[chris v]

From NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/17/ed...17charter.html

Collapse of 60 Charter Schools Leaves Californians Scrambling
By SAM DILLON


en Larson was pacing the floor of his office in a tiny elementary school in Oro Grande, Calif., surrounded by the chaos of fax lines beeping, three beleaguered secretaries peppering him with questions and phone lines ringing for the umpteenth time.


It had been a month since one of the nation's largest charter school operators collapsed, leaving 6,000 students with no school to attend this fall. The businessman who used $100 million in state financing to build an empire of 60 mostly storefront schools had simply abandoned his headquarters as bankruptcy loomed, refusing to take phone calls. That left Mr. Larson, a school superintendent whose district licensed dozens of the schools, to clean up the mess.


"Hysterical parents are calling us, swearing and shouting," Mr. Larson said in an interview in Oro Grande last week. "People are walking off with assets all over the state. We're absolutely sinking."


The disintegration of the California Charter Academy, the largest chain of publicly financed but privately run charter schools to slide into insolvency, offers a sobering picture of what can follow. Thousands of parents were forced into a last-minute search for alternate schools, and some are still looking; many teachers remain jobless; and students' academic records are at risk in abandoned school sites across California.


Investigators are sifting through records seeking causes of the disaster, which has raised new questions about how charter schools are regulated.


"Until the Charter Academy went into its tailspin, few people predicted that these crashes could be so bloody, but this has been a catastrophe for many people," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley. "The critics of market-oriented reforms warned of risks with the philosophy of let-the-buyer-beware, but in this case, buyers were just totally hung out to dry."


Jack O'Connell, the California superintendent of schools, said in an interview that a majority of the state's 537 charter schools were making a solid contribution to public education. But Mr. O'Connell has concluded from the disaster that the state must apply "tough love" in regulating them, "to keep this kind of near-bankruptcy and chaos from happening again," he said.


"If there's mismanagement and malfeasance, we'll come in and put you out of business," he said.


Back in 1999, the national movement to provide alternatives to parents through charter schools, which face less burdensome regulation than other public schools, was gaining steam. Many charter schools have since flourished, and experts say that some of them offer an excellent education. But in Southern California, there were signs of trouble soon after C. Steven Cox, a former insurance executive whose only educational credential was his brief service on a local school board, founded the Charter Academy.


State auditors are now scrutinizing Mr. Cox's financial records to determine whether he exaggerated enrollments and to sort out claims from a line of creditors, said Scott Hannan, director of school fiscal services at the California Department of Education.


"But our highest priority is securing the student records," Mr. Hannan said. That is a sore point with Mr. Larson, who said that thousands of students' immunization and academic records had been virtually abandoned all across California.


Mr. Larson, superintendent of a tiny school district in Oro Grande, a Mojave Desert village 88 miles northeast of Los Angeles that looks like a set for "Bad Day at Black Rock," has converted a storeroom at his school into a warehouse for the records. He has arranged for dozens of file cabinets holding student records to be trucked to Oro Grande from schools that have closed across the Mojave Desert, he said, but he has no way to collect records and equipment left behind elsewhere.


Mr. Larson said Mr. Cox approached him in 2001, preaching the charter school gospel that money spent on filing reports to government regulators would be better spent in classrooms, and asking the Oro Grande district to license him to found charter schools. The Oro Grande school board approved the idea, and two other California districts forged similar relationships with Mr. Cox between 1999 and 2001.


Mr. Cox eventually founded 60 satellite schools in low- and middle-income communities stretching from Chula Vista near the Mexican border to Gridley, 140 miles northeast of San Francisco, and under California's financing formulas the state paid him about $5,000 annually for each student he enrolled. As his business grew, he hired his wife, son, daughter-in-law and other relatives to work at his corporate headquarters in Victorville, near Oro Grande.


But by early 2003, Mr. Cox had become mired in several costly confrontations with the California Department of Education; one centered on whether 10 of his schools were in violation of a 2002 law barring charter operators from opening schools in counties they had not registered in. The state withheld more than $6 million that Mr. Cox had expected to receive.


