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  • Stop shortchanging charters serving the highest need communities

    Stop shortchanging charters serving the highest need communities


    Students at Lodestar Charter School in Oakland.

    Courtesy: Lighthouse Community Public Schools

    While we wait for the governor’s budget — and a much leaner projection for public education funding — many district and charter school officials have started making significant cuts in preparation for the upcoming school year.

    Unfortunately, at a time when every dollar matters, charter schools serving some of California’s highest-need students are getting shortchanged.

    Critical dollars following each and every student is a fundamental construct in our state’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Schools and districts that serve a higher number of high-need students — English learners, low-income students, and foster youth — get additional funding in the form of supplemental grants for each student, along with concentration grants for schools where more than 55% of the student body is from at least one of those student groups. These funds are meant to follow the students and be invested in their programmatic needs.

    Unfortunately, the only exception is if these students attend a public charter school. 

    Current law caps the concentration grant funding for charter schools at the unduplicated pupil percentage of high-need students in the school district in which they are physically located. This restriction disproportionately affects students and families who attend charter schools in districts where the percentage of high-need students is lower than that of individual charter schools. For example, 82% of Oakland Unified’s students are eligible for the additional funding, but many charter schools in East Oakland serve student populations with unduplicated high-need student percentages ranging from 85% to 99%. Yet concentration funding for these charter schools is capped at 82% despite their serving a higher percentage of high-need students. This is also true for many charter schools in the LA area, in the wider Bay Area, as well as across the state. 

    A new bill seeks to correct this inequity by ensuring that dollars actually follow students to their schools.  

    Assembly Bill 1062 would enable charter schools serving greater percentages of high-need students than their district to apply for a waiver to receive concentration grant funding based on their actual student population, rather than being capped at the local district average. 

    Take for example Lodestar: A Lighthouse Community Public School in the Sobrante Park community in deep East Oakland. Like many communities impacted by the pandemic, the school’s demographics have shifted over the last five years. Today, Lodestar serves a student population where 98% of the students have high needs, including 47% English learners, 8% newcomers to our country, 17% qualifying for special education services, and 5% homeless. Should they be expected to meet their community’s needs at “82 on the dollar” while still being expected to meet the state’s stringent charter renewal criteria brought on by Assembly Bill 1505? (This 2019 law requires charters to outperform state averages on standardized tests and other measures to qualify for streamlined approval.) 

    Shouldn’t dollars that are directly tied to students and families follow them regardless of the school a family chooses for their child? 

    Many charter schools and charter management organizations that serve East Oakland exist to provide strong school choice options to students and families in historically under-resourced communities. It’s not surprising that one-third of Oakland students have selected charter schools. Over the last three years, Oakland’s charter high schools have had college readiness A-G completion rates for African American and Latino students that are significantly higher than at district high schools.

    Despite Oakland’s rich history of political activism for historically marginalized and under-resourced families, this clause in the funding formula prohibiting charter schools from fully accessing these funds has not been studied nor evaluated.

    The Assembly Education Committee has an opportunity to consider and address this funding inquiry. This committee, which includes progressive assembly members from the Bay Area and greater Los Angeles area, can advocate for public dollars following each student for their education and future impact.

    It’s time to ensure that state funding follows students equitably, so they are not penalized for choosing to attend a public charter school.

    •••

    Rich Harrison is CEO of Lighthouse Community Public Schools, which operates two K-12 public charter schools serving more than 1,600 students in East Oakland.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Carol Burris: With Religious Charters, the Charter Lobby’s Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

    Carol Burris: With Religious Charters, the Charter Lobby’s Chickens Have Come Home to Roost


    Carol Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education. She was a high school teacher and principal in New York State, where she was honored by the state principal’s association as principal of the year. She is a tireless advocate of public schools and an equally tireless opponent of privatization.

    She writes:

    On April 30, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a pivotal case concerning whether a charter school can teach a religious curriculum. The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board v. Drummond addresses Oklahoma’s St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School’s attempt to become the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. 

    This case was always intended to go to the Supreme Court, testing the limits of the separation of Church and State. What is surprising, however, is who has entered the fight against St. Isadore. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), which has never met a charter school it did not like, has filed an amicus brief against its existence. This is unexpected from an organization that has supported charter schools run by for-profit corporations, virtual schools with poor outcomes, and even micro-schools, claiming that different models provide needed choice and innovation. When public money is allocated to religious private schools via vouchers, the charter lobby is either supportive or silent in the name of “choice.”

    The reason for their present opposition is self-interest. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “a decision to allow religious charter schools will throw charter laws into chaos nationwide, resulting in significant financial and operational uncertainties.”  Nina Rees, the former long-time CEO of the organization, lamented that a ruling in favor of St. Isadore “could also jeopardize the myriad federal and state funding streams they [charters] currently qualify for—funding that the sector has fought hard to secure and continues to fight for on the premise that students attending public charter schools are entitled to the same funds they would receive in district schools.”

    On what basis, then, will SCOTUS make its decision? At the heart of the case is whether charter schools are state actors or state contractors providing educational services. The Oklahoma State Virtual Charter Board argues that merely because the state legislature declares a charter school “public,” it does not transform it into a public school. Furthermore, even if charter schools are state actors for some functions, they might not be state actors for purposes of the First Amendment, specifically regarding curriculum matters.

    There is precedent for their argument.

    In 2010, both a federal court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, determined, in an employment case, that an Arizona charter school was not a “state actor” and thus a wrongful termination lawsuit could not be brought forth by a former teacher.  “This case presents the special situation of a private nonprofit corporation running a charter school that is defined as a ‘public school’ by state law,” the three-judge appeals court panel said in its unanimous Jan. 4 decision in Caviness v. Horizon Community Learning Center. The court concluded that the corporation running the charter school (private non-profit or for-profit corporations run most charter schools) was not a state actor but a contractor providing a service.

    In some states, where districts are the only authorizers of charter schools, charter schools likely fully meet the “state actor” test. That was the original intent of the charter movement—schools within a district free of some restraints to try innovative practices. However, only a few states still embrace that model, thanks to the relentless pressure from organizations like NAPCS, which have provided St. Isadore with more than enough fodder for its arguments. Over the years, charter trade organizations have successfully lobbied for looser charter laws, expanded charter management organizations, and vigorously defended for-profit corporations like Academica and Charter Schools USA, which use nonprofit schools as a façade. In short, they have made charter schools as “private” and profitable as possible. 

    Remember how charter schools could secure Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds during COVID-19 when public schools could not? Charter trade organizations, including NAPCS, encouraged charter schools to leverage their corporate status, resulting in the sector securing billions of dollars. Some even provided talking points for justification.

    The truth is that charter schools have used their private status when it is in their interest, even as they secure an advantage from the public label. And that is why they have only themselves to blame if the chicken comes home to roost and the sector is thrown into chaos. If that results in a shake-up of the charter industry and a return to truly public charter schools in most states, that may not be a terrible outcome. 



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