4 EDCAL January 22, 2018
Charter school authorizing: Quality schools for all
The following article was written by Brooke
Soles, assistant professor of educational lead-
ership at California State University, San
Marcos.
Charter school authorizers have an enor-
mous responsibility to support and monitor
their schools. However, not all authorizers
approach their work in the same manner.
Considering California has approxi-
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mately 1,000 charter schools serving almost
600,000 students, authorizers must support
equity and access for all. Whether you are
a Diane Ravitch or Reed Hastings fan, or
both, what I have learned as a charter school
principal and subsequent authorizer are
concrete steps for best practices in account-
ability planning that work for both charter
schools and authorizers. the Education Code to outline this autho-
rizing process. Like with many regulations
and codes, there is room for discussion.
Not all authorizers are created equally,
but there are specific organizations dedi-
cated to calibrating the authorizer process,
such as the California Charter Authorizing
Professionals and the National Association
of Charter School Authorizers.
Who am I to say? Who is in charge here?
I am an educator who practices equity
and access for all and holds the unique
perspective of having experience in both the
traditional public and charter school worlds.
I became familiar with the charter school
system during the tail end of the California
budget crisis in 2012. After working as a
teacher and assistant principal in the Los
Angeles and San Francisco unified school
districts for 10 years, there were no tra-
ditional public school principal positions
open.
So I turned to the charter world and
served as the principal of a small secondary
charter school in Los Angeles. I subse-
quently served as a charter school authorizer
with the Los Angeles County Office of
Education for four years.
Thus, I come to the table with a broad
range of expertise and experiences when
discussing charter school authorizing.
How does authorizing work?
Each state has its own practices when
authorizing charter schools. Some states
allow non-profit organizations to monitor
and support charter schools, while others
permit universities and government agen-
cies to do the job. Here in California, there
are three distinct entities that may autho-
rize: local traditional school districts, county
boards of education and the State Board of
Education.
Typically, individuals desiring to open
a charter school begin at the local district
level. If the local district denies their charter
petition, they have the opportunity to sub-
mit that same petition to their local county
board with a final appeal opportunity with
the SBE.
Prior to going to the SBE, charter school
petitions denied by the local district and
county board are reviewed by the California
Charter School Advisory Board, which in
turn makes a recommendation to the SBE
for consideration.
There are specific guidelines in the
California Code of Regulations as well as
John Eick
Principal,
Westlake Charter School
Charter schools typically have autonomy
when it comes to governance. Traditional
public schools in California work with local
school districts that have elected boards as
the governance body. However, most charter
schools have non-elected boards to provide
guidance to their charter school or schools.
This means that many individuals may
sit on a charter school governing board just
because they want to and not because they
may have capacity to decide how public
funds are distributed.
Problems arise when the charter school’s
governing board does not demonstrate
capacity to govern. For example, how does
a charter school founder sell a Lexus to
its director of operations without board
approval? Or, how does a governing board
approve a $300,000 executive director sal-
ary for serving 10,000 students? Granted,
these are extreme examples, but what does
governing board capacity look like on an
ongoing basis?
There are many charter schools follow-
ing state and federal laws providing par-
ents and families a quality choice in their
local neighborhoods. There are also charter
schools practicing sound governance poli-
cies and following the Brown Act as a best
practice. The Brown Act is a statute that
was enacted in response to growing public
concerns over informal, undisclosed meet-
ings held by local elected officials.
Some charter authorizers, such as the
LACOE Board, require their charter
schools to follow the Brown Act to pro-
vide transparency and accountability to the
school, its stakeholder and the general pub-
lic, but not all authorizers perform this type
of monitoring and not all charter schools
follow the Brown Act.
Even state requirements dampen leader-
ship capacity measures, as charter school
administrators are not required to hold an
administrative services credential.
Mark West
See CHARTERS, page 5
Associate Project Officer, Teacher Development
and Education Sector Policy, UNESCO Paris