Court ruling will hinder some charter schools' right to cross district borders
e California Supreme Court has let stand a 2016 appeals court decision that will restrict some charter schools’ ability to expand and jeopardize the status of an estimated 38,000 students studying under charter school arrangements that the appeals court declared illegal.
The case involved a small but growing number of charters, called “nonclassroom-based” charter schools or “independent study charters” – schools that don’t operate in a traditional bricks-and-mortar setting. They serve a range of students, among them children home-schooled for religious reasons, students who struggled in a regular school environment, and child actors and athletes needing a flexible schedule. Some of these schools, like for-profit K12 Inc., operate only online, while others offer limited face-to-face services in satellite offices or “resource centers,” where the schools run science labs, tutor students, give standardized tests and serve special education students.
At issue in “Anderson Union High School District v. Shasta Secondary Home School” was whether the charter school law permits an independent study charter authorized in one district to open a “resource center” to serve students living in other districts in the same county. A district court said Shasta Secondary Home School, recently renamed Shasta Charter Academy, could; a three-judge panel of the 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled it couldn’t.
The Supreme Court’s decision earlier this month not to hear the Shasta Charter Academy’s appeal will leave the affected charters the choice of converting to a fully virtual operation or closing the centers and forcing students to travel to a resource center in the district that authorized the charter. More than a quarter of the 142,000 students that, according to the California Charter Schools Association, were enrolled in independent study charter schools in 2014-15 may be left with the Court ruling will hinder some charter schools’ right to cross district borders | EdSource: