June 2023 ACCS - Item 1 Public Comment 1
Public Comment 1 received for Agenda Item 1 of the June 13, 2023, Advisory Commission on Charter Schools meeting.The following information was provided on California Teachers Association letterhead. Except when needed for accessibility purposes, no corrections to spelling, grammatical, or typographical errors have been made. The Charter Schools Division understands the following acronym to mean: ADA = average daily attendance.
To receive a copy of the below communication in its original format, contact the Charter Schools Division by email at charters@cde.ca.gov.
June 9, 2023
RE: CTA COMMENTS REGARDING ITEM #1: Consideration of Requests for Determination of Funding as Required for Nonclassroom-Based Charter Schools Pursuant to California Education Code sections 47612.5 and 47634.2, and Associated California Code of Regulations, Title 5.
Dear Advisory Commission on Charter Schools Commissioners,
On behalf of the over 310,000 members of the California Teachers Association (CTA), we must express our continued concerns with the funding determination process for Nonclassroom- Based Charters (NCB). This process is broken and does not provide the level of transparency needed for the Advisory Commission on Charter Schools (ACCS) nor the State Board of Education (SBE), to provide appropriate public oversight on these funding determinations.
The disconnect between the state level process, the NCB, and the charter authorizer continues to be significant. This disconnect opens the door to bad actors such as the A3 charters and other groups who have taken advantage of loopholes. Just under a year ago, it was announced that the leaders of the A3 Charter Scandal, despite a theft of hundreds of millions of dollars, will not spend a day behind bars (Voice of San Diego Article
).
Additionally, most of the ACCS commissioners have shared these similar concerns for two meetings in a row (February 2023 and April 2023). The commissioners continue to raise significant concerns regarding the funding determination process, the intersection of the authorizer, and the state level process. At the end of the February 2023 meeting, Chair Walsh expressed “it is clear that there is still work to be done on the process and the systems and becoming clearer about the charter authorization responsibility.”
The lack of a role for the charter authorizers within the NCB funding determination process continues to be a significant issue.
CTA would like to call your attention to additional points specific to the individual NCBs in this item.
- iLEAD Hybrid
• Level of Reserves-$9,677,943 or 24%
• Only one vendor receiving over $50,000 for a budget of over $44,000,000
- Gorman Learning Center
• Level of Reserves-$8,988,083 or 62%
• Gorman Learning Center has 1,176 ADA and Gorman Joint School District (their authorizing district) shows a total enrollment of 82 students. Their charter enrollment is over 1,400% larger than their own enrollment.
• There doesn’t seem to be any oversight fees being paid to the authorizer based on page five of the Funding Determination Form (FDF). - Gorman Learning Center-San Bernardino/Santa Clarita
• Level of Reserves-$3,067,679 or 19%
• Gorman Learning Center-San Bernardino/Santa Clarita has 1,323 ADA and is larger than the student population served by Lucerne Valley Unified School District (their authorizing district).
CTA looks forward to working with the California Department of Education, SBE and ACCS to fix this broken process before it is too late.
Sincerely,
/s/
E. Toby Boyd,
President California Teachers Association
C:
CTA Executive Officers
Teri Holoman, Associate Executive Director, CTA Governmental Relations
Lori Easterling, Manager, CTA Legislative Relations
Commissioners, Advisory Commission on Charter Schools
Nancy Portillo, Deputy Superintendent, California Department of Education
Brooks Allen, Executive Director, State Board of Education
Kyna Collins, CTA Liaison to the ACCS
Return to the June ACCS Meeting Agenda