Broad official defends charter schools following leak of expansion plan
arter schools have been wrongly accused of not serving all students and a proposal to greatly expand the number of them in Los Angeles would not result in financial catastrophe for the nation's second-largest school system, according to a top official with the group spearheading the plan.
The remarks were the first extensive comments by a representative of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation since The Times obtained a copy of the privately developed proposal and made it public in September.
Under that plan, 260 additional charters would open over the next eight years, resulting in about half of L.A. Unified School District students being enrolled in these independently managed public schools.
"Charters take all kids and that’s what they are required to do," Gregory McGinity, the foundation's managing director of policy, said in an interview after an invitation-only forum Thursday morning in an auditorium at the historic county general hospital.
McGinity also responded to an independent financial analysis presented this week at a Los Angeles Board of Education meeting. A panel of experts concluded that the growth of charters were a major factor threatening the district's fiscal solvency, but took no position on whether charter growth was good or bad for students served by L.A. Unified.
"I don’t see LAUSD going bankrupt," McGinity said. "LAUSD, like a lot of other districts, has fiscal challenges." He added that the panel made "a number of recommendations on how the district can find opportunities to improve its financial position. Other districts with a significant number of charters are thriving in terms of their Broad officials defends charters in first extended comments since leak of charter expansion plan - LA Times:
