Charter regulations open to comment through Aug. 2
Renewals would occur automatically if LEAs don’t act within 60 days
Published: July 19, 2011
Long-awaited regulations proposed to clarify procedures for school districts and county offices of education to renew or revoke school charters, and for appeals of those actions to county offices or the State Board of Education, are now open to a third round of public comments following unanimous votes of California’s State Board of Education last week.
Two separate packages of charter regulations are involved, one for renewals and subsequent appeals and the other for revocations and appeals. The regulations specify processes, timelines, required documentation, grounds for denial and other issues.
Most significant may be the provision that charters will be automatically renewed if districts do not act on completed applications within 60 days. Stephanie Farland, a senior policy consultant who represented CSBA during the regulations’ lengthy development, urges local governance teams to carefully review and comment on the proposals.
“Charters—whether they’re succeeding or not succeeding—would be automatically renewed for five years if the district missed its 60-day deadline. This is a huge issue,” Farland says of the automatic renewals in a “This Just In” video blog posted on CSBA’s YouTube channel.
“Charter renewal, as you know as a charter authorizer, is really one of the only times that the district has to negotiate with charters to fix issues in their charter school. If charters know that they don’t have to negotiate with districts, if they know that if they just wait out the 60-day period they’ll be automatically renewed, what we’re go see in California are many charter schools with severe deficiencies being renewed automatically. This is a huge issue for the kids of California and the kids who attend those charter schools.”
CSBA’s “Charter Schools: A Manual for Governance Teams,” available for complimentary download from CSBA’s Charter Schools Web page, continues to be a reliable guide to local oversight duties, and the association will continue to monitor developments and update its resources as conditions change.
Easy links:
Review the regulations and learn now to submit comments on the California Department of Education’s Charter Renewal and Appeals Web page.
CSBA’s “Charter Schools: A Manual for Governance Teams”