BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Gloria Romero, Chair
2009-2010 Regular Session
BILL NO: AB 1982
AUTHOR: Ammiano
AMENDED: May 20, 2010
FISCAL COMM: No HEARING DATE: June 30, 2010
URGENCY: No CONSULTANT:Beth Graybill
SUBJECT : Charter schools
SUMMARY
This bill establishes until December 31, 2016, a state-wide
cap of 1450 on the number of charter schools that can operate
and prohibits charter schools personnel with hiring authority
from employing relatives.
BACKGROUND
Existing law, the Charter Schools Act of 1992, provides for
the establishment of Charter schools in California for the
purpose, among other things, of improving student learning
and expanding learning experiences for pupils who are
identified as academically low achieving. Charter schools
may be authorized by a school district governing board,
county board of education, or the State Board of Education.
Existing law allows up to 100 start up or conversion charter
schools to be authorized each year. (Education Code 47601
et. seq.)
Existing law authorizes anyone to develop, circulate, and
submit a petition to establish a charter school, and requires
charter developers to collect certain signatures in support
of the petition, as specified. Current law requires
governing boards to grant a charter if it is satisfied that
the charter is consistent with sound educational practice. A
governing board is precluded from denying a petition unless
it makes written factual findings that the petition fails to
meet one or more of the following: (Education Code 47605)
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1) The charter school presents an unsound educational
program.
2) The petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to
successfully implement the program described in the
petition.
3) The petition does not contain the number of required
signatures.
4) The petition does not contain an affirmation it will be
nonsectarian, nondiscriminatory, shall not charge
tuition, and other affirmations, as specified.
5) The petition does not contain reasonably comprehensive
descriptions of the 16 required elements of a charter
petition, including descriptions of the qualifications
to be met by individuals to be employed at the school.
ANALYSIS
This bill :
1) Specifies that in the 2010-11 school year, and in each
successive school year thereafter, the maximum total
number of charter schools authorized to operate in
California is 1450. Specifies that the cap is to remain
in effect until December 31, 2016, and repeals the cap
as of that date.
2) Prohibits specified personnel that work for a charter
school operated by a private entity, from appointing,
employing, promoting, advancing, or advocating for the
appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement in or
to a position in the charter school over which the
charter school personnel exercise jurisdiction or
control, any individual who is a relative.
3) Specifies that an individual shall not be appointed,
employed, promoted, or advanced in or to a position in a
charter school if the appointment, employment,
promotion, or advancement was advocated by charter
school personnel who serve in or exercise jurisdiction
or control over the charter school and who is a relative
of the individual, or if the appointment, employment,
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promotion, or advancement is made by the governing body
of which a relative of the individual is a member.
4) Requires a petition for a charter school to include full
disclosure of the identity of each individual who is or
plans to be employed by the charter school and who is a
relative of charter school personnel as defined.
5) Specifies that a "position in a charter school" includes
contracts for services for the benefit of a charter
school.
6) Defines "charter school personnel" to include the
charter school owner, president, chairperson of the
governing body, superintendent, governing body member,
principal, assistant principal, or any other person
employed by the charter school who has equivalent
decision making authority.
7) Defines "relative" as a parent, child, sibling, uncle,
aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, spouse,
father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law,
daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law,
stepparent, stepsibling, stepchild, half brother or half
sister.
STAFF COMMENTS
1) Need for the bill : According to the author's office,
"many reports, including a recent report by the Center
for Research and Education Outcomes (CREDO) demonstrate
that charter schools are not the panacea for closing the
achievement gap." The CREDO study based on longitudinal
student achievement data in 15 states and the District
of Columbia, including California also found that only
17 percent of charter schools performed better than
their traditional counterparts. According to the
sponsor of this bill, the California Federation of
Teachers (CFT), the bill "primarily puts a cap on the
number of charter schools and ends the unlimited growth
that charter schools currently enjoy with a lack of true
accountability."
2) Charter Schools . Charter schools are public schools
that provide instruction in any combination of grades,
kindergarten through grade 12. According to the
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California Department of Education (CDE), there are 870
active and pending charter schools (fifty-one of these
schools are "pending" because they will not claim
funding until the 2010-11 school year). Of the 870
charter schools, 25 currently operate based on SBE
approval.
Parents, teachers, or community members may initiate a
charter petition, which is typically presented to and
approved by a local school district governing board.
The law also allows, under certain circumstances, for
county boards of education and the State board of
Education to authorize charter schools. The specific
goals and operating procedures for a charter school are
detailed in the agreement (charter) between the
authorizing entity and the charter developer. Current
law establishes 16 different operational and educational
quality indicators that need to be included in a charter
school petition. A governing board may deny a charter
school proposal that does not comprehensively address
each of those 16 elements.
Except where specifically noted, charter schools are exempt
from laws governing school districts and schools in
order to allow the charter school the flexibility to
innovate and be responsive to the educational needs of
the student population served. Charter schools are
required however, to have credentialed teachers in core
and college preparatory courses, meet statewide
standards, participate in state testing programs
required for the Academic Performance Index (API), and
consult with parents, guardians, and teachers regarding
the school's programs.
