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Sitting on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk is a document that has added fuel to the roiling debate over legislation that would limit the growth of charter schools in California.
Newsom hasn’t taken a public position on the 13-page report by the California Charter School Policy Task Force, which he asked State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to convene.
But the four members affiliated with charter schools on the 11-member task force say they’re concerned that the report misconstrues what the group supported. They are particularly critical of a package of proposals that Thurmond presented to the task force, put to a vote and then included in the report. Thurmond ran the task force meetings and oversaw the writing of the report.
Thurmond dismissed the criticisms as off-base and defends the wording of the report and the decisions behind it. Some committee members agree with him.
The disagreement highlights the struggle Newsom and the Legislature are having as they determine the future role and growth of charter schools. California has more than 1,300 charter schools. They serve more than 10 percent of the state’s 6 million public school students.
During the next two months, Newsom’s advisers, charter school advocates and detractors will be negotiating language in Assembly Bill 1505, which could substantially restrict charter school growth. Its author, Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, and its co-sponsor, the California Teachers Association, are citing some of the contentious proposals in the task force report to support their positions. Their ability and that of charter advocates to sway public opinion on charter school reform could shape a potential deal on the legislation.
Earlier this year Newsom asked Thurmond to create the task force and report back by July 1 on two key issues: how to weigh a charter school’s fiscal impact on school districts and how to change the way a school receives authorization to operate.
In consultation with the governor’s office, Thurmond appointed representatives from both sides of the charter controversy. The task force’s meetings were not open to the public, with Thurmond’s staff taking notes but with no formal minutes.
EdSource reached out to all 11 members and spoke with the eight who responded. They differ on some pivotal details.
After meeting weekly for nearly three months, the task force issued a report with 13 proposals considered by the group: four recommendations, listed first, reached by consensus, and then seven more approved by a narrow majority. Thurmond included two other proposals that were discussed at length; one wasn’t voted on and the other narrowly failed to get a majority vote.
The most far-reaching of the consensus recommendations was approved toward the end of the task force’s work, after hours of draining and, members said, sometimes emotional discussions. It calls for giving school boards “additional discretion” over a charter petition by allowing them to consider the impact that a charter school would have on a district. “Fiscal” impact isn’t included but related factors are: whether additional charter schools would saturate a district, whether a charter petitioner could prove a need for the program it is proposing and whether a district is already offering a similar program to what the charter school proposed.
The report implies charter and union representatives made difficult tradeoffs to reach that recommendation. In giving a school board more authority to reject charter petitions, task force members “recognized there needed to be a balance with appeal rights,” it said. Agreeing not to recommend changes to the appeals process was a big concession from those who favored more restrictions.
The other three consensus recommendations are less provocative:
What’s in dispute is the package of seven proposals that Thurmond presented during a meeting on May 7. Thurmond called it a “framework” of issues for consideration. In creating the list of proposals, Thurmond said he included issues that already had come up. He said he considered it an even-handed list, but charter school advocates didn’t view it as balanced.
It included stronger restrictions on charter schools than the consensus recommendations, including some contentious issues initially proposed in Assembly Bill 1505:
Some task force members, including those affiliated with charter schools, told EdSource they disliked that they were asked to vote on the entire package with a yes or no vote, with no opportunity to amend it, after less than an hour of discussion at the end of a meeting. It passed 6-3, with two members having left the meeting early.
The four task force members affiliated with labor unions voted for the package, as did San Diego Unified Superintendent Cindy Marten and Edgar Zazueta, senior director of policy and governmental relations for the Association of California School Administrators.
But Zazueta said that he and others assumed they were taking a “straw vote” on a group of ideas that the task force would take up at a subsequent meeting.
“I believe there was merit in all of the issues,” he said, but there needed to be more discussion in an effort to try to reach a consensus on the items. “My assumption was we would come back” to them, he said.
In retrospect, he said, “I would not have been prepared to support the framework as a package without further fleshing it out.”
Task force member Margaret Fortune, president and CEO of the Fortune School of Education and chairwoman of the California Charter Schools Association, said that she didn’t expect to see the seven proposals in the final report. Listing each item as approved by the majority inaccurately implied that most members endorsed each recommendation on its own.
Only the consensus recommendations have “credence or credibility,” she said. “The rest of what has been included in the report is political noise.”
But Thurmond strongly disagreed, saying the report was a “complete and factual” account of every major topic that the task force considered and to leave out the vote “would be a glaring omission,” he said.
He said one mission of the task force was to review the issue of charter schools’ financial impact, “so I knew we had to have recommendations, even if not supported by the whole group,” he said.
Thurmond said that those who have complained about the majority recommendations simply “weren’t happy with the outcome of the vote.” He said they didn’t complain that the report included a proposal with a majority vote that went their way. That occurred when charter representatives helped defeat a proposal that would have changed a single word in statute to give school boards broad latitude to reject charter petitions. Instead of stating that school boards “shall” approve charter petitions that meet the legal criteria, it would have read “may.”
Task force member Erika Jones, a Los Angeles Unified elementary teacher and board member of the California Teachers Association, agreed with Thurmond that the list of majority proposals should be in the report.
“The public deserves to see what we discussed,” she said. The items contained “nothing new,” she said. All of the items were chosen from a “brainstorming list.”
“No one was blindsided,” she said.
But Cristina de Jesus, president and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools, said she too viewed the vote on it as a “pulse check” for a later discussion when all members were there. And the package was put on the agenda for the following two meetings in May, but, for reasons that aren’t clear, the task force didn’t subsequently discuss it.
Thurmond said any member could have raised it at any point, but none did. He said that he called every member to invite alternative proposals but none were submitted.
Thurmond included the framework in the draft report that was emailed to members on the evening of May 30. He invited feedback during a one-hour phone meeting the next morning. With little time for comments, Thurmond invited members to email or call staff with additional thoughts. Charter representatives said they emphasized to Thurmond and members of his staff they didn’t want the package of seven proposals included. Zazueta said he suggested omitting the proposals that conflicted with the more important consensus recommendations.
Thurmond and staff made wording changes but kept the basic structure intact when releasing it publicly a week later.
In the public debate since the release of the report, distinctions between the consensus and majority proposals have become blurred. Task force members from charter schools point to the consensus recommendations as reason to exclude the majority’s proposal to restrict the right of appeal. This contradiction “undermines the significance of folks coming together and their ability to put forward a united position,” Plate said.
“Now there is confusion,” De Jesus said.
But Marten, who favors including fiscal impact and restricting the right of appeal, said she saw no contradiction. The consensus recommendations represent “the floor” — the minimum restrictions the task force approved — while the majority-vote proposals represent “the roof” — controls that should be passed, she said.
Thurmond said he understood that the report “would never make everyone happy.” But it tells the full story about what happened, he said. “The task force did very important work, great work,” he said.
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Comments (9)
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Shannon Lockwood 5 years ago5 years ago
Some of those proposed restrictions make it obvious that his was a witch hunt from the start. The members chosen didn’t allow for a fair view of charter schools and also, why were the members overwhelmingly from southern California? The reason charter school are successful is because they work!
J.D. 5 years ago5 years ago
When will there be this amount of attention on legislation or policy for failing school districts that have not responded to State or County interventions and support? Which side of this roiling Charter School debate could impact and effectively address one reason for the importance of Charter Schools, namely, failing districts. We continue to “authorize” failing districts as they fail children, families and communities.
JudiAU 5 years ago5 years ago
And again, where are the parents?
Who advocates the children?
I guarantee it isn’t the people who make their bread from the decisions.
