The latimes investigation into California charter schools continues in part 2, with a look at how the charter law allows questionable operators to identify lenient school districts.
Students board a yellow New Jerusalem Elementary School District bus. The district has made plenty from charter school fees, but it was chastised for lax oversight after a charter operation failed. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, as tax revenue plummeted, small school districts across California quickly felt the pain. Many were already lean, where administrators did the work of two or three, and students were counted in tens, not thousands.
Across California, other small districts hatched similar plans as word spread that they could fix their financial problems by approving certain types of charters and then charging them for a range of services. “You’re telling people they’re supposed to vet charters. But they also know that if there’s no charter revenue, they don’t have a job,” Pfalzgraf said. “I think staff was looking at this and going, ‘If I recommend no, what’s going to happen to me?’ ”
But a Times analysis of enrollment data found more than 60 California school districts in which more than half of the students enrolled are attending charter schools. In Kern County, a district with about 300 students has authorized five charters — all but one conducts most of its classes online. In the fall of 2017, the California state auditor released a report that exposed two school districts’ tactics of increasing revenue by approving out-of-district charter schools.
“It’s almost like what bankers call ‘creative financing,’ ” he said. “That’s how the schools are adapting to survive.” Thoming quickly got a reputation for being charter-friendly. When a lawyer representing charter schools called to ask if he would consider approving an independently run charter not controlled by the district, Thoming and his school board agreed.By 2016, New Jerusalem was overseeing six independent charter schools in addition to its seven district-run charters and its lone traditional school.
Thoming said the audit’s criticism was overstated. By his account, once he saw the problems, he went after the charter group, ultimately spending about $500,000 in legal fees to shut them down. What he got for his effort, he said, was unfair criticism. Rise Academy’s leaders eventually withdrew their petition. They would try again, petitioner Greg Ruffin wrote Thoming, with “another district that is comfortable with charters.”
What he didn’t know was that the same group behind Rise Academy had sent nearly identical applications to a handful of other small districts that had approved them. It was already in business under different names.
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