A bill aimed at making charter schools more accountable is one of more than a dozen CTA-backed bills sent to the governor in the waning days of the legislative session.
AB 1994 by Assembly Member Sarah Reyes (D-Fresno) would require the state's charter schools to comply with significant fiscal and academic reforms.
Charter schools would have to:
- Submit an annual statement of receipts and expenditures to school districts, county offices of education and the superintendent of public instruction for review.
- Count each of multiple sites separately toward the statewide cap on the number of charters if the sites do not share a common program. All sites would have to be approved by the chartering entity as amendments to the charter and be registered with the local district, the county office of education and the superintendent of public instruction.
- Describe programs and facilities.
- Designate how they plan to inform parents about the relationship between their educational program and the requirements of other high schools and higher education entities.
The bill would bar charter schools from becoming statewide or countywide entities unless they can demonstrate that the needs of students could not be met by a series of local charter schools.
The bill would require county offices of education to investigate any complaints of questionable practices at local charter schools.
All future charter schools would have to submit their charters to the school district within which they intend to operate. The bill would give currently chartered schools until their renewal date or the year 2005 to secure the authorization of a school district in the county in which they are located.
Districts would be barred from authorizing a charter school serving students at a grade level the district does not ordinarily offer.