October 2026 ACCS - Items 2 and 3 Public Comment 1

RE: Agenda Item 2: Appeal of a County Board of Education's Reversal of a Charter Revocation: Highlands Community Charter School; and

Agenda Item 3: Appeal of a County Board of Education's Reversal of a Charter Revocation: California Innovative Career Academy

Dear Commissioners:

On behalf of the Twin Rivers United Educators (TRUE), representing 1,500 educators in the Twin Rivers Unified School District (TRUSD), we urge you to follow the CDE staff recommendation and recommend to the State Board of Education that they uphold the revocations of the charters for California Innovative Career Academy (CICA) and Highlands Community Charter School (HCCS).

The operators of CICA and HCCS, Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools (HCCTS), engaged in substantial, pervasive and well-documented misuse of public education dollars. Despite claiming they have turned things in the right direction, HCCTS’ new leadership are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive consultants for PR and lobbying yet they still have not produced valid audits for 2023-24 or 2024-25.

While we would have liked to have seen TRUSD take action sooner, the TRUSD Board of Directors have taken appropriate legal steps to revoke these charters and there is no legal basis to reverse their decision. As the staff report points out, TRUSD’s findings in their decision to revoke these charters are supported by substantial evidence and therefore should be upheld.

Adult Education is important for California. However, preventing and deterring misuse of public education dollars, especially at the scale we see in this case, is critical to the integrity of our public education system. We can support adult education while recognizing that HCCTS is not the only possible provider of that service.

HCCTS committed significant violations, TRUSD took appropriate action, and their findings are supported by substantial evidence. HCCTS’ current CEO, Jonathan Raymond, claims that under his leadership, everything is different. This is not the case.

We are now well over a year into Mr. Raymond’s tenure and not only have they failed to produce the valid audit at issue in the revocation (2023-24), they have also failed to produce any audit for the 2024-2025 school year, which was due 9 months ago, in December 2025. While the legislature enacted reforms focused on audits as the key vehicle to preventing fraud and misuse of public funds in the charter sector, Mr. Raymond is quoted in the media as claiming accountability for their lack of fiscal audits as “much ado about nothing.”
(https://edsource.org/updates/twin-rivers-unified-issues-more-notices-of-violation-to-highlands-community-charter)

HCCTS’ current leadership has spent over $1 million, money that is owed back to California schools, on PR, media and lobbying contracts, while simultaneously laying off instructional and support staff. This is an organization whose priorities are not in order, and they should not be entrusted with public education funds.

The HCCTS case is egregious. The new leadership demonstrates ongoing disregard for basic fiscal accountability, but even if this were not the case, it does not change the fact that the TRUSD board’s decision to revoke is supported by substantial evidence. TRUSD followed the legal process, allowed the charter operators a remedy period to fix the documented violations, and the charter operators did not remedy the violations.

All entities entrusted with public school dollars need to understand that, if they are going to misuse the funds intended to support our students or refuse to follow the basic accountability required by law, they will no longer be entrusted with public dollars. Supporting the decision of TRUSD to revoke these charters sends that message.

We urge you to support the staff analysis and recommend to the SBE that they uphold TRUSD’s revocation of CICA and HCCS charters.

Brittoni Ward
TRUE President
Twin Rivers United Educators (TRUE)