KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON Nov 18, 2014 @ 12:01 p.m.
Einstein Academy officials are set to re-apply for a charter school approval from the Acton Agua Dulce Unified School District in December, according to AADUSD officials.
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The district plans to reconsider the charter school petition at a public hearing on Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m.
The school district already approved a charter for the Albert Einstein Academy for the Letters, Arts and Sciences once in May 2013 with a 3-2 vote.
Einstein Academy officials are set to re-apply for a charter school approval from the Acton Agua Dulce Unified School District in December, according to AADUSD officials.
That decision was set aside in October, after Newhall School District officials sued the district and the charter school over the approval.
Related: Judge Asks Einstein Academy To Seek New Approval For Charter
A Newhall School District attorney said AADUSD is “invalidating the process by which the local community participates in the decision of whether there should be a charter school in that community.”
The judge also told AADUSD that any financial gains to the district can not be considered as a factor in considering the charter school’s application.
AADUSD Superintendent Brent Woodard said the charter review process, which was commended by the judge in that same lawsuit, would be similar a second time around.
“It’s going to be like a new petition and we’re going to treat it as such,” said Woodard. “If it meets the elements and conditions of the law, then we’ll discuss that.”
The district is having the December hearing to gather public input and listen to any possible concerns, Woodard said, although he said district officials have visited and praised the Einstein Academy site.
“We’ve taken a look at their operations from A to Z — I can’t say that any organization is perfect, but (none of the concerns) is of a critical nature,” he said.
Einstein Academy is currently being audited by FCMAT, an independent team of financial and management experts, which was called for by Los Angeles County Superintendent Arturo Delgado.
Related: Auditors Continue Probe Of Einstein Academy Charter School Finances
The letter that prompted the audit included allegations of fraud, Woodard said, which seem unfounded based on his communications with FCMAT.
“That was my primary concern was, ‘How is that audit going to come out?’” he said, “just to make sure our fiduciary commitments were being met.”
There were issues, but they weren’t of a “critical, red flag” nature, he said.
“I think (the concern) was around internal controls, making sure there was no fraud,” he said.
FCMAT also audited the Acton Agua Dulce Unified School District, and the Los Angeles County Office of Education put several previous charter school approvals made by AADUSD on hold.
Related: County Education Office Questions Acton Agua Dulce Financial Plan
Those restrictions, and the accompanying county oversight, ended in October, after the governing board passed a certified budget, Woodard said. The charter school approvals the district made, which had previously been stayed, were released from their holds.
“I obviously am looking forward to the hearing and seeing what other people have in terms of input,” Woodard said, adding that he’s anticipating a big turnout at the meeting. “It’s the board’s task to decipher between hyperbole and fact, as well as fiction — I wish we would have had that amount of support and input ahead of time (before the last approval).”
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Interesting spin by the AADUSD superintendent who has a personal fiscal interest in the outcome of these “re-do hearings”. I attended the court hearing the superintendent speaks of. In addition to not seeing him in attendance to hear what the judge had to say first-hand, I heard no blessings coming from the judge on AADUSD charter processes. What I heard was that certain interests, including the school boards and the public from districts where AADUSD is popping up charter schools, were excluded from participation in the approval process and that the AADUSD board issued no findings for the approval. Once these hearings have been redone properly (i.e. findings for educational merit of charter/proven need for sponsorship outside of district boundaries), issues of good faith will come into play.
As it stands now, I think that anyone with any amount of any common sense would be wondering why funds intended to educate students are being spent on attorneys and staff time to re-do these hearings if all were well in the first place.
I was a strong supporter of the AADUSD sponsorship of AEA as an educational alternative to AADUSD. I assumed at the time that what was being done was legal. The sheer volume of legal expenses since, not to mention what will be spent in the future, says differently.
I am assuming that the Santa Clarita Valley school district attorneys will be at the December 4th AADUSD school board meeting to ask the most obvious questions:
Will the loss of income coming in currently from out of boundary charters put AADUSD into receivership? If the answer is no, have the AADUSD CFO to daylight the budget and show the crowd how AADUSD will operate on the plus side without using Einstein as a crutch.
If the claim that AADUSD brought in Einstein to improve it educational offerings is true, why has the Einstein path for Acton/Agua Dulce kids been cut off so that each of them is guaranteed a path into a local Einstein middle school? I say it’s to protect the enrollment and funding at AADUSD’s own High Desert Middle School. If that is not the reason that stand up at the hearing and tell us what the reason is.
Why did AADUSD raid the building maintenance fund to balance its 2014/2015 budget after it was rejected by LACOE the first time around and then claim that the Acton School site is in such disrepair that it is unfit to house a charter school which seems to justify AADUSD’s placement of charters outside of district boundaries? Who is using Acton School now? If it’s not fit to use, why is the building maintenance fund being raided? If it’s full of other students, open the building for a public tour.
Realistically, how objective can we expect the AADUSD school board, and the superintendent, to be knowing that the fiscal survival of AADUSD is, self admittedly, dependent upon an expanding network of out of district charter schools. Given the content of recent LACOE and FCMAT (see links to documents below), if the AADUSD board does not approve the charters in the re-dos of these hearings, the loss of income AADUSD currently receives from its charters will put the district into receivership. This in turn would lead to the mandated release of the superintendent and board and intervention of regulatory agencies.
Knowing that a $17,000 a month salary and benefit package and names on a bronze plaque at a new high school are at play, it doesn’t surprise me that the AADUSD superintendent is getting out ahead of the re-do hearing and telling us all what to think.
Anyone have a stopwatch? I bet I can read this aloud in three minutes or less. See you at the AADUSD board meeting on December 4, 2014 at 7:30 PM.
Here’s those links to the LACOE and FCMAT documents regarding AADUSD:
FCMAT AADUSD report http://fcmat.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/09/LACOE-Acton-Agua-Dulce-final-report-9-10-14.pdf
October 8, 2014 LACOE budget letter to AADUSD https://www.dropbox.com/s/2om58mpobrdqtwi/AADUSD%20LACOE%20budget%208%20Oct%202014.pdf?dl=0
October 9, 2014 Newhall v AADUSD orally modified court document: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mfjztuoead9094j/Tentative%20Decision%20Newhall%20v%20AADUSD.pdf?dl=0