"The instructional disruption from co-locations further impacts disproportionately low-income, low-performing and disabled District neighborhood children." - Board District 2 Candidate Dr. Rocio Rivas
This is the second in a series on unpaid overallocation fees by charter schools. Please read the first part for an introduction to the current debt.
Dr. Rocio Rivas holds a doctorate in International and Comparative Education from the Teachers College at Columbia University. It should, therefore, not be surprising that her response to questions about how to handle the $13,745,310 in unpaid overallocation fees owed to the district is very thorough. It includes an evaluation of how PROP-39 affects public-education students, especially those who are low income, low-performing, or have special-education needs. Under PROP-39, charter schools are allowed to demand space from public schools. To comply with these demands the district must often take "disruptive measures," reducing the space available to provide vital programs.
Given her understanding of the issue, it is not surprising that Dr. Rivas believes that charter schools should be held accountable when they take more space than they are entitled to receive. This overallocation occurs when these schools overestimate their enrollment. The data shows that the majority of charter schools that are invoiced for an overallocation of space are assessed this penalty for multiple years.
Dr. Rivas says directly that "a charter school that is not fulfilling its agreed legal obligations of repaying their debt to LAUSD students as a consequence of taking away much-needed space should face consequences, such as having their [charter] petition revoked." Furthermore, she states that "a charter school with a large amount of debt is not practicing fiscally sound processes which in the long run are to the detriment for all students."
If elected, Dr. Rivas states that she would hold senior district staff accountable for the non-payment of overallocation fees. This includes Megan Reilly who as the Deputy Superintendent was put in charge of collecting these fees by former Superintendent Austin Beutner. The head of the Charter School Division, Jose Cole-Gutierrez, would also be held responsible for not fully enforcing fiscal oversight of the charter schools he is supposed to regulate.
Dr. Rivas' complete responses to the questions that were presented to her are as follows:
Do you support revoking the charter of any school that has ongoing unpaid debt?
To provide space to charter schools seeking PROP-39 accommodations, the District took disruptive measures to eliminate the number of school set-asides needed for various services and needs for students. The instructional disruption from co-locations further impacts disproportionately low-income, low-performing, and disabled District neighborhood children.
The District set-asides necessary to implement District-wide instructional, health, and safety programs and services, such as educational testing centers, health center clinics, food services, Beyond the Bell programs, and special education services were reduced. Charter school co-locations impose unnecessary hardships upon LAUSD students' by interfering and denying their ability to receive the special education-related services in their home school and forcing students to travel to other locations.
A charter school that is not fulfilling its agreed legal obligations of repaying its debt to LAUSD students as a consequence of taking away much-needed space should face consequences, such as having their petition revoked. The overallocation penalty fees that the charter schools owe as a result of PROP-39 classroom allocation is money owed to the students of the co-located schools. Upon the hearing for a charter petition renewal, the charter school should be notified that if no payment is made towards the unpaid debt, then their charter is in danger of being revoked.
It is unfortunate that the charter school parents and students lose in this effort to collect money owed to LAUSD students, but this is an agreement that co-locating charter schools entered in and seems not to be taking it seriously.
What steps do you support to ensure that these funds are collected on behalf of LAUSD students?
The District and Board of Education must make it clear that these funds be reimbursed to the LAUSD students. The dispute resolutions must be more determined in recuperating those funds on behalf of the students that were affected by the depletion of space in their schools to accommodate a charter school.
Under CA education code 47614 section b2, indicates that if a charter school "generates less average daily classroom attendance by in-district students than it projected, the charter school shall reimburse the district for the overallocated space at rates to be set by the State of Education."
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