3) Charter school cap . The Charter School Act of 1992
provided for the establishment of 100 charter schools in
California. Subsequent legislation, AB 544 (Lempert,
Chapter 34, Statutes of 1998) increased the total
charter school cap from 100 to 250 in the 1998-99 school
year and an additional 100 added each year thereafter.
According to the California Department of Education
(CDE), there are approximately 870 active and pending
charter schools (fifty-one of these schools are
considered "pending" because they will not claim funding
until the 2010-11 school year), well under the statutory
limit of 1350 for the 2009-10 school year. This bill
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would provide that the maximum number of charter schools
for the 2010-11 through 2015-16 school years would be
1450. Absent this bill, the law would allow up to 1950
charter schools by the end of the 2015-16 school year.
In the last 10 years, on average, there were 86 charter
schools approved each year. If this same rate of
approval continues in the future, one could estimate
that the cap of 1450 established by this bill would be
reached on the natural during the 2016-17 school year.
The sunset date for the charter school cap that is
included in this bill would likely coincide with the
time that the cap is reached.
In recent years, state and federal policies have supported
the expansion of charter schools. The federal Race to
the Top incentive grant program (RTTP), for which
California submitted a second application on June 1,
2010, awards points to states that ensure successful
conditions for high-performing charter schools,
specifically, the extent to which the state's charter
school laws do not prohibit or effectively inhibit
increasing the number of high-performing charter
schools. Although proponents of this measure argue that
1450 is well above the number of charter schools that
the U.S. Department of Education claims is the number
needed for educational reform, could the establishment
of a total cap "send the wrong message" to grant readers
and make it more difficult for California to be
successful in the second RTTP grant round or subsequent
federal incentive programs?
4) Nepotism . According to the CFT, "there are groups,
foundations, and charter management organizations that
are using charter schools as a way to privatize public
schools, accessing tax payer money for the use and
access of a few. For many, charter schools have become
a place to be the exception to the rules: rules of
accountability, public transparency, workers' rights and
most importantly students' rights. They should not be
exempted from public employment practices. They should
be financially responsible and transparent."
This bill establishes anti-nepotism employment standards for
charter schools. The provisions in this bill model
existing charter school law in Florida regarding
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employment prohibitions and disclosure. Florida's
charter law requires an initial petition for a charter
school to include full disclosure of any relatives that
have been hired by the decision makers at the school,
and it prohibits decision makers at operational charter
schools from hiring relatives. While an argument can be
made that as recipients of public funds, charter school
operators and personnel who are in decision-making
positions should abide by the same conflict-of-interest
rules as other school officials, they raise a number of
questions the Committee may wish to consider:
Are these standards too restrictive?
Could a charter school end up spending more
money than it needs to on a contract for services
if the lowest bidder happens to be related to
someone on the governing body? What happens if the
contractor is the only one in the area who can
provide the needed service?
Would the employment restrictions apply to
non-classroom based charter schools?
How would these restrictions affect existing
charters that may already have contracts in place
or employees that could be disqualified under the
provisions of this bill?
Do the disclosures required for the petition
create a barrier for the approval of a charter
school?
1) Related and prior legislation .
AB 1950 (Brownley), which is scheduled to be heard by this
Committee on June 30, 2010, establishes academic and
fiscal accountability standards relating to charter
schools.
AB 1741 (Coto), requires charter schools that expect 15% of
their pupil population to be English learners to meet
additional petition requirements relating to the
education of those students. The Committee passed this
bill as amended on a 5-0 vote on June 23, 2010.
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AB 2363 (Mendoza), requires charter school petitioners to
obtain the signatures of permanent classified employees,
as specified. The Committee was held in Committee on
June 16, 2010 and is scheduled for "vote only" on June
30, 2010.
AB 572 (Brownley, 2009) makes a charter school board subject
to the Brown Act open meeting law, the California Public
Records Act, and the Political Reform Act. This bill
was passed by this Committee on a 6-1 vote is in the
Senate inactive file.
ABX5 8 (Brownley, Fifth extraordinary session of 2009) would
have deleted the cap on charter schools and would have
made other changes to provisions governing audit and
fiscal standards, authorization, renewal and revocation
of charter schools. This bill was held in Committee.
AB 1772 (Garcia, 2008) would have established a conflict of
interest standard based on the Corporations Code for
school boards.
AB 2115 (Mullin, 2008) would have established a conflict
of interest standard and would have prohibited employees
from serving on governing boards of charter schools.
This measure was passed by this Committee on a 6-2 vote
and subsequently vetoed by the Governor with the
following statement:
"Not only would this bill create state mandated
costs for charter schools to comply with its
provisions, the measure runs counter to the intent
of charter schools, which were created to be free
from many of the laws governing school districts."
2) Policy arguments .
Proponents of this measure maintain that AB 1982 establishes
a reasonable cap on charter schools while making changes
to charter school laws that take the first step in
making them accountable to students, parents and the
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public.
Opponents of this measure argue that the bill reinstates a
firm cap on charter schools that serves no practical
purpose and is unnecessarily restrictive in prohibiting
private entities that operate a charter from employing
relatives of charter school personnel.
SUPPORT
California Federation of Teachers
California Labor Federation
California School Boards Association
California School Employees Association
California State PTA
California Teachers Association
San Francisco Unified School District
OPPOSITION
California Charter Schools Association