CSBA opposes Belisle appointment to State Board of Education 

CSBA has joined a chorus of opposition from education groups to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointment of Raneene “Rae” Belisle to the State Board of Education. Belisle has until March 11, 2010, to be confirmed by the full Senate.

In a letter delivered Sept. 14 to Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, CSBA President Paula Campbell explained why the association is contesting the selection.

“For more than a decade,” Campbell wrote, “Ms. Belisle has been directly involved in key decisions and policies of the State Board of Education that have caused serious concern. This involvement has come during her time as a sitting member of the Board but also in other roles: during the time she served as General Counsel and Executive Director of the Board, as an advocate for EdVoice, and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Charter Schools.”

Campbell went on to address “three specific issues of particular concern” to CSBA, which included Belisle’s advocacy of Schwarzenegger’s push for the SBE to adopt an Algebra I requirement for all eighth-graders; her vote to approve Pac Tech Charter as a statewide benefit charter school in her capacity as a member of the SBE’s Advisory Committee on Charter Schools; and her influence in the SBE decision to postpone critical instructional materials waivers for several school districts in the midst of severe budget setbacks this past spring.

“Not only was [the Algebra I requirement] an ill-timed proposal that failed to consider the systemic implications for making such a significant shift in policy, it was wholly inconsistent with state law,” Campbell wrote. “The Legislature has required Algebra I as a high school graduation requirement, and the Board’s action directly circumvented the Legislature’s direction to schools. … By requiring Algebra I for all eighth-graders, the Board made a revision to the state standards which were not authorized by the Legislature.”

CSBA's Education Legal Alliance initiated litigation against the SBE for its Algebra I vote, which resulted in a permanent injunction halting implementation of the decision.

With respect to Belisle’s action on behalf of creating the Pac Tech charter, Campbell pointed out that “the Legislature created a very limited forum for the creation of statewide benefit charters” and that lawmakers had “crafted charter school law to ensure that charter schools were under direct oversight of the boards in the local communities where the students are served.”

Belisle’s actions to postpone instructional materials waivers “demonstrated a striking lack of consideration for the financial crisis faced by every district in the state,” the letter said. “This crisis is so severe that the Legislature ultimately postponed all instructional material adoption and development until 2012-13.”

“If the Senate confirms Ms. Belisle,” Campbell wrote, “then it is providing tacit support for the Board to conduct itself in ways contrary to direction provided by the Legislature.”

Finally, Campbell wrote that CSBA is becoming “increasingly alarmed” by the majority of SBE board members who are either employed by charter schools or charter advocacy organizations.

“This imbalance has resulted in policy that favors charters and students who attend charters over the 97 percent of students who attend traditional schools,” the letter concluded.