Tomorrow is the day when we find out whether the millions invested by Dark Money in electing a majority of the school board pays off for charter operators.

The charters want public money without public accountability. They don’t want to be pestered by Investigations of waste, fraud, and abuse. And the LAUSD board decides tomorrow. They want to be called “public schools” when it’s time to get public money, but private schools when it’s time to be accountable.

Donald Cohen writes here about what’s at stake.

“A number of Los Angeles charter schools up for renewal this week are throwing a tantrum if they don’t get their way. Charter school operators have refused to comply with Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) charter school policies and say they won’t include some district standard requirements they don’t like in their charter application. For example, they are refusing to comply with special education rules and the ability of the district to pursue investigations of fraud and other illegal practices.

“They say they should not be subject to basic transparency, accountability and oversight requirements. California charter school operators have plenty of autonomy as the state law grants them. But that doesn’t mean they get to do things that harm education, that allow fraud to go undetected and uninvestigated and allow them to set their own rules on basic educational policies and programs such as school discipline and special education.

“And today in Los Angeles, given the very public problems and investigations related to charter school operators at LAUSD it couldn’t be a worse time to reduce oversight and accountability mechanisms. One recently elected school board member and founder of Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC), a charter school network in the region, has been charged with three felonies for campaign finance violations and the school district is asking the PUC’s operators about potential conflicts of interest and delayed reporting of financial transaction.

“Charter operators are objecting to the ability of the district’s inspector general to investigate all possible malfeasance and to limit the scope of investigations they do conduct. The District should be able to pursue any possible violation of the law in the quickest and most effective way. The Office of the Inspector General, upon initial investigation, can determine the full scope needed. But failing to treat allegations as seriously as they could potentially be will inevitably allow problems to go unaddressed.

“Charter operators also want to be allowed to become part of a Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) that may be hundreds of miles away and that have far less ability to oversee the schools. Several small districts in rural areas of the state welcome distant charters into their SELPA and the fees that come with it. Los Angeles is correct to require local charters to be part of the local SELPA so that special education students and programs in individual schools are tightly integrated into the local school district. Special education students need to be able to access and rely on services and programs that are available district wide. Special education students often change schools as they encounter challenges and seek the best situation for their education; somtimes back and forth between both charter and district schools.

“The charter operators also object to using the district’s student disciplinary processes. We have seen, in California and across the nation, that independent charter schools have used expulsions and suspensions as a way to “push out” under-performing students who may reduce an individual school’s testing averages or require additional resources. To prevent this, disciplinary procedures, including whether to use restorative justice methods, must be fair, transparent and equally established and implemented in all schools. Allowing charter operators to define their own processes is an invitation to discriminate and unfairly treat some students and families.”

Will the board give the charters what they want? Will they split the difference, to avoid the appearance of being the billionaires’ puppets, or will they insist that charter schools accept the accountability that accompanies public money?