Correct meeting time is 12:30 pm
Sacramento County Board of Education
Regular Meeting
Friday / April 5, 2013 / 12:30 P.M.
PLEASE NOTE:
Meeting Location
Leo A. Palmiter Jr/Sr High School Cafeteria
2040 Ethan Way
Sacramento, CA 95825
Meeting Time
12:30 p.m.
We believe that the Fortune schools should go before the individual districts where the schools are to be located to petition for their charter. Please take a minute to let the Sacramento County Board of Education know that you support the Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education and that Fortune Charters must go before the individual districts where the schools are to be located to petition for their charter. Below you will find some of the issues involved with the fight against the Fortune Charter Schools being granted in district service areas without the approval of the elected school board in that district. Also below are the email addresses of the entire Sacramento County Board of Education, take a moment and let them know that you support the Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education.
Hi all:
You may have seen the letter to the SCOE board that I posted on our website.
www.savesacramentopublicschools.org I received this attached letter in reply from Greg Geeting. He schooled me on some statements I made, including some that were correct, and then cc’d his reply to the Elk Grove Supt. and board President and Raymond and Jeff Cuneo. Meanwhile he ignored the main point of the letter. I’m writing a reply which I will cc to the same people and send on to you.
The Fortune school is asking for a material revision of their charter to locate in a area not mentioned in their original petition. It’s almost inevitable that they will come before the SCOE board to ask for another charter to get a start up grant for the third school. The need more money and the state has decided that a charter like theirs only qualifies for one start up grant. Our argument remains the same-they should be petitioning the school districts they want to locate their schools in. I was told that all three Elk Grove unions will be going to the SCOE board meeting Friday evening, and that if there are four votes tonight, their Superintendent will be going as well.
Hope you have time to drop them a line,
Send a letter to the SCOE board regarding the Fortune charter
by Kate_Lenox
published by Kate_Lenox on Tue, 04/02/2013 - 1:07pm
Dear SCOE Board of Trustees: It has come to our attention that the Fortune School will be coming before the SCOE board to ask for a material revision of its charter. It is proposing a new school in Elk Grove School USD more than three miles from the "children's zone" identified in the original petition for a school location. Not only does this seem to go against its stated mission of locating in areas where the students in most need of their service reside, the location was approved by SCOE with no notification to Elk Grove USD. As stated by President Geeting in the SCOE minutes, the Fortune Charter School must come before the SCOE board to ask for a new charter for its third school due to a state decision about charter funding. We believe that the Fortune school should go before the individual districts where the schools are to be located to petition for their charter.
The recent court decision on the Aspire schools supports this. The decision, while pertaining to a statewide charter, is analogous to this situation. The Fortune School did not prove that they could not achieve their goals through locally chartered schools. They simply made that claim in their original petition and it was not disputed by SCOE. The countywide benefit they claimed is more for their ease of operation than for the students they plan to serve. Students could as easily attend a Fortune School chartered by the district it is located in.
The SCOE board should not approve this material revision of the Fortune charter. The Fortune school should not undermine the intent of charter school law by going directly to the County Office of Education for their charter. Individual districts have the right to hear these petitions and make the determination. Please see the link to the court decision below.
Thank you,
Kate Lenox, Secretary
Sacramento Coalition to Save Public Education
Sacramento News & Review > Blogs > SNOG > Post
Well, it wasn’t a surprise, but local school board trustees from
Sac City Unified,
Natomas Unified, and other area school districts are
muy bummed that the Board of the
Sacramento County Office of Education usurped their power to approve (or disapprove) charter schools, and went ahead and greenlighted a
plan by Fortune Schools to open a several new charters around the county.
Fortune Schools will be allowed to open five school in the next five years, with five more to follow, pending approval from the SCOE board. The charter network would serve 5000 kids in all. Fortune’s stated goal is closing the achievement gap between African American and white students, leading SCOE trustee Harold Fong–the sole “no” vote against the plan–to complain that the board might be approving segregated schools.
