State Board to appeal CSBA win on statewide benefit charters
Published: August 14, 2012
The State Board of Education decided at its July meeting to appeal the victory earlier this year of CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance and its partners in their legal challenge to the statewide benefit charter the State Board had granted in 2007 to Aspire Public Schools, Inc.
In a final order this summer affirming her earlier ruling, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jo-Lynne Q. Lee granted Aspire one year to continue to operate its statewide benefit charter while it seeks local charters in Los Angeles, Stockton and Sacramento—just as CSBA and its partners in the lawsuit had argued was the appropriate remedy.
As Angelo Williams, Ed.D., CSBA’s assistant executive director for Policy and Programs, said following the issuance of the tentative ruling, “Children are best protected when local district or county office boards evaluate charter petitions and supervise charter schools in their own communities, and state lawmakers who devised statewide benefit charter regulations intended that.”
The filing of the notice of appeal not only protects the State Board’s legal position but it also allows time for CSBA’s ELA, the Association of California School Administrators, the California Teachers Association, the State Board and Aspire Public Schools to explore a potential settlement.
Learn more about this and other ELA cases on behalf of public education at www.csba.org/ela.aspx.