Mr. Cox sued, seeking to force payment, but lost that battle after running up huge legal fees, and the state withheld money as a result of other disputes, too. By the summer, Mr. Cox's financial difficulties had grown severe, and on July 28, the trustees of one of the four charters responded to the mounting crisis by voting to close the schools they had licensed. Mr. Cox stalked out of that meeting and stopped responding to most phone calls.


Within a week and a half, trustees voted to close the rest of Mr. Cox's schools, and his second in command announced to scores of employees gathered at the Victorville headquarters that they were out of a job. Kim Ehrlich, a billing supervisor, said she spent the first half of August with workers dismantling the offices around her, phoning local utility companies across California to turn off the power at Charter Academy schools, then lost her job.


The sudden collapse blindsided even the charter school principals. Melody Parker, whose Village elementary school in Inglewood was one of the most popular schools in Mr. Cox's organization, said that although her budget had been slashed and Mr. Cox had grown aloof, she never imagined that his organization could fall apart.


"It hit us like a tornado," Ms. Parker said. On Aug. 12, she informed teachers that their jobs were gone, and the next day she told hundreds of parents gathered at the school that it would not open for the fall term. Many had still not found schools by the second week of September, she said.


"The collapse was so disheartening,' said Dwayne Muhammad, who works in a funeral home and whose daughter Aisha was to attend the Village's fourth grade this fall. "Everybody began rushing to find alternate schools."


Mr. Muhammad has visited eight schools in the weeks since, all of which have been full, he said Monday. "We've been left by the wayside."


The nonprofit California Charter School Association said in a report this week that 80 percent of the students displaced from Mr. Cox's schools had since enrolled in other charter schools. Some teachers, like Maria Boatwright, who taught first grade at the Village, have found new jobs at other charters.


But teachers all across the state have reported difficulties in finding new teaching positions because most schools had hired their staffs by the time the academy collapsed, Mr. Larson said.


At the interview in Oro Grande, he produced a stack of letters from distraught, jobless teachers. Travis D. Taylor, who taught art and science to students at a Charter Academy school in Gridley, wrote to say that he had not been repaid the hundreds of dollars he spent on books and science equipment for his students.


Mr. Taylor's mother, Shelly, said that since the collapse, Mr. Taylor had been unable to find another teaching job. With his debts mounting, he has been harvesting rice "to keep his head above water," she said.


Mr. Cox did not respond to requests for an interview left on his voicemail, sent by e-mail and relayed through former employees. Mr. Larson has not been able to reach him either, he said.


One of Mr. Larson's secretaries interrupted the interview to announce that the landlord of a school forced to close in Los Angeles was threatening to dump desks and student records in the street to make way for a new tenant. Mr. Larson wrestled with the notion of driving a truck to Los Angeles himself to fetch the assets.


"There's 100 desks down there," he muttered. "What would we do with 100 desks?"

[chris v]

100 million of your dollars, basically stolen. Kids without schools. Nice work, guys.

[spacefreak]

What makes this a conservative nostrum? Nothing in the story indicates anything about conservatives. I don't really know too much about this scandal, but around me, the charter schools are extremely liberal organizations.

[vmarks]

Yeah, curse parents for wanting a say in how their children are educated and having to seek it outside the unionized traditional public education monopoly.

In North Carolina, many of the charter schools showed success, to the point of being top in their respective counties.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by spacefreak:
What makes this a conservative nostrum? Nothing in the story indicates anything about conservatives. I don't really know too much about this scandal, but around me, the charter schools are extremely liberal organizations.

... the conservative bent to privatize everything that is humanly possible ?? Sounds good on paper but often ends up in disaster. S & L ... deregulated, looked nice for the bottom line .. taxpayers end up footing a multi-billion dollar bail-out of the ones that went under. Airlines ... deregulated, looked nice for efficiency and slashing airfares etc. 9/11 happens, taxpayers end up footing billions to keep them solvent.