But mostly the local schools boards feel undermined. “I’m disappointed. I think this is a local decision, with impacts on our local districts,” said Sacramento City Unified School District trustee Patrick Kennedy.
He noted that the county board of education has no active charter schools at all under its watch right now, and may be ill-equipped to give the large new charter network adequate oversight.
“We scrutinize these charters pretty heavily, to make them better. I don’t think they [SCOE] have the track record or the experience.” And Kennedy says the SCOE is a relatively unknown agency to the public, making it tougher to hold them accountable.
Kennedy also thinks the county board of education may have violated state law when it approved the Fortune Schools Charter–because backers of the charter and the staff at SCOE didn’t really address what the likely impacts would be on local school districts.
For example, “We can not afford to lose several hundred kids,” said Natomas Unified School trustee Lisa Kaplan. That district is already in such a precarious financial position–because of low enrollment, the economy, and the impact of several previously established charter schools which suck state education money away from the district–that it faces possible bankruptcy and takeover by the state.
“If the charters are approved in our district, it’s basically the board rubber-stamping a state takeover,” Kaplan said of the SCOE decision.
But all is not lost for public school fans.
“Litigation is a real possibility. I think it should be explored,” said Kennedy.
The local districts be the only ones contemplating a
lawsuit. The California Teachers Association sent a letter to the SCOE board warning that the courts might frown on county-wide charter. The teachers union cites the case of
California School Boards Association v State Board of Education and Aspire Public Schools Inc. In that case decided last summer the California 1st Distrct Counrt of Appeal found that Aspire schools could not circumvent local school boards under a state-wide charter.
Sure, a state-wide charter sounds a lot less local than a county-wide charter, but the CTA says the principle is the same: Fortune schools didn’t really make the case that asking Sac City Unified, or Elk Grove Unified, Natomas Unified or other school districts to approve schools in their territory would somehow hurt students.
The ed code says that: “A county board of education may only approve a countywide charter if it finds…that the education services to be provided by the charter school will offer services to a pupil population that will benefit from those services and that cannot be served as well by a charter school that operates in only one school district in the county.”
Even if it’s politically easier to go to the county board.
Here is a recent Sacramento Bee story surrounding Fortunes’ efforts in the Capitol City:
Opposition is mounting against a proposal to create a network of charter schools in Sacramento County.
Area school board members and union representatives say their concern is that local control is being thwarted by Margaret Fortune petitioning for 10 charter schools with the Sacramento County Office of Education and not individual school districts.
“These charters will have implications both fiscal and educational on these local districts, so these districts should have the opportunity to consider the charter application,” said Patrick Kennedy, a Sacramento City Unified board member.
Sacramento City Unified will vote tonight on a resolution expressing concerns over Fortune’s charter proposal, which is aimed at improving the academic achievement of African American students.
This isn’t Fortune’s first charter attempt in City Unified’s boundaries.
Fortune spearheaded the controversial drive to remake Sacramento High School into a charter school.
“This charter petition is a regional charter to address a regional problem,” Fortune said. “I’m comfortable being a gadfly to encourage districts with a negative record of African American achievement to address the problem with a level of seriousness.”
Twin Rivers teacher union President John Ennis said he is writing a letter to the county Board of Education to voice his concern about the charter schools that would be in his jurisdiction. Twin Rivers Superintendent Frank Porter, at the direction of the school board, is writing a similar letter.
Kennedy said tonight’s Sacramento City resolution was drafted by board members and Superintendent Jonathan Raymond.
“This resolution isn’t about being pro or anti charter,” Kennedy said. “It’s about locally elected school boards having input and control over the education of kids in their district.”
The financial implications stem from how schools receive state aid based on average daily student attendance. If students leave district schools to attend independently run charters, the districts would lose thousands of dollars in state aid for each student.
Sacramento County schools chief Dave Gordon said Fortune came to his office because she plans to open charter schools in the Twin Rivers, Natomas, Sacramento City, Elk Grove and Folsom Cordova school districts.
“If they want to operate in more than one district then they are not obligated to go district by district,” he said.
