A tale of two charters

By almost any measure you can imagine—from its dismal student test scores to its dangerous, trash-strewn campus—San Diego’s Gompers Middle School was a failure. Syringes littered the playgrounds, teachers locked themselves in their classrooms during their free periods, and teaching positions went vacant for months.

In 2004, the school was placed in Program Improvement under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for a third straight year of falling short in the education it provided to its overwhelmingly poor, largely minority student population. Local parents were increasingly outraged. Something had to give.

In the Northern California suburb of Livermore, the situation at Arroyo Mocho and Almond Avenue elementary schools was radically different. Parents were delighted with the education their children were receiving at these high-achieving “open boundary” schools that attracted top students from throughout the district.

But Livermore Unified, a low-wealth district with stagnant enrollment, was in financial trouble. In 2004, Livermore school board members reluctantly voted to close Arroyo and Almond, hoping to save about $900,000 a year. Furious parents vowed to fight the decision.

These are two very different districts with very different concerns. But in both San Diego and Livermore, parents decided that a charter school would solve their problems.

After an intense campaign by parents and district officials (led by charter advocate Alan Bersin, who was San Diego Unified School District superintendent at the time), Gompers opened as a district-sponsored charter school in the fall of 2005.

Extreme makeover

Gompers is now safe, clean and fully staffed with credentialed teachers. Students rarely miss school; they stay late and attend Saturday classes. Test scores are improving modestly but consistently. The entire campus culture has undergone a radical improvement, but it’s taken Herculean efforts from all involved.

“There is no easy fix,” says former state senator Dede Alpert, who sits on the Gompers board. “We’ve had to go to private foundations for support. We couldn’t possibly do what we’re doing at Gompers with what schools receive from the state in ADA. Because we’re a charter school, we’ve been able to be more flexible to spend our money in ways that directly support children. But it’s a daunting, daunting task.”

Livermore parents also worked hard to make their charter school a success. But their odyssey has been difficult. Like Gompers supporters, they had to fight to get their charter petition approved. Both the district and county rejected the application to establish Livermore Valley Charter for—among other concerns—a heavy reliance on private fundraising and parental donations.

But the state Board of Education overruled the locals, and Livermore Valley Charter opened in 2005 with nearly 600 students, who posted excellent achievement numbers during the school’s first year of operation.

Thus far the charter has been unable to attract many disadvantaged and minority students, and its enrollment—in the words of one Livermore school board member—is “not reflective of Livermore as a whole.” Some prospective students from poor families may have been discouraged, critics say, by the fact that charter officials encouraged every family to donate $1,000 in spring 2006.

The past year has been rough for the charter’s officials, who have had to borrow heavily to balance the budget and are embroiled in a bitter dispute with the school’s former executive director, a founding parent. State regulators have warned that the school could lose its charter if its budgetary practices do not improve significantly.

“Yes, their school day is longer, their classes are smaller, and there are full-time art, music and science teachers,” says Livermore board member Anne White. “With Livermore’s charter school, parents who can are using their own funds to supplement a state-funded school that can then provide a program we all envy. Is that what legislators intended when they voted for the Charter Schools Act of 1992?”