Legacy may impede new charter official

You’d be hard-pressed to find a person more qualified to assist charter schools than the new director of the charter division for the Los Angeles Unified School District. In recent years, Jose J. Cole-Gutierrez has personally helped dozens of these schools find loans and locations, and aided in myriad other ways, while also lobbying on their behalf before state and local officials.

But that has created thorny conflicts of interest that limit -- at least for a year -- what he could be allowed to do. On the advice of the district’s ethics officer, Cole-Gutierrez could have to abstain from dealing in any way with at least 10 charter schools. Case in point: As general manager for the California Charter Schools Assn., Cole-Gutierrez aided a local charter school now being investigated by the school system’s inspector general.

He also has preemptively recused himself from negotiations over a contentious lawsuit between his former and his current employer. This litigation pertains to the district’s policy on providing classroom space to charter schools. About a dozen charters operate in district-owned property, but most of the rest are pressuring the district to help out more.

Charters are public schools that function under their own board, independent of many rules that govern traditional campuses. L.A. Unified has 128 charter schools, more than any school system in the country. With more than 47,000 students -- close to 7% of the district total -- these schools have become a major thrust of local reform.

This year alone, 26 charter schools opened and 38 others are up for renewal prior to June 30. To oversee this burgeoning reform landscape, L.A. Unified has allocated 27 employees and a budget of nearly $4 million. Overseeing it all, as of this month, is Cole-Gutierrez.

The trade-off with conflicts is worth it, according to his supporters, who characterize his skills as sorely needed and his integrity as beyond dispute.

“Jose’s strengths will allow L.A. Unified to partner with charter schools in ways the district wishes to and should,” said Brian Bauer, executive director of Granada Hills Charter High School. “He’s a collaborator and a sharp person who really looks at issues objectively -- removing personality without striking the humanity from the conversation.”

Among some senior district officials, however, there are misgivings.

“He’s been so identified with one part of the movement, as an advocate,” said one senior administrator, who like other critics, requested anonymity for fear of repercussions. “The operators of charter schools are going to make it difficult for him to be anything other than an all-out advocate. He’s going to feel a lot of pressure from folks he’s been working with a long time.”

The district’s ethics officer, Yea-Lan Chiang, wrote a memo to the school board identifying Ivy Academia in Woodland Hills as among 11 charters Cole-Gutierrez “lobbied LAUSD on.” Cole-Gutierrez is also listed as having helped develop seven other charter schools from scratch.

The school district’s inspector general is investigating whether Ivy Academia, a 4-year-old school with high test scores, improperly commingled for-profit and nonprofit activities.

A high-level district source said Cole-Gutierrez was among Ivy’s advocates. Besides the alleged wrongdoing, the Ivy Academia case is also a test for a crucial question: What is the obligation of charter schools to reveal detailed budgets and other documents?

In correspondence and statements, Ivy Academia’s founders have denied any wrongdoing, while asserting that they have cooperated with investigators and complied with all disclosure requirements.

“In this case,” said the district source, “Jose might have to recuse himself indefinitely.”

Cole-Gutierrez, who will make $137,496 a year, declined to discuss which charters he worked with or what he did for them. He said he’s actively cooperating with the ethics office to stay within appropriate bounds.

Overall, he said, it’s invaluable to have worked intently with so many schools. “I know their mission and passion,” he said. “And knowing that story is tremendously helpful as I do this work.”

When Cole-Gutierrez “has to make decisions we don’t like,” said Caprice Young, head of the charter schools association, “we will trust that he’s doing the best for all the students.”

He will lead a division with a sometimes conflicting mission -- that of policing charter schools while helping them succeed. Young asserts that L.A. Unified has misfired on both prerogatives.

“The bureaucracy has focused on the creation of new regulations as opposed to ensuring that charter schools are fiscally sound and academically successful,” Young said. The petitions required to start a charter, she added, “have gone from 75 pages to nearly 500.”

More of the new district schools under construction, she said, should be given to proven charter organizations rather than falling under the same bureaucracy that has failed to turn around existing traditional schools: “If you have the choice between replicating lousy schools and providing space so that good schools can thrive and expand -- that’s a no-brainer.”

But here Cole-Gutierrez could be limited initially. That’s because he took part in discussions that ultimately led to the filing of litigation against L.A. Unified over access to school sites. Once he began discussions about switching jobs, he removed himself from involvement in the litigation, both sides say.

Still, “it may be necessary for him to be disqualified on those legal matters,” the ethics officer wrote in her memo.

The previous director, Gregory McNair, will step in to handle matters involving a conflict. McNair, an attorney, left the post at his own request to return to work in the general counsel’s office. McNair has critics in the charter school community, but colleagues in the district describe him as smart and fair, and they credit him with building the division as much as limited resources would allow.

Among Cole-Gutierrez’s attributes is a personal success story. The 33-year-old Fresno native was born to uneducated parents: a father who was a Mexican immigrant and a mother who was a Texas migrant farmworker. Until he was 13, they woke him at 4 a.m. during the summer to pick grapes with them. They would ask him: “Do you want to do this for the rest of your life or do you want to get an education?”

He also remembers a second-grade teacher who interpreted his hyperactivity as intelligence, insisting that he take a bus across town to enter a program for gifted students.

He eventually graduated from Stanford with honors, following it up with a master’s in education from Harvard. His introduction to charter schools was at the Puente Learning Center, where he helped manage a charter school while also overseeing additional programs for kindergartners as well as adults.

At L.A. Unified, “my hope is to bridge the gap of assumptions and misunderstandings,” Cole-Gutierrez said. “And I’m committed to leading with ethics and following the law.”

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howard.blume@latimes.com