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By Kimberly Beltran
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
California’s State Board of Education approved waiver requests this month increasing the pupil-to-teacher ratio for independent study students at several online charter schools.
The actions, said board members, are consistent with the many routine waiver approvals traditional public schools have received allowing for increased class sizes since the onset of the state’s fiscal crisis.
“With the steadily decreasing per pupil rates and the extreme uncertainty of the state budget, we must take advantage of any relief we can including the small amount of flexibility offered by the waiver process,” said Franci Sassin, business manager at Capistrano Connections Academy Charter School. “This is at a time when brick and mortar schools have been granted quite a bit of flexibility with class size via the state’s budget bills, and that flexibility is awarded regardless of whether increasing class size would or would not affect student achievement.”
California Department of Education staff had recommended denial of the school’s waiver because it had not met a previously-approved waiver condition that it must meet its Academic Performance Index growth targets for 2010-11 and 2011-12. Therefore, said staff, “the educational needs of the pupils are not adequately addressed.”
But charter school supporters and some board members pointed out that the API condition is not applied equitably to