Charter schools and others submit plans for control of new and struggling L.A. schools

Four dozen groups will vie for control of 10 new campuses and three existing schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The applications, which were due Wednesday, are part of a reform strategy under which groups inside and outside the nation’s second-largest school system compete to run new schools and persistently low-performing schools that fall short of improvement targets.

The new schools, including seven high schools, were built as part of a voter-approved, bond-funded construction program to relieve decades of overcrowding.

At long-struggling Clay Middle School, two campus groups will compete with Green Dot Public Schools, a charter-school organization. Green Dot also has a bid in for a new middle school.

Charters are privately owned and independently managed public schools.

For Muir Middle School, the competitors are an internal district team and MLA Partners, an outside nonprofit that already manages Manual Arts and West Adams high schools. MLA this week also had to deal with the sudden resignation of the Manual Arts principal following an internal district investigation. District officials declined to release details of the investigation.

The only proposal for Mann Middle School came from the coordinator of the school’s program for assisting low-income students.

One large charter organization, ICEF Public Schools, has been beset by financial difficulties and abandoned its bids for Mann and Muir as well as two new schools.

All told, charters have bids in for nine of the 10 new schools, according to the California Charter Schools Assn. Only a handful of charters prevailed in bids for new schools last year, on the first round of competition for schools. Charter operators complained last year that they were not given a fair shot at the new campuses.

On Wednesday, local charter leaders held a news conference to announce their submission of bids.

“We stand here, together, to ensure that charter schools are given a fair chance at running high-quality schools,” said Jacqueline Elliot, founder of Partnerships to Uplift Communities.

On Thursday, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa continued his advocacy for charter schools by visiting Granada Hills Charter High School in support of that school's bid to control a new San Fernando Valley high school campus.

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L.A. school board approves wide-ranging pact with charters

20 file to run for L.A. Board of Education; direction of reforms at stake

-- Howard Blume

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Comments

[LAUSD teacher]

Not, some charters have already dropped out of the running. Why are we giving the community's schools away to outside operators?

[TAM]

All schools are voters approved bonds, and the tax payers do not have a say in the matter. It is just a gift of public funds. The charter schools' owners should pay for their schools as the tax payers have to pay. It is time to vote out the Pint Size Mayor's puppets, and CLEAN up the school board. LAUSD is worst since the Pint Size Mayor's puppets have taken over. The Pint Size Mayor has done to LAUSD as he is having done to the city of LA.

[Charter Supporter]

Hey, Howard - Can we get you off the "privately owned" soapbox long enough to remind your readers that charters are public schools that operate independently of an existing school district structure. These schools are usually created or organized by a group of teachers, parents, community leaders, a community-based organization, or the school district.

Gee, that doesn't sound much different than the LAUSD-sponsored teams that are applying for Public School Choice opportunities. Except that the charters bring independence from the district, and the district-sponsored teams are saddled with the same old inadequate funding, policies, and methods that keep most district schools from succeeding in educating all of their students.

Oh, and by the way, LAUSD voters passed quite a number of bond issues under Proposition 39, which let them win approval with only 55% of the vote. Then, they conveniently forg0t that it is their responsibility to use part of that money to provide facilities for charter schools.

No wonder real school reform is an uphill battle.

[Fred Hernandez]

AGAIN MR. BLUME.... FALSE STATEMENTS?
"Charters are privately owned and independently managed public schools."
Charter School are PUBLICALLY FUNDED and independently managed public schools... NOT PRIVATELY OWNED... Where do you think the money comes from to fund these schools? I am concerned that your continuous false statements about Charter Schools are believed by the general population who still don't understand what Charter Schools are all about... OUR CHILDREN!

[Robert D. Skeels]

"Charters are privately owned and independently managed public schools."

The first two assertions are correct, but the last one?

Mr. Blume, with all respect, how can you call organizations that are exempt from the Public Records Act, The Brown Act, or any other public scrutiny "public schools?" In fact, how can you call any organization with unelected boards that meet in secret "public schools?" Aside from the fact that charter-vouchers take public funds (and lots of them -- see Mike Piscal), what is the public part again? I know the dominant narrative in Russ Stanton's newsroom is to give the charter-voucher sector a free pass on everything, but Mr. Blume you're a real reporter -- you're not Jill Stewart or Beth Barrett.

On another note, perhaps Jacqueline Elliot could address her schools' dismal percentages of students with disablities and special education needs (http://bit.ly/5LHf2j) before making specious claims of "running high-quality schools." A high quality school is one that takes the obligation of educating every child seriously, not ones that exclude students because they cut into profitability.

[ARD]

So the inappropriately-named “parental choice” public school giveaway train rumbles on in LAUSD with the dreaded and scrooge-like Ramone Cortines at the helm with a backseat full of grinning thieves such as Ben Austin, Gloria Romero, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Arne Duncan, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, and Yolie Flores. This rogues gallery of political climbers, capitalist thieves, misled sycophants, and political dimwits are the braintrust behind the largest public school giveaway/moneygrab in the history our country. Last time I checked, our elected school boards and elected officials are given our trust and treasure in order to design, create, nourish, and protect our public schools in Los Angeles, and to do so with a common goal of creating a platform of educational equity for the masses – a public platform critical to the growth and vigor of our healthy and sustainable American democracy – and not in the business of giving away our communities’ precious resources to dear political cronies with deep pockets and strange, self-driven agendas. Each of these schemers, when you scratch the surface, have little in the way of a professional understanding of education, and most are using the “parental choice” train as highly-charged, visible, and lucrative political vehicle to carry them past public education issues – which they claim they care so much about – into greener, more powerful, more lucrative, and more visible political situations. To cut through the sound-bite clutter filling our airwaves regarding this LAUSD-driven taxpayer-owned school giveaway policy and see it for the moneygrab/powergrab that it really is, one needs only to witness how the “parents” acted last school year when they were actually asked to choose schools (I know, there was that little nuisance of having to ask the “parents” about their school “choice”). When put to a vote, the parents in communities in which their neighborhood schools were being given away overwhelming shunned the LAUSD-backed charter schools that were jockeying to close them down, and chose instead their traditional LAUSD public schools with their traditional staffs. Ouch. “Darn those pesky parents, teachers, students, and community members that foiled our evil plan,” the rogues’ gallery would mumble to themselves in the dimly-lit backrooms of the Beaudry building in the early spring of 2010. Today’s newspaper headlines, however, is a chilling reminder that these grim reapers still lurk. In those same shadows they now chuckle. “We’re baaack.”