County School Board Punts

“Why is accountability too much to ask of charter schools?”

– Steven Singer, Gadfly On The Wall

Under AB 1505, the decision to uphold the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) vote to close down the Crete Academy Charter School should have been easy. Unfortunately, the unelected Board of the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) has a history of overlooking charter school failures. I, therefore, took the opportunity to remind them of their responsibilities to students and taxpayers before they considered the appeal of the Crete Academy Charter School on Tuesday, May 13, 2025:

As the Los Angeles County Board of Education considers an appeal from Crete Academy, I urge you to uphold LAUSD’s decision to deny its renewal. It is in the best interests of students and public accountability.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has long adopted a permissive stance toward charter schools, having authorized more than 200 - more than any other district nationwide. Since the vast majority of these charters are renewed, only a school with severe operational deficiencies will be slated for shutdown by the District. As one of the worst-performing schools in California, the case was especially strong against the renewal of Crete Academy:

• On the California Dashboard, the school is in the red (very low) for English Language Arts and Mathematics, scoring over 100 points below standard in both. These scores declined from the previous year:

• The data shows resident schools outperform Crete for the California Dashboard Academic Indicators:

• In seven years of oversight visit reports, Crete Academy never received a rating higher than 2 (Developing) in Student Achievement and Educational Performance.

• The District expressed concern with the school’s ongoing operations and ability to solve persistent problems as it had been issued 14 Notices of concern and Notices to cure since 2018:

In preparing for Tuesday’s meeting, your staff also reviewed this charter school’s performance and found that the LAUSD’s decision to deny renewal should be upheld. Like the District’s staff, your Superintendent found that Crete’s “Action Plan does not adequately address declines in student achievement and does not identify meaningful steps to address underlying causes of low performance.” This is not surprising given that “the school lacks capacity to collect, organize, and interpret verifiable data to help student groups at all grade levels.”

The issue with data was on display as the school’s co-founder, Brett Mitchell, spoke before you in March. At that time he claimed that 30% of the students in his school were unhoused, but in his letter to you, he said it was 35%. The renewal petition claims the number is 15.2% but the SARC report submitted by the school says it is 21%. If the school prides itself on serving this population, shouldn’t it be able to determine this number with accuracy?

History has shown that LACOE is willing to ignore the findings of the LAUSD and its own staff to renew charter schools that are failing. The most embarrassing example is the North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) which showed how unprepared your staff is to provide oversight to a school with operational deficiencies. You have already taken on responsibility of overseeing KIPP Sol and the Los Angeles Leadership Academy, what bandwidth would your staff have to take on Crete?

Given Crete Academy’s consistent underperformance, lack of demonstrated capacity for improvement, and discrepancies in its reporting, renewing its charter would undermine public trust and, more importantly, fail the students it is meant to serve. Both LAUSD and your own staff have concluded that the school lacks the ability to address its persistent academic and operational challenges. I respectfully urge the Board to uphold the denial of Crete Academy’s renewal.

Before debating the appeal, the LACOE Board was reminded that the law states that a charter school deemed "low performing" can only be renewed if the data showed that it was making progress; an indicator Crete did not meet. Board member Yvonne Chan stated her opposition to the law she is sworn to uphold and led the majority in voting to reject their own staff's recommendation to deny Crete's appeal. She was joined by Andrea Foggy-Paxton, Stanley Johnson, and James Cross, who had the audacity to lie about the record, claiming that if they closed Crete, its students would be forced to go to a "crummy" LAUSD school. The data presented by LACOE staff specifically showed that Crete was outperformed by 12 of the 13 resident schools in the area.

Unfortunately, that was not the only time the law would be ignored during the meeting. With the Superintendent’s recommendation rejected, the Board had to pass a resolution about what should be done about the school. After failing to achieve consensus regarding the resolution wording, they voted to go into closed session, denying the public the ability to witness the rest of the debate. This lack of transparency violated California's open meeting laws.

The Board returned from its private session with a fully formed resolution that was voted on without further discussion or the opportunity for the public to provide comment. The decision reached behind closed doors was to rule that the changes Crete had made to their Action Plan were so significant that the application to renew the charter was not the same as the one the LAUSD had voted on. It was, therefore, unanimously decided to send the application back to the LAUSD who will now have to spend more public dollars evaluating a school that the law clearly states should be closed.

Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, and serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. 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.