• Athletics
  • Big Ed
  • Ed Tech
  • Educators
  • Elections
  • Federal Policy
  • Parents
  • Students
  • The Testing Industry

K-12 News Network's The Wire

K-12 News Network: People-Powered Public Education News

  • Budgets
  • Charter Schools
  • Federal Policy
  • School Districts
  • State Education Law
  • School Boards
You are here: Home / Los Angeles / Los Angeles Unified School District, Proposition 39, Co-location Issues & Charter Schools

Los Angeles Unified School District, Proposition 39, Co-location Issues & Charter Schools

July 5, 2012 by K12NN Site Admin

Facebooktwitterredditlinkedinmail

To my great surprise, LAUSD has pushed back on a judge’s ruling that the district give facilities to charter schools seeking more space in existing public schools. Of the judge’s order, which would affect up to 45 charter schools, Superintendent of Los Angeles public schools John Deasy and the LAUSD school board say

… that it would require L.A. Unified to displace students from their neighborhood schools, forcing them to be bused elsewhere, and would dramatically skew class-size ratios in favor of charter students.

Under the order, the ratio of elementary school students to class size would be 24 to 1 on the district side of the school but 15 to 1 on the charter school side, said LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. Facilities such as computer labs, parent centers and specially designated classrooms would have to be removed to create space for charter students, Deasy said.

“I want to be very, very clear, this is not possible to carry out,” Deasy told the L.A. Unified school board at its meeting last Thursday.

Deasy said the district would have to start moving students “tomorrow” to comply with the order because the school year starts early, in mid-August.

“And I for one believe it is completely inappropriate and against everything this board and district has done to relieve overcrowding, to take a student from a neighborhood school and move that student to a non-neighborhood school,” Deasy said.

One effect of the charter school encroachment on existing school spaces (through co-location or surrender of existing school space to charters) is to impose a big difference in the class sizes of each kind of school. Because LAUSD uses a “norming ratio” to balance public school with charter school class sizes, California’s Charter School Association lobbying group claims that it must abide by ratios it did not determine and therefore it’s unequal. LAUSD, however, has arrived at a ratio that is

no less than 24 students per classroom for grades K-3, 30.5 to 1 for grades 4-6, 28 to 1 for grades 7-8, and 30 to 1 for grades 9-12. The district argues that following this ratio when it allocates space to charters is in keeping with the “spirit and intent” of Proposition 39; all public school students receive the same space.

The charter schools, as cited above, would enjoy class sizes of 15 students to 1 teacher if the judge’s orders were to prevail, while existing public schools would be at minimum 24:1 in the youngest grades.

LAUSD is therefore saying that in accommodating charters, it will not create a situation where one type of school has vastly smaller class sizes than the other (as charters are demanding), nor will it remove special facilities such as computer labs (decreasing the educational resources) of existing schools in order to accommodate charter schools.

As I understand it, charter schools demand parity by square foot, but want to maintain advantage in smaller class size; whereas LAUSD’s position is to say that ALL publicly funded schools must adhere to considerations of equity in class size and equality of access to facilities by the type, use, and nature of the facilities.

Keep an eye on this story, as there are co-location issues involving Proposition 39 all over the state. With over 25,000 seats requested in LAUSD alone for one academic year, this story focusing on a charter school co-location shoehorning itself into Micheltorena Elementary in the city of Los Angeles is archetypal. The judge’s decision originally specified that the situation be resolved by July 11, 2012, but since LAUSD schools start as early as mid-August in some cases, there’s no logistical way LAUSD can comply even if it wanted to.

What remains to be seen is if LAUSD’s position holds on principle or if its resistance can be overcome if the shortened time frame is no longer a consideration.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutube

Filed Under: Los Angeles, School Boards, School Districts, State Education Law Tagged With: California, Charters, co-location, LAUSD, Proposition 39

About K12NN Site Admin

I'm Cynthia Liu, Owner/Founder of K12 News Network. I'm the proud product of public schools through post-grad, the mom of a child in public schools, and the daughter of two teachers. Connect with me professionally on LinkedIn.

Comments

  1. Mr. Martinez says

    July 9, 2013 at 5:54 pm

    I would rather have my child in classroom of 15 than a classroom of 24, sounds like the charters are doing something right to alleviate our overcrowded classrooms. Also, let’s be honest, Franklin needs a bit of competition. Maybe this will light a fire in your heart and push you to educate those kids the way they should be educated. Stop making excuses by constantly referring to the challenges they face in their community. It’s more of a reason why they need a top notch education. It’s time for accountability and time to earn that kushy tenure you got many years ago.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required
Email Format

Buy a hybrid Facebook+ website today!

Federal Policy

Quick Education Voter’s Guide to the California CD34 Race, April 4, 2017

There are twenty-three candidates running to fill former Congressman Xavier Bacerra’s seat in Congressional District 34 in Southern California. (Bacerra is currently the state’s Attorney General, replacing Kamala Harris, who, after November 8, 2016, became our US Senator.) Election Day is Tuesday, April 4, 2017, 7:00 am to 8:00 pm. You can find your polling […]

Betsy DeVos, #NOTMYSDOE

Take the pledge to #resist and fight for public schools as a public good TODAY. DeVos had to have the assistance of Vice President Mike Pence’s unprecedented tie-breaking vote in order to win her confirmation. Two GOP Senators voted against, all Democratic Senators voted against. Yet all the other GOP Senators who received campaign donations […]

Next #DemDebate MUST Include K-12 Education Policy

The next #DemDebate is scheduled for the important primary state of Iowa on November 14, 2015. It’ll be broadcast by CBS in partnership with the Des Moines Register. Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig is leading the call for the families of 50 million students K-12 across the nation and the communities they live in to have […]

More Posts from this Category

K12NN on Blog Talk Radio

Online Politics Progressive Radio at Blog Talk Radio with MOMocrats on BlogTalkRadio

Categories

July 2012
S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  
« Jun   Aug »

Copyright © 2022 · The Wire Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in