San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
S.D. CHARTERS COULD FIND IT TOUGHER TO WIN APPROVAL
San Diego Unified School District is proposing adding dozens of standards for new and expanding charter schools after a new state law gives districts more leeway to deny charters.
Under the proposed criteria, San Diego Unified would consider the potential financial and enrollment impact of a new or expanding charter school on the district.
Before the law change, the district could not consider those factors.
School districts regularly compete with charter schools for students, and in California state money follows the student.
“It’s been frustrating as a school board member for 12 years to have charter petitions come before us and not be able to ask that basic question: How will this school impact neighboring schools and our district as a whole?” said school board Vice President Richard Barrera at a recent meeting. “And now, not only can we ask those ques
tions, we will ask those questions.”
For example, San Diego Unified could consider how many district and charter schools already serve students where a charter school hopes to locate and how many students a charter school is projected to take away from San Diego Unified and other charter schools.
Deidre Walsh, San Diego Unified’s executive director of charter schools, said the new policy does not mean the district won’t allow any new or expanding charter schools.
“There’s not an assumption that every impact is going to be a negative impact,” Walsh said Friday.
Charter schools are public schools that run independently of school districts.
In order to create a new charter school, charter school leaders have to get approval from their local school district board.
Charters also have to get renewed by a school board every five years to continue operating.
If their local district denies them, they can appeal to the county school board, then the state school board.
A new state law called AB 1505, which was the result of a compromise between the California Charter Schools Association and lawmakers, expands the criteria districts can consider when approving or denying charter schools.
Before AB 1505, the main criteria school districts could consider were whether a charter school presented an “unsound educational program” or showed it was unlikely to successfully implement the educational program.
Now AB 1505 allows districts to consider the community impact and fiscal impact of a new or expanding charter school.
Districts can deny a charter school if it decides the charter would “substantially undermine existing services” provided by other schools or if it would copy a program already offered in the district that has enough room to serve students.
“The policies before were very ... rigid in looking at the proposed new charter school as a standalone, as if it wasn’t going to exist within an existing system of schools,” Walsh said.
“And so now when we look at it as part of the larger system ... it’s a more complicated process, assuredly, but I don’t think any of us have taken this as these new regulations mean there will never be a new charter school or there will never be a charter expansion.”
The state law leaves it up to districts to determine the fiscal and community impact of a charter school.
According to a draft of the policy, San Diego Unified plans to consider enrollment trends at existing schools, whether charter school leaders have engaged with the community where they plan to locate and whether there is parent support for a new charter school.
The district also plans to consider whether the charter school would enroll a student body that includes high-need students — such as students with moderate or severe disabilities, homeless students and English learners — in proportions that are similar to the overall district’s.
The fiscal and community impact criteria would not be used to decide whether to renew a charter school, Walsh said.
San Diego Unified board members discussed the draft of the charter school policy at the Nov. 3 board meeting but did not approve it. They did not say when they would discuss or approve it.
San Diego Unified gets few petitions for new charter schools, typically no more than one a year. It gets more requests from existing charter schools hoping to expand, Walsh said.
The district has denied renewal to a few charter schools in the last five years, mostly for failure to make academic progress, Walsh said. Charter school renewal petitions still will be vetted for academic progress.
San Diego Unified’s enrollment has consistently declined by about 1,000 to 2,000 students a year. Enrollment took a deeper hit this year because of the coronavirus — there are about 98,000 students enrolled now, compared to 102,000 last year.
Meanwhile San Diego charter school enrollment has f luctuated around 21,000 students in recent years. The district currently authorizes 43 charter schools.
Charter schools are drawing students who otherwise might have gone to district schools. But other factors also are driving the district’s enrollment decline, such as a lack of affordable housing and demographic changes in an area.
While traditional public school advocates argue that charter schools hurt school district finances by taking away their students, charter school advocates argue that students leave district schools for better options at charter schools because the district schools are not serving them well enough.
Though it has not been approved yet, San Diego Unified’s draft policy is drawing concern from the local division of the California Charter Schools Association.
Miles Durfee, the association’s vice president of local advocacy for southern California, said the district should wait before making a new charter school policy; there’s no need to rush it during a pandemic.
“It’s a 33-page document that adds a whole bunch of burdensome … oversight,” Durfee said. “What we should be doing right now is focusing on the students that are out of school and trying to work together as an education system to bridge the learning gap.”
Durfee said he hopes to collaborate with the district on the policy.