Some things don't need to be privatized. Even if they are more cost efficient they are succeptible to certain things that public organizations are not. Like insolvency, bankruptcy, etc. Anything that is a public (gov't, taxpayer) guarantee (like primary/secondary education or insured bank deposits) is NOT a good candidate for privatization, IMHO. Gives those businesses all the potential rewards of private enterprise without the risk (since the gov't will bail them out if they fail).

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by vmarks:
Yeah, curse parents for wanting a say in how their children are educated and having to seek it outside the unionized traditional public education monopoly.

In North Carolina, many of the charter schools showed success, to the point of being top in their respective counties.

Yes, choice is good.

Nothing like this should be fully controlled by the Gov.

[vmarks]

Originally posted by Krusty:
... the conservative bent to privatize everything that is humanly possible ?? Sounds good on paper but often ends up in disaster. S & L ... deregulated, looked nice for the bottom line .. taxpayers end up footing a multi-billion dollar bail-out of the ones that went under. Airlines ... deregulated, looked nice for efficiency and slashing airfares etc. 9/11 happens, taxpayers end up footing billions to keep them solvent.

Some things don't need to be privatized. Even if they are more cost efficient they are succeptible to certain things that public organizations are not. Like insolvency, bankruptcy, etc. Anything that is a public (gov't, taxpayer) guarantee (like primary/secondary education or insured bank deposits) is NOT a good candidate for privatization, IMHO. Gives those businesses all the potential rewards of private enterprise without the risk (since the gov't will bail them out if they fail).

Hint: Charter schools ARE public schools. They take public money for educational resources but raise building funds on their own. In exchange they get to take some liberties with curriculum, but are still held to state and federal standards, and some curricula remain required by the state.

Some traditional public schools fail. Some charter schools fail. The latter is generally more of a rare occurrence based on the numbers I have seen.

[Orion27]

Originally posted by vmarks:
Yeah, curse parents for wanting a say in how their children are educated and having to seek it outside the unionized traditional public education monopoly.

In North Carolina, many of the charter schools showed success, to the point of being top in their respective counties.

Ditto for charter schools in Charleston, South Carolina. Huge successes there as well. Particulary in the James Island District.

[Millennium]

I must say, charter schools as we know them don't seem to be doing terribly well, in large part because when one of these conglomerates goes it takes down the whole system.

The public education system as we currently know it just plain isn't working. Eventual privatization may be a solution -the schools which succeed certainly do better- but the infrastructure needed to actually sustain such a system on an national scale isn't in place yet. There may an even better solution. But the current system isn't it. Even if it isn't scrapped, it's past the point where it can't just be patched up; a complete top-down redesign is needed at the absolute least.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by vmarks:
Hint: Charter schools ARE public schools. They take public money ....
Some traditional public schools fail. Some charter schools fail. The latter is generally more of a rare occurrence based on the numbers I have seen.

I know Charter Schools are publicly funded ... and I also know that some will be successful. I don't, however, know about "the numbers you have seen". Public schools don't often "fail" in the sense that they actually close their doors en masse like these schools in CA. Federal and State laws require primary and secondary education ... so even horrible public schools will stay open. As far as performance, the Dept of Education released their first assessment of Charter schools nationwide in middle August ... and they appear to be doing worse on the whole than "regular" public schools. Given the fact that regular public schools aren't so great, that's doubly damning.

I think there can be a place for Charter schools ... but only in places where there is a pretty large population and several alternatives as far as education (i.e. a place that is not going to be in dire straits if the school fails). Like Post Offices, sometimes "uneconomical" institutions have to be maintained to insure a public pact (e.g. if the Post Office didn't maintain offices in some places, then the promise of a "from anywhere, to anywhere" Postal Service would not be a reality ). Choice is as good thing ... but not at the expense of unequivocal availability of some sort of education to everyone of school age.

Originally posted by Orion27:
Ditto for charter schools in Charleston, South Carolina. Huge successes there as well. Particulary in the James Island District.

