Proposed charter school’s status being decided
Charter group to review district’s concerns
Elk Grove Mayor Gary Davis
In addition to being Elk Grove’s mayor, he is the director for the California Charter School Association.
He is collaborating with Tri-Valley Learning Corp. (TVLC), a Livermore-based nonprofit, to operate Golden State Charter School, a pre-K-8 school. They have managed charter schools in Livermore and Stockton for the past decade.
“This is purely about providing an alternative and another choice for Elk Grove families,” Davis said.
In addition to being Elk Grove’s mayor, he is the director for the California Charter School Association.
Tri-Valley’s leaders decided to withdraw their petition on Feb. 2 to address a 10-page review from Elk Grove Unified School District staff that heavily critiqued their school plan. The staff recommended to the school board to not accept the petition.
Tri-Valley’s withdrawal gave them 30 days to address the concerns and report back to Elk Grove. Their board will decide on their next move at their Feb. 17 meeting, Tri-Valley’s charter development director Lynn Lysko told the Citizen.
Davis said the petition’s withdrawal was a good move.
“(Elk Grove Unified) took a pretty hard stance against the petition,” he said. “Tri-Valley now has an opportunity to fix the petition and bring it back for consideration. At that point, the district should have all of their issues addressed.”
Elk Grove School Board President Bobbie Singh-Allen told the Citizen she found her district’s review of Golden State Charter School to be “eye-opening.” She said that as per district regulations, her district will not accept any more charter school petitions for the 2016-17 school year.
The Elk Grove school district staff reported 29 concerns when they reviewed the plans from Tri-Valley. They doubted the TVLC staff could successfully implement their education programs due to a lack of solid funding plans and inadequate means of serving all students.
Plans are to open the Golden State Charter School near Interstate 5 in the Laguna West area. The district staff discovered the school’s proposed site actually lies within the Sacramento City Unified School District’s jurisdiction.
Staff also reported that Tri-Valley would also need Elk Grove city approval to rezone the school site from a “general commercial” use to house Golden State Charter.
Other concerns focused on Tri-Valley’s budgeting, which is mainly based on bonds such as a $25.5 million bond they issued last year. The nonprofit was reportedly unable to provide audited financial statements for their 2014-15 school year.
District staff also noted that the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District raised concerns over Tri-Valley’s practice of charging tuition fees upwards of thousands of dollars a year to foreign students. Such a practice violates the state regulation that prohibits charter schools from charging tuition.
The Elk Grove district also questioned Golden State Charter School’s staff development practices, budget plan and projections, approaches to teaching students from different groups such as English language learners, and its plan to charge fees for after-school programs.
“Relying on ‘fee-based’ programs to provide before- and after-school programs will dissuade families without the means to participate in these programs from seeking to enroll their children at the school,” the Elk Grove district report stated.
Questions of how many local educators and parents were interested in joining Golden State Charter were also raised. The district staff reported that Tri-Valley claimed that 40 local people including educators expressed interest but the charter petition did not disclose their names, due to “professional reasons.”
Golden State Charter is the second charter school that Davis has tried to open in Elk Grove. He earlier led an effort to open the Grove Leadership Academy in 2013 but his staff withdrew their charter petition following a critical reaction from the Elk Grove district staff and teachers union.
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