By Kristen Taketa
A bill that aims to fix loopholes that have allowed cases of charter school fraud in California passed a key Assembly committee Wednesday.
The state Assembly Education Committee voted 5-2 to advance the bill to the Appropriations Committee. The education committee’s only Republican members, Kevin Kiley of Rocklin and Megan Dahle of Nevada City, voted no.
Education Committee Chair Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, has said he introduced AB 1316 to prevent future charter school scandals, including ones like the A3 charter school case, in which operators of the online charter school network manipulated enrollment numbers to fraudulently obtain hundreds of millions of state education dollars. The bill contains a variety of measures that mostly address online charter school accountability, finance and operations.
About 40 people — mostly charter school leaders, teachers, families, and home schooling families — spoke against AB 1316 during the bill’s first hearing Wednesday. Representatives of three employee unions, including the California Teachers Association, voiced support for the bill.
Charter school proponents view the bill as an attack on charter schools that could force some to close by reducing their funding. They also say the bill has so many regulations, it would take away charter schools’ ability to innovate and provide flexible alternatives to traditional brick-and-mortar schools.
“AB 1316 is an attempt to cripple charter schools with additional costs, reduced revenue and new regulations that would make the very fabric of, I mean the vision, for charter schools nearly impossible,” said Kate Ford, board president of the Santa Barbara Unified School District, which authorizes 11 charter schools.
Most of California’s approximately 1,300 charter schools “are not mired in fraud and should not be treated as such,” she said.
The bill’s authors tried to assure charter supporters that nothing in the bill would make a charter school close. They said the bill would bring equity for online charter students by improving the quality and transparency of their schools and establishing guardrails to prevent bad actors from using online charter school students to steal state money.
Charter schools are privately run, publicly funded schools that must be authorized and overseen by an education agency, usually a school district.
While some of the measures in the bill would affect districts and charter schools, the bill’s main focus is online charter schools, also known as non-classroom based charter schools, which provide most of their education online.
The bill would require charter school authorizers to increase their oversight of charter schools and it would establish an inspector general for the state education department. It also would require school auditors to look more closely at school enrollment figures and get education-specific training.
The bill would largely eliminate the use of a multi-track school calendar method that A3 leaders used to manipulate enrollment numbers.
The bill also seeks to improve the quality of online charter schools’ education, based on research that suggests students in online charter schools perform worse than other students. For all non-classroom based programs the bill would enforce a 25-1 student-teacher ratio, and teachers must meet with students virtually or in person at least once every three days. For non-classroom based charter schools, there is currently no minimum requirement for teachers to make contact with students, O’Donnell said.
Several home-schooling charters have paid private and sometimes religious vendors to provide recreational and enrichment programs to students, but there are almost no state laws regulating those vendors. AB 1316 would require that vendors providing direct services to kids have a teacher credential.
AB 1316 also would reduce per-student funding for non-classroom based charter schools, based on how much of their instruction is based online.
kristen.taketa@sduniontribune.com