolio district—a Wall Street model that has closed neighborhood schools, turned over more schools to unaccountable private operators, increased segregation, and undermined learning conditions in other cities.

“LAUSD has been a target of unregulated charter expansion by groups like CCSA and wealthy privatizers Eli Broad, who see public education as an industry to be broken up rather than reinvested in and supported,” Caputo-Pearl said. “We call on our civic leaders to finally address the rampant expansion of charter operators at the expense of our current schools.”

Watch the press conference live here.

UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, is proud to represent more than 35,000 teachers and health & human services professionals in district and charter schools in LAUSD.