The Los Angeles Unified School District is prepared to fight a decision handed down in Superior Court requiring them to set aside more classroom space and facilities for charter school students.
According to the Times, the decision by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Green required traditional public schools to take into account computer labs, special education classrooms, parent centers and other supplemental facilities when determining how much space they can offer to charter schools.
The district was required to issue revised offers to new charter school applicants under the decision. Thirty-one of the 36 extended have been accepted, including one to a new Silver Lake charter school.
California's Proposition 39 requires public school districts to provide charter schools with facilities roughly equivalent to those of public schools. Among its provisions is one that requires districts to offer unused public school campus space to charters.
Charter school space sharing--or co-location--became a hot topic in Silver Lake, when parents at Micheltorena Elementary School clashed with another group of parents wanting to start a branch of Citizens of the World Charter School there.
After heated confrontations, CWC finished its negotiations with LAUSD and will inhabit 6 classrooms on the site.
According to LAUSD trustee Bennett Kayser's office, Citizens of the World was among the 31 schools affected by the judge's order that agreed to "alternative arrangements" requiring no revised offer of classroom space for this coming year.
Gabriella Charter School shares a campus in Echo Park with Logan Elementary.
Gabriella has been on the Logan site for several years and is not affected by this decision.
I'm not sure "choice" is the right word when one of the two groups in the situation has no choice at all. My kids attend public school, so I doubt that you are suggesting that I might want to choose to have my kids' computer labs, parent centers and after-school programs taken away by a system that has clearly chosen one group of kids over another? Not to be confrontational, but I think when you say choice, you are actually referring to yourself... as most parents do these days. Using the royal "we" in this case is simply not possible. This is not about choice, this is about a country that has decided to abandon public education in favor of privatization simply because the problems inherent in the system are easier to toss in the trash rather than face head on. I understand that most folks believe that Charters are part of the free, public education system. But, I'm not sure how much longer that belief will hold when things like "choice" vanish for more and more kids. Charters are not open to all. If you can't get in, you can't get in. Where will those parents who can't afford private, and can't get through a lottery go? At this rate, public kids will be lucky to have a card table in the parking lot while Charter kids take our computer labs so they can have a teacher's lounge. I doubt that any of us would choose that for our kids. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't. No one would.