100th School Charter OK’D Questions Shadow Celebration

By Naush Boghossian\ Staff Writer

Approval of the 100th charter school in the Los Angeles Unified School District was celebrated Wednesday, even as local and state officials pushed to quell the explosion of the popular independent campuses.

The news conference at Milagro Charter School came the day after LAUSD board member Jon Lauritzen proposed a one-year moratorium on new charters, and other board members said they want time to map out the future of the booming charter movement.

“The charter movement is in its infancy stages, and our board helped to initiate that growth,” the board president, Marlene Canter, said. “With the 100th comes a responsibility of reflection – looking at charters’ successes and challenges and creating an effective oversight and accountability process.”

By fall, at least 30 more charters are expected to open – making nearly one in every six LAUSD public schools a charter. The 100th charter, Excel Academy, is expected to open in September.

Canter said she has been talking with Caprice Young, a former school board president who now heads the California Charter Schools Association, to determine the future of charters in the district.

But Canter also has been working with LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer and the president of the teachers union, A.J. Duffy, on a program that would give traditional campuses more flexibility – an effort to curb the number of schools seeking charter status.

Young said Los Angeles Unified is the most innovative very large district in the nation – with charters, learning academies, magnets and continuation schools – and that the various campuses have to find ways to collaborate more effectively and share their methods for success.

Lauritzen said the school board has been spending so much time reviewing charter applications that he is concerned members have been unable to monitor performance of those already operating.

“I don’t think we’re well-serving the ones we already have in existence,” said Lauritzen.

“Charter schools really have so little regulation or supervision, we don’t know how it’s going to fit into the overall program,” he said.

He and board members Julie Korenstein and Marguerite LaMotte are considered the least likely to support charter growth. Lauritzen will be working on the proposed one-year moratorium with the California School Boards Association. The group has sponsored legislation that would make it easier for school boards to deny charters that would have a negative fiscal impact on the district.

Duffy supports Assembly Bill 2954 and said he’d also like to see the state limit the amount of money that goes to charters.

“I am opposed to charters because they don’t educate any better and the drain on the general fund is getting to an alarming proportion where it’s going to hurt the public sector,” said Duffy, who heads the 47,000-member United Teachers Los Angeles. “With each charter, state funding goes with them, which means we get less, and the general fund money available to do things – like … class-size (reduction), maintenance, equipment – is less.”

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is maneuvering to take over the district, congratulated its residents for having the most charter schools of any district in the nation and said the movement should continue unimpeded.

“Mayor Villaraigosa is strongly supportive of charter schools and believes we must expand the number of these high-quality, innovative public schools,” said his spokeswoman, Janelle Erickson.

Romer said district officials have embraced charters but they want to look for ways to better serve students not enrolled in charters.

“It’s obvious that charters have become a part of the tradition of LAUSD, but there’s always the possibility of creating other forms that are technically not charters,” Romer said. “As we go forward, we’ll be looking at new forms. I think that choice – a variety of forms – is a good idea.”

Romer also predicted that as the academic performance at traditional schools continues to improve, the campuses will reclaim some of the students they lost to charters.

But experts say they expect charters to continue to gain popularity among students, parents and teachers, and districts and charters should find ways to collaborate.

“Charter schools were created to change the public school system, and we’re seeing that happen,” said Priscilla Wohlstetter, professor and co- director of the center on educational governance at the University of Southern California.

Naush Boghossian, (818) 713-3722

naush.boghossian(at)dailynews.com