#AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal

Enabling Theft And Fraud

The LAUSD continues to take away space from public school students to give to charter schools with past due bills totaling $1.9 million.

“We respectfully request the district award us the 14 classrooms to which we are entitled.”

- Charter school principal

It is clear that when our students finally return to the district’s school buildings, they are going to need more space so that social distancing can be enforced. For campuses that have co-located charter schools, this is going to be more difficult as they must give up any space not used for teaching to their privately-run charter counterparts. However, since the state has been unwilling to suspend the rules that implement PROP 39, the district continues the process of giving away space for next year. For this reason, an item was included on the agenda of the last school board meeting providing the district’s reasons for splitting up some PROP-39 co-locations between multiple campuses.

Many of the charter schools on the list that the school board was considering have requested more space than they needed in past years. Some of them still owe the LAUSD a total of $1.9 million in unpaid overallocation penalties. This includes Citizens of the World charter schools which have been caught collecting names of students who had no “meaningful interest” in attending the school. I provided this information to the board in public comments before they voted on this item:

I find it interesting that the speaker two speakers ago used the word “entitled.” Our LAUSD public schools are losing the rooms that they use for special education, for parent support, and for after-school programs, but this charter school believes that it is “entitled” to get enough rooms for their program. It is funny that the previous speaker then used the word…