August 2025 ACCS - Item 1 Public Comment 3

August 8, 2025

August 2025 ACCS Meeting / Oakland Charter High 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 Advisory Commission on Charter Schools (ACCS) issue a recommendation to the State Board of Education (SBE) to hear the Oakland Charter High School (OCHS) appeal. CCSA is opposed to the actions of both the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and the Alameda County Board of Education (ACBOE), which wrongfully seek to force the closure of a charter public school that has been providing a quality public school option to Oakland students and families since 2007.

The written submission by OCHS in support of this appeal spells out in great detail multiple abuses of discretion by OUSD and ACBOE, and those abuses are more than sufficient to support a recommendation by the ACCS that the SBE hear this appeal. We will address these abuses in greater detail below, but the central core of this appeal is not particularly complicated: OCHS is a quality public school, with a proven track record of success dating back to the school’s founding in 2007, and neither OUSD nor ACBOE had any legally supportable grounds to justify a vote to force the closure of this successful school. Their actions absolutely meet the SBE adopted abuse of discretion standard “.. arbitrary, capricious, entirely lacking in evidentiary support, unlawful, or procedurally unfair” (California School Boards Association v. State Board of Education [2010] 186 Cal.App.4th 1298, 1313-1314).

OCHS is a middle-performing charter school by law, and as confirmed by the CDE’s analysis which placed the school in the middle tier for renewals. Under state law, middle-performing charter schools are eligible for five-year renewals, and may only be lawfully denied renewal by the chartering authority under two specific scenarios. Under the first scenario included in Education Code Section 47607.2(b)(6), the chartering authority must adopt written findings, setting forth specific facts to support the findings, that the charter school has failed to meet or make sufficient progress toward meeting standards that provide a benefit to the pupils of the school, and that closure of the charter school is in the best interest of pupils. This is an intentionally rigorous standard for authorizers to meet, particularly for a school like OCHS with a successful academic track record. Neither OUSD nor ACBOE adopted any written findings to deny the renewal on these grounds.

Education Code Section 47607(e) sets forth the other option for non-renewal. It states that the chartering authority may deny renewal of a charter school upon a finding that the school is demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition due to substantial fiscal or governance factors, or that the charter is not serving all pupils who wish to attend the school. The chartering authority may deny renewal of a charter school under this subdivision only after it has provided at least 30 days' notice to the charter school of the alleged violation and provided the charter school with a reasonable opportunity to cure the violation, including a corrective action plan proposed by the charter school. The chartering authority may deny renewal only by making the finding that the corrective action proposed by the charter school has been unsuccessful or that the violations are sufficiently severe and pervasive as to render a corrective action plan unviable. Again, neither the OUSD nor ACBOE adopted any of the requisite findings to not renew the school under this code section.

OUSD has taken the position that despite the clear requirements of Section 47607(e), the OUSD Board is not required to adopt specific written findings describing the fiscal or governance factors supporting the Board’s vote to force the closure of the school, because the OUSD Board Resolution specified that the OUSD Board adopts all aspects of the Staff Report on OCHS’ petition, except to the extent that any aspect of the Staff Report is inconsistent with the Resolution. However, not only was the Staff Report inconsistent with the resolution, the findings and the recommendation—the most important component of the Staff Report—completely contradicted the Resolution. The Staff Report read as follows:

"The OUSD Office of Charter School ("OCS") Staff have found that the Charter School meets Renewal Criteria I, Ill and IV, as detailed in the subsequent Staff Report. Furthermore, Staff have found that, despite significant fiscal and governance concerns resulting in the November 13, 2024 Notice to OCHS, pursuant to Education Code 47607(e), OCHS is not demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the proposed educational program and thus meets Renewal Criteria II. As such, Staff recommends approval of the renewal petition for Oakland Charter High School for five years."

The staff recommendation was correct. OCHS has been successfully operating for 18 years, has met oversight requirements and completed audits during those 18 years, and has been renewed twice previously by OUSD. OUSD did not substantiate any factors to support a conclusion that the school is suddenly demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the proposed educational program. It was an abuse of discretion by OUSD’s Board to deny this renewal.

The ACBOE also abused its discretion when it denied the OCHS appeal. More specifically, the OCHS written submission clearly documents multiple abuses by the ACBOE Board. Education Code Section 47605(k)(1)(A)(ii) is clear that county boards of education shall review charter petition appeals de novo which the ACBOE staff recognized. But the ACBOE staff did not correctly describe what a de novo review entails, and as a result the ACBOE did not follow this statutory requirement. Board members stated that they were reviewing only information given to them by OUSD rather than taking a fresh look at the renewal application.

Even without conducting an actual de novo review, the ACBOE might have still reached the proper conclusion that forcing the closure of this successful school was wrongful if they only applied the proper legal standard. Instead, county staff advised the ACBOE that it “must” approve or deny the petition for fiscal or governance standards under Education Code Section 47607(e) even though that code section says “may deny” and not “must deny”, and that they must make that decision based upon the analysis OUSD followed. The ACBOE then proceeded to deny the renewal petition without adopting any specific findings of their own to support their denial, but instead relied on the OUSD staff report—the same staff report quoted above that concluded that OCHS was not demonstrably unlikely to succeed and that recommended that OCHS be renewed. Finally, the ACBOE ignored the Section 47607(e) requirement that a chartering authority may deny the renewal of a charter school only after it has provided at least 30 days’ notice to the charter school of the alleged violation and provided the charter school with a reasonable opportunity to cure the violation, including a corrective action plan proposed by the charter school. These actions of the ACBOE were obvious abuses of discretion.

At the conclusion of the AB 1505 debate, the California Legislature very purposely retained the right of charter school petitioners to appeal denials to county boards and the SBE. If this right of appeal is to serve the purpose intended by the Legislature, county boards and the SBE must be willing to require authorizers to adhere to state law, and must be willing to overturn denials when authorizers abuse their discretion by not following the law. This is particularly critical in the case of a nonrenewal of an existing charter school. We agree with the compelling legal arguments included in OCHS written submission that existing charter schools have acquired vested property rights and should therefore be entitled to heightened due process rights during the renewal process. We ask that you vote in favor of recommending that the SBE hear the OCHS appeal so that the SBE can consider these important legal and policy matters.

Thank you for your careful consideration of this item. If you have any questions regarding our position on this matter 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

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