About Reform Charter Schools – ReformCharterSchools.org

This is the online home of community members, parents, teachers, students, and educators who understand that charters depopulate and defund existing public schools. Especially after the teacher strikes of 2019 in Los Angeles and Oakland, more and more people understand how paying for one-and-a-half school systems with the same pot of money that used to pay for a single public education system has not led to good results.

More people see the growth in charter school corruption and want to do something about it. This movement is about taking back local control of schools for the benefit of the immediate communities, families, and students where public schools are located.

Charters Drain Funding

Charter schools defund existing public schools. In the Public Interest’s study shows that

Charter schools cost Oakland Unified $57.3 million per year. That’s $1,500 less in funding for each student that attends a neighborhood school.
The annual cost of charter schools to the San Diego Unified is $65.9 million.
In East Side Union, the net impact of charter schools amounts to a loss of $19.3 million per year.

Read the study here:

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Charters Breed Corruption

If in California alone between $80 and $100 million per year is lost to waste, fraud, and abuse by charter school operators, where does that leave the families that relied on charter schools? Or school districts who lose funding when K-12 funds follow the child out of a district school and into a charter?

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Read this important report by the Center for Popular Democracy, ACCE, and Public Advocates to learn how we can return public funds to the public institutions they were intended for — the transparent, accountable, and publicly overseen schools that belong to every community in the state.

Then join our movement!

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Not in California? Read this national report on charter school fraud and mismanagement, downloadable here.

This is the online home of community members, parents, teachers, students, and educators who see the growth in charter school corruption and destructive financial competition with public schools and want to do something about it. This movement is about taking back local control of schools for the benefit of the immediate communities where schools are located. We are not opposed to community-based, neighborhood-started charter schools.

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Este es el sitio para miembros de la comunidad, padres, maestros, alumnos, y pedagogos quienes han visto el crecimiento de la corrupción en escuelas privadas subvencionadas y optan por hacer algo al respecto. Este movimiento es para recuperar el control local de las escuelas para el beneficio de aquellas comunidades inmediatas en donde se encuentran las escuelas.

Strong Transparency, Accountability, Local Control for Charter Schools

To Our California State Public Officials

Dear Governor Gavin Newsom, Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalikis, Speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon, Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell; State Senator Pro Tem Toni Atkins; State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, State Controller Betty Yee, State Treasurer Fiona Ma, State Attorney General Xavier Bacerra,

We are taxpayers, parents, students, teachers, and concerned Americans, and we support the call for a statewide moratorium on approval of charter schools until transparency, accountability, and local control provisions not already in the current approval process are established.

While there are some charter schools that are locally approved, are transparent with their budgets including posting executive salaries, and are accountable to the public, the vast majority of charter schools have taken advantage of taxpayers through weak charter laws and lax oversight by state and county officials.

Studies show that in school districts where teacher unions recently went on strike, Oakland and Los Angeles, charters defund Oakland public schools by $57.3 million a year, and defund Los Angeles public schools by $600 million a year. It is estimated well over 100,000 community, parent, student, and teacher supporters of public education marched in support of public schools in both cities in the first quarter of 2019.

Since 2006, the California state agency Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT)  has audited charter schools and identified $81 million in fraud, waste, and abuse. Other school budget experts estimate $100 million lost to corruption by California charter operators in 2015 alone. (Source: http://populardemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Charter-Schools-California-Report-b.pdf)

Thank you for passing SB126 which makes the Brown Act apply to charter schools, who must now keep public records, hold open meetings, and bar operators and key staff from conflicts of interest.

However, under current law, charter schools are not required to:
·       Have transparent budgets and salaries
·       Ensure facilities are asbestos and lead free
·       Ensure local support and adequate resources for students with disabilities
·       Have locally elected board members
·       File a fiscal, academic, or facilities impact report on surrounding public and charter schools in a petition for authorization
·       Ensure parental oversight through School Site Councils and English Learner Advisory Councils
·       Ensure teachers hold a Commission on Teacher Credentialing certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold
·       Maintain adequate cash reserves as required of public schools

Because of these loopholes, many charter operators are gaming the system and are in it to make money with little regard to children’s education. Corruption is such that the largest charter school operator in America, with schools in California, is operated by foreign nationals without taxpayer knowledge and virtually no oversight.

This has got to stop.

As taxpayers and Americans, we deserve better. Our children deserve better.

Therefore, we respectively request that you remedy these problems through your legislative authority, and pass the strongest versions of AB 1505, AB 1506, AB 1507, and SB 756 that you can, with input from grassroots public school communities all over California.

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This petition is now closed.

End date: Nov 27, 2020

Signatures collected: 2234

Signature goal: 5000