Sheila Jordan 5 years ago5 years ago
As a former school board/city council member in Oakland, I spent a great deal of time with Ed Blakely, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, the Urban Strategies Council, and District staff to create a demographic plan for all the schools in Oak. During my 16 year tenure as superintendent, the Alameda County Office of Education board started approving appeals from charters rejected by OUSD, I soon realized and started to study the … Read More
As a former school board/city council member in Oakland, I spent a great deal of time with Ed Blakely, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, the Urban Strategies Council, and District staff to create a demographic plan for all the schools in Oak.
During my 16 year tenure as superintendent, the Alameda County Office of Education board started approving appeals from charters rejected by OUSD, I soon realized and started to study the random placements of these schools. For example, in East Oak, 3 new charters were located around Highland Elementary. They all were competing for the same relatively small number of children.
I lobbied the state charter organization pointing out the lack of planning and the problems of having no demographic plan. Actually they agreed but insisted they had no choice since places and land were scarce. However, I felt and still do that this lack of planning hurts our ability to best serve our students and community.
Replies
Ann 5 years ago5 years ago
” They all were competing for the same relatively small number of children.” Exactly the point. The public schools didn’t step it up and they lost. Just as it should be.
Ann 5 years ago5 years ago
Meetings held in secret with no minutes? Then this? “… and its co-sponsor, the California Teachers Association.” What? CTA is a co-sponsor of a bill? Without the extensive ballot harvesting, Thurmond would not have this position and with this kind of malarkey he should be removed. Gavin?
Scott 5 years ago5 years ago
I am a long time California educator with over 20 years of experience and recently taught for a charter for five years authorized by Capistrano USD. I can testify (as does the data from charter schools) that many charters, but not all, are lower quality in many areas: – Lower teacher quality (new teachers with little support from experienced mentor teachers). Extremely high teacher turnover also ensures lower teaching quality year after year, – Lower … Read More
I am a long time California educator with over 20 years of experience and recently taught for a charter for five years authorized by Capistrano USD. I can testify (as does the data from charter schools) that many charters, but not all, are lower quality in many areas:
– Lower teacher quality (new teachers with little support from experienced mentor teachers). Extremely high teacher turnover also ensures lower teaching quality year after year,
– Lower quality administrators (most administrators are charter only experienced teachers and do not know how to effectively lead and support teachers for a higher quality school environment and to attain high student achievement.
– Lower quality student supports (inexperienced and underdeveloped counselors, etc. are not able to properly support at risk students effectively).
– Bad special education and 504 processes and decisions. In my years in a charter school, I saw students get an IEP without a full well-rounded assessment, and teachers were not encouraged to provide input during the IEP meetings or to provide accurate formative or observed documentation, etc. all to ensure parents get the IEP as requested. Most any 504 request was also granted and a 504 document created mainly for ADHD without collecting proper assessment data and showing a disability impacted their daily life significantly.
– Student earning multiple Fs over semesters were granted work permits by the inexperienced administrators and counselors to keep students and parents happy.
– Marketing to get more students enrolled to gain more funding into the school seemed more important than actually improving school procedures and raising student achievement.
– Staff developments were not focused on the most glaring of poor school data—-inability to effectively raise math skills as I observed over my entire five years.
– Administrators would change teacher grades during summer if parents complained without consulting or advising teachers. These illegal actions were only found by some teachers if they happen to log on to school system during summer break. Because administrators were inexperienced, it is policy to comply with parent requests rather than investigate and find the truth about issues.
I am back in a public school district school and am unable to support charters at this point. Others that have worked in charter schools will also recognize the above issues as the norm. Many certificated teachers and administrators that only have charter school limited experience do not even realize the above are not best practices learned and followed in high performing California school districts. More accountability and oversight is needed to say the least.
Todd Maddison 5 years ago5 years ago
Who represented parents on this committee?
I guess the customer is not important?
Dee 5 years ago5 years ago
Charter schools are an “out” for students. Traditional schools represent society and students need to learn to meet the norms of society. There are no Charter Societies unless you are an elite, and that is not the Charter School representation. Our monies need to be put into and for the masses not the few.