BERKELEY—Charter school enthusiasts breathed a sigh of relief today as the state senate approved a compromise bill that preserves $18 million for low-income charter schools.
The legislation, which Governor Schwarzenegger is expected to sign swiftly, replaces an earlier draft that tied the money to more restrictive rules on charter school expansion.
“With [the bill’s] original language, the $18 million were essentially being held hostage,” said Tom Martinez, spokesperson for the new bill’s sponsor, Sen. Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch).
Under current law, charter schools can bypass local school boards and submit petitions to create new schools directly to the state board of education. But under the original bill, newly created, state-sanctioned charter schools had to be turned over to local school boards after three years.
Critics argued that this would have deterred charter school expansion in localities where boards were either unable or unwilling to support the schools. Currently, only two charter groups—Oakland based Aspire and San Diego-based High Tech High—are run as state charter schools.
After several hundred parents and educators staged a protest on Aug. 23 in front of the office of Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez (D-Los Angeles), the legislature last week turned SB 92 into SB 20, keeping the $18 million of funding for low-income area schools in place, but giving the state authority to supervise charter schools as long as they provide “services of statewide benefit that cannot be provided by a charter school operating in only one school district, or in only one county.”
Speaker Núñez is cited as the new bill’s principal co-author.
“In its original form, the bill would have been very detrimental,” said California Charter Schools Association spokesperson Gary Larson. “The state has just done a much better job with charter schools – they don’t tend to view them as competition, like local school boards do.”
The new bill is intended to let only high-achieving charter schools qualify to become state charter schools. According to Larson, one of the players potentially in the running is KIPP, a national charter group based in San Francisco that runs 57 schools, including five in the Bay Area.
Two of them, KIPP Bridge College Prep and KIPP Summit Academy, are in Oakland. Both outperformed the Oakland Unified School District in all subjects and all grades in the latest California standards tests.
“We think this compromise is a win-win situation,” said KIPP spokesperson Steve Mancini. “It’s promising because it gives us more flexibility, while ensuring that only quality schools will be replicating across the state.”
Another group of charter schools that has met with success and which some commentators accused the original bill of attempting to thwart is Green Dot, of Los Angeles. Green Dot founder Steve Barr, who participated in protesting Núñez’s bill, said several schools he proposed for Los Angeles were denied last year “over politics.”
“It’s nice to have these options, because politics change in some areas, but the need doesn’t,” Barr said. “People in Sacramento need to put forward their own vision, instead of obstructing what works.”
Sen. Tom Torlakson had met with various stakeholders, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to arrive at the compromise. The governor initially proposed $43 million for charters in low-income areas, before budget negotiations slashed this figure down to $18 million.