Who is Choosing Who? A Charter School Places Barriers to Entry
“This is a conditional admission practice contrary to the law requiring charter schools to admit all who wish to attend.”
- LAUSD Charter School Division
When the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) Charter School Division recommended that the school board deny the North Valley Military Institute’s (NVMI) charter renewal in 2017, they cited the school’s requirement that “[a]ll students enrolling in NVMI must successfully complete an Entrance Camp” as one of the reasons. The district bureaucrats found that this requirement amounted to “a conditional admission practice” and, therefore, violated the provisions of “the law requiring charter schools to admit all who wish to attend.”
Since 2011, Granada Hills Charter High School has included a requirement that all students attend a “Summer Transition Academy (STA) as a graduation requirement for all students.” The school’s enrollment documents state that “New students programmed into the 2019 STA session who do not report to or complete the STA will receive a grade of F”. Unlike NVMI, this requirement did not prevent the Charter School Division from recommending to the school board that they should approve the renewal of Granada’s charter when it came before them last year.
When asked why NVMI’s requirement was seen as a violation while Granada’s was not, the Charter School Division replied that Granada’s program “is not a CONTINUE READING: Who is Choosing Who? A Charter School Places Barriers to Entry