Gordon and his staff will make a recommendation Friday to the county Board of Education.
That recommendation will be sent to affected school districts Monday.
The county board will hear the petition Feb. 1 and possibly vote.
“The standard for charter approval is whether they meet the legal requirement, not whether you like charters or not,” Gordon said.
If approved, the first school would open in August in south Sacramento as a kindergarten through third-grade school and expand incrementally each year to a K-8 campus.
Fortune said she has more than 100 parents who want to send their children to the first charter.
“I’m excited about the conversations that have been happening,” said Fortune, who is president of the Fortune School of Education, a teacher and principal credentialing program. “It excites me that there are moms in hair salons writing letters to the county Office of Education on why they want a better education for their child. That kind of engagement can only be good.”
Last August, Fortune School opened its first charter, the Hardy Brown College Prep Charter School at the Carousel Mall in San Bernardino. Fortune plans to open a similar charter school system with 10 schools through the San Bernardino City Unified School District.
The Sacramento County charter proposal calls for one school to open each year for the first six years. The schools will have longer school days, use non-union teachers and each be named after a living African American icon, Fortune said.
Seats on the Sacramento County Board of Education aren't usually hotly contested. But a controversial network of charter schools has changed that.
The June 5 contest for four open seats on the seven-member board has already generated one lawsuit and a flurry of donations from charter school opponents and proponents.
The undercurrent is that candidates are running in an effort to stop the approval of charter schools operated by educator Margaret Fortune, said board President Brian Cooley. He is not running for re-election.
"Quite frankly, I think there is a reason there are so many candidates," Cooley said. "Most people usually aren't even aware of this race, but the charter issue really put it on the forefront."
Two Fortune schools already are operating in the county, with three more approved. Fortune plans to ask to open five additional schools over the next decade. The schools focus on closing the achievement gap for African American students.
If two candidates opposed to the charter network were to win, they could tip the board majority. Harold Fong, who has only one opponent, voted against the Fortune schools last year. John Scribner, who has no opposition, and Rivas, who is not up for re-election, both abstained.
Scribner has reported a $100 donation from the political director of the California Federation of Teachers – the state's largest teachers union – on his campaign contribution statement.
Charters generally don't sit well with unions. The schools usually aren't unionized and they draw students and the dollars attached to them from local school districts.
Heather McGowan, one of four candidates running for the seat being vacated by Cooley, said the $4,900 fee for her candidate's statement was loaned to her by the teachers union for the Twin Rivers school district.
But Fortune isn't sitting idly by. As of March 17, she had donated $1,100 to Christina Shipman. She is running against Fong, who voted against the charters. She also has given $100 to incumbent Eleanor Brown, who voted for the charters.
A Charter School Political Action Committee has contributed $3,500 to the campaign of Penny Schwinn, a charter school operator, who is also running to replace Cooley. A sitting board member, Gregory Geeting, who voted for the charter, lent Schwinn $1,500 for her campaign.
McGowan wouldn't say whether she would vote against the charter schools if elected. "My biggest concern are that these schools are being brought to the county board for approval, instead of to local school districts," she said.
But McGowan said she would take a closer look at whether the county Office of Education legally approved the Fortune charter network. She said there is some question whether a county board can approve a chain of individual schools. "It could throw out the entire charter," she said.
McGowan said she was approached about running for the school board by local education leaders 48 hours before the deadline. She said there is no slate working against the charters. "We are running as individuals."
In the meantime, incumbent Fong waged a battle of his own. Fong sued county Registrar of Voters Jill Lavine to prevent his opponent from calling herself an "early childhood educator" in the voter pamphlet.
Fong asserted that Shipman, a manager for First Five Solano, an agency providing early education programs, is not an educator.
The court disagreed.
The rules about job titles aren't very stringent, said Alice Jarboe, assistant registrar of voters for the county. A person's title should explain what they have done in the past 12 months and should be reasonable and clear, she said.
Editor's Note: This story has been changed from the print version to correct board member John Scribner's vote on the Margaret Fortune network of charter schools. Corrected on April 23, 2012.
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