James Island Charter High School is, as I understand it, a large improvement over the prior public high school. However, in absolute terms, its is roughly middle of the pack for Charleston area high schools. Pure public schools in Mt. Pleasant, Dorchester County, etc. are rated far higher ("Excellent" ratings vs JICHS's "Average" and "Good" ratings). Still... conceded that JICHS is overall a relative success. Of course, the schools down here are pretty strange to begin with ... the wealthiest areas (lower John's Island, Downtown) tend to be in crappy public school districts as large numbers send their kids to private school and substantially divest themselves from caring about the local pubic schools. The solid middle and upper middle class areas (Summerville, Mt. P) have excellent public schools.
[/a guy who has lived in Charleston for 9 years now ]

[CreepingDeth]

Why is the government even the monopoly in education?

Originall posted by Krusty
.. the conservative bent to privatize everything that is humanly possible

As opposed to you wanting to nationalize and control everything.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by CreepingDeath:

As opposed to you wanting to nationalize and control everything.

Not at all .. your just making stuff up to pretend that "wild and crazy liberals" want to nationalize everything. I think that MANY things are good ideas to privatize. However, there is a very tenuous tightrope being walked when privatizing things that are publicly "guaranteed" such as education, postal service, and the military.

There is a balance that needs to be achieved between pubic institution's reliability and private institution's efficiency. In the case of Charter schools, their has to be some sort of public accountability such that a "public" school doesn't just fold up unexpectedly as has happened in CA. Private efficiency = YES. Private unaccountability = NO (see description in the article .. the head of this group has "simply abandoned" his office and stopped taking calls.) In a public system, a new head could simply be appointed by the superintendent of schools. In this case ... what will happen ? A public superintendent can't just appoint a new head of a private business.

I'm not saying that Charter schools can't possibly be done right. But they aren't being done right at present if an entire battery of public schools can simply shut down without notice.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Not at all .. your just making stuff up to pretend that "wild and crazy liberals" want to nationalize everything. I think that MANY things are good ideas to privatize. However, there is a very tenuous tightrope being walked when privatizing things that are publicly "guaranteed" such as education, postal service, and the military.

There is a balance that needs to be achieved between pubic institution's reliability and private institution's efficiency. In the case of Charter schools, their has to be some sort of public accountability such that a "public" school doesn't just fold up unexpectedly as has happened in CA. Private efficiency = YES. Private unaccountability = NO (see description in the article .. the head of this group has "simply abandoned" his office and stopped taking calls.) In a public system, a new head could simply be appointed by the superintendent of schools. In this case ... what will happen ? A public superintendent can't just appoint a new head of a private business.

I'm not saying that Charter schools can't possibly be done right. But they aren't being done right at present if an entire battery of public schools can simply shut down without notice.

Constitution.
Nowhere does it say anything about guaranteed education.
You'd hold the government up in accountability? The only real guarantee we have is defense. Post Office and schools suck. Post office loses big time in accountability. They're not efficient and have no desire to be, same with education.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Originally posted by chris v:
100 million of your dollars, basically stolen. Kids without schools. Nice work, guys.

LOL! This is comical!

In the state of California where the mostly far out in left field state legislature has stolen and continues to steal literally BILLIONS of dollars, you're blame-shifting onto conservatives (that probably had nothing in particular to do with this) a measly 100 mil?

Talk about selective outrage!

Thanks for the comedy!

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

http://www.vvdailypress.com/cgi-bin/...5253654,77257,

About 80 percent of the school-aged students who attended the now defunct California Charter Academy are enrolled in other charter schools, charter school officials said Tuesday.

At least 2,646 of California Charter Academy students in kindergarten through 12th grade are enrolled in other charter schools in their area, said Gary Larson, the spokesman for the California Charter School Association. The association tracked the enrollment through the California Department of Education, campus surveys and calls from parents.

"We feel confident the majority of the kids have been transferred into public schools of their choice," Larson said.

CCA's operating boards voted to close their doors in July and August leaving all its students to scramble for new schools. Most of the students under the Snowline Unified School District charters have responded quickly and found new schools. Most returned to their local school districts or charter schools within their area, said Kathy Sharkey, an administrative assistant for the district.

About 40 percent of CCA's were adults returning to school for a high school diploma. Changes in the state's adult education policy made it impossible for CCA to receive funding for those students, which contributed to its sudden closure.