Dr. Rocio Rivas: Unpaid Charter School Debt Hurts Students

“The instructional disruption from co-locations further impacts disproportionately low-income, low-performing and disabled District neighborhood children.” - Board District 2 Candidate Dr. Rocio Rivas

This is the second in a series on unpaid overallocation fees by charter schools. Please read the first part for an introduction to the current debt.

Dr. Rocio Rivas holds a doctorate in International and Comparative Education from the Teachers College at Columbia University. It should, therefore, not be surprising that her response to questions about how to handle the $13,745,310 in unpaid overallocation fees owed to the district is very thorough. It includes an evaluation of how PROP-39 affects public education students, especially those who are low income, low-performing, or have special-education needs. Under PROP-39, charter schools are allowed to demand space from public schools. To comply with these demands the district must often take “disruptive measures,” reducing the space available to provide vital programs.

Given her understanding of the issue, it is not surprising that Dr. Rivas believes that charter schools should be held accountable when they take more space than they are entitled to receive. This overallocation occurs when these schools overestimate their enrollment. The data shows that the majority of charter schools that are invoiced for an overallocation of space are assessed this penalty for multiple years.

Dr. Rivas says directly that “a charter school that is not fulfilling its agreed legal obligations of repaying their debt to LAUSD students as a consequence of taking away much-needed space should face consequences, such as having their [charter] petition revoked.” Furthermore, she states that “a charter school with a large amount of debt is not practicing fiscally sound processes which in the long run are to the detriment for all students.”

If elected, Dr. Rivas states that she would hold senior district staff accountable for the non-payment of overallocation fees. This includes Megan Reilly who as the Deputy Superintendent was put in charge of collecting these fees by former Superintendent Austin Beutner. The head of the Charter School Division, Jose Cole-Gutierrez, would also be held responsible for not fully enforcing fiscal oversight of the charter schools he is supposed to regulate.

Dr. Rivas’ complete responses to the questions that were presented to her are as follows:

Do you support revoking the charter of any school that has ongoing unpaid debt?

To provide space to charter schools seeking PROP-39 accommodations, the District took disruptive measures to eliminate the number of school set-asides needed for various services and needs for students. The instructional disruption from co-locations further impacts disproportionately low-income, low-performing, and disabled District neighborhood children.

The District set-asides necessary to implement District-wide instructional, health, and safety programs and services, such as educational testing centers, health center clinics, food services, Beyond the Bell programs, and special education services were reduced. Charter school co-locations impose unnecessary hardships upon LAUSD students’ by interfering and denying their ability to receive the special education-related services in their home school and forcing students to travel to other locations.

A charter school that is not fulfilling its agreed legal obligations of repaying its debt to LAUSD students as a consequence of taking away much-needed space should face consequences, such as having their petition revoked. The overallocation penalty fees that the charter schools owe as a result of PROP-39 classroom allocation is money owed to the students of the co-located schools. Upon the hearing for a charter petition renewal, the charter school should be notified that if no payment is made towards the unpaid debt, then their charter is in danger of being revoked.

It is unfortunate that the charter school parents and students lose in this effort to collect money owed to LAUSD students, but this is an agreement that co-locating charter schools entered in and seems not to be taking it seriously.

What steps do you support to ensure that these funds are collected on behalf of LAUSD students?

The District and Board of Education must make it clear that these funds be reimbursed to the LAUSD students. The dispute resolutions must be more determined in recuperating those funds on behalf of the students that were affected by the depletion of space in their schools to accommodate a charter school.

Under CA education code 47614 section b2, indicates that if a charter school “generates less average daily classroom attendance by in-district students than it projected, the charter school shall reimburse the district for the overallocated space at rates to be set by the State of Education.”

Under CA Code of Regulations 11969.8b, “charter schools must continue to make payments for overallocated space and pro-rata share payments.”

Under CA Code of Regulations 11969.10d3, indicates that during a mediation process for a dispute resolution when the school district and charter school have not reached an agreement within 15 days from the first meeting or come to an impasse, the mediation is terminated.

And so based on these regulations, the co-locating charter school is responsible for repayment. The CA education laws and codes do not specify or provide guidance or restrictions on how this penalty should be collected once mediation is terminated, which indicates that the District can possibly include direct specifications on when the debt should be repaid and include collection debt service costs.

Should Megan Reilly face consequences for failing to collect this debt?

The collection of overallocation penalty fees is under her purview. The amount owed keeps increasing and the charter schools are paying small amounts that do not compare to the loss of space and resources from District students. Responsibility is certainly on District leadership that must collect these funds and yet are not as aggressive as they should be in making sure the charter schools pay up.

The failure to collect these penalty fees, which have been accumulating since 2016, was complete negligence that currently continues to grow as co-locating charter schools continue to take away from our neighborhood schools.

This negligence also lends itself to litigation from charter schools as the District demands to be repaid in full for three years or more in back pay. Accountability has to be demanded and provide results in getting those funds back into our schools.

Should Jose Cole-Gutierrez face consequences for failing to collect this debt?

He is also part of the negligence in collecting overallocation penalty fees. Higher expectations rooted in the same CA education laws that the charter school division bases its policies and regulations on should also be applied to the collection of penalty fees. During PROP-39 meetings with charter schools, the Charter School Division must stress that overallocation fees must be paid back within a specific timeline before facing more aggressive debt collection procedures and possibly facing the revocation of their charter petition.

Oversight of charter schools includes making sure that charter schools have sound fiscal management processes and are debt-free. A charter school with a large amount of debt is not practicing fiscally sound processes which in the long run are to the detriment of all students. Therefore, their fiscal oversight was not fully enforced by the CSD and that has to be addressed.

What reforms, if any, would you like made to the PROP-39 process?

There are flaws in PROP-39 that were not fully thought out, particularly on how this law would be implemented and the further depletion of resources from neighborhood schools. The school and District set-asides should not have been drastically reduced and eliminated to make space for charter schools. If the space is not available it’s because the space is being utilized and the district school should have a voice in this decision-making process, particularly if the school is going to be a magnet or a community school.

The LAUSD PROP-39 applications must include eligibility criteria that the Charter Schools must abide by if they are to share District property. The criteria should include COVID-19 protocols and mandates, hiring public union employees, and abiding by District SELPA to ascertain that they are servicing their fair share of students with moderate and severe disabilities.

Include in the PROP-39 agreement specifications on the repayment/collection of overallocation fees. The fees should be repaid annually in a timely manner and if any fees are owed at the renewal stage will face revocation. The charter schools have to take this seriously and CSD must stress that this is space that is depleting resources from LAUSD students and these fees are repayment to what they lost.

The over-projection of enrollment should be highly discouraged by emphasizing that this will incur an increase in penalty fees. These over projections cause the district schools to lose space for paraprofessional or health-related services, which in turn affect the education and well-being of LAUSD students.

Now more than ever due to the COVID-19 safety protocols, the District needs all the space possible to maintain the safety of LAUSD students. And the over projections of enrollment by charter schools must be discouraged with additional penalty fees if the over projections are 50% or more as the space that is taken away can come at the cost of the health of our schools and students.

Next up: Miguel Angel Segura
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Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He is an elected member of the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and serves as the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.