April 2026 ACCS - Item 5 Public Comment 2

April 3, 2026

Chair Mike Walsh and Commissioners
Advisory Commission on Charter Schools
California Department of Education
1430 N Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

RE: April 2026 ACCS Meeting / Item 05 / Vista Springs Charter School

Dear Chair Walsh and ACCS Commissioners,

On behalf of the California Charter Schools Association (“CCSA”), I am writing in support of the California Department of Education (“CDE”) recommendation that the State Board of Education (SBE) approve the renewal of Vista Springs Charter School (“Vista Springs”) for a term of two years.

We appreciate CDE staff’s thorough review and consideration of this renewal under a de novo standard of review as is required for SBE authorized charter schools, and we agree with CDE’s conclusion that the school should be renewed. Following CDE’s yearly analysis of charter school performance, Vista Springs was placed in the middle performance category when those categories were released in both 2024 and 2025. As described in the CDE staff report, the school was still considered a middle-performing charter school when the renewal petition for the school was submitted to the Vista Unified School District (“District”) in August of 2025. It was not until the renewal categories were released for 2026 that Vista Springs was moved into the low performance category. The non-renewal and closure of a quality public school due to a single year of lower performance, without any opportunity to demonstrate improvement would be particularly unjust.

California Education Code Section 47607.2(a)(3) rightly provides an exception to the presumption of denial for low performance category charter schools. The chartering authority may renew a charter that meets the criteria for this category only upon making a written factual finding, with specific facts to support the finding, that:
1. The charter school is taking meaningful steps to address the underlying cause or causes of low performance, and
2. Those steps are reflected, or will be reflected, in a written plan adopted by the governing body of the charter school.

CDE staff has rightly concluded that this exception is appropriate in the case of Vista Springs. As is described in the CDE staff report, Vista Springs has identified the root cause of the school’s performance challenges, and has already begun taking meaningful steps to address them. Vista Springs has submitted a board approved performance improvement plan, which describes the meaningful steps Vista Springs is implementing to address the underlying causes of its lowered performance, and creates actions guided by academic data to improve teaching and learning.

In addition to meeting these criteria for renewal, the school has already begun to see promising academic performance improvements which should continue as the actions described in the performance improvement plan take full effect. According to CDE’s 2025 growth measure data, 80% of Vista Spring students showed improvement in English language arts, and 69% showed improvement in math. CDE’s analysis of Vista Springs’ Verified Data further confirms that Vista Springs students are already improving. In 2024–25, Vista Springs students at every grade level exceeded the 100 percent median score target for annual typical growth in reading, and most grade levels met this standard for math. Importantly, this growth is demonstrated for all numerically significant student groups at all grade levels. Vista Springs expects all grade levels to meet the 100 percent median growth target by the end of the 2025–26 school year.

Given the school’s historic performance as a middle category school and the obvious evidence of growth towards reaching that level again soon, the school should be granted a petition renewal with an opportunity to continue helping their students improve. We respectfully request that you vote in favor of the CDE staff recommendation for this item.

Thank you for your consideration of our views on this matter. If you have any questions regarding our position on this item or would like to discuss it further, please feel free to contact me at (nwatson@ccsa.org).

Best Regards

Nicolas Watson
Managing Director of Regulatory Affairs
California Charter Schools Association