For-Profit Charter Schools Proposed

A private company proposes to create for-profit charter schools in eight Orange County school districts and 27 others across California.

The move has startled school officials throughout the county, which has two publicly financed, independently run charter schools. Neither of them is a profit generator.

John Hall and his wife, Joan, said their schools would be nonprofit institutions. But the administration, management and curriculum development of the schools, known as Opportunities for Learning, would be contracted out to a for-profit company run by the Halls.

“So, in effect, there will be a profit-making company running these schools,” said Tony Polk, spokesman for the La Canada Flintridge couple.

State officials said the practice is legal, but local school administrators questioned it.

“It just makes me suspicious,” said Bill Manahan, assistant superintendent at the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, where the Halls applied for a charter to open a school for dropouts. “It implies that there isn’t a nonprofit out there that can do it.”

“If there is a profit made, the profit should be folded back into the system to help children,” said Supt. James A. Fleming of the Capistrano Unified School District, where the Halls also seek to open a school.

Opportunities for Learning has so rattled educators statewide that they are gathering Thursday in Sacramento to discuss for-profit charter school proposals. Representatives from the California School Board Assn. and the Assn. of California School Administrators will participate.

Charter schools operate free from most state and local regulations but are funded by the local school districts in which they are located. They usually are managed by committees of parents, teachers and school administrators.

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Supporters say charter schools are a competitive alternative to regular public schools that will improve the entire system. Opponents argue that the schools sap financial resources from other public schools with little accountability for increasing student performance.

What sparked the surge in charter school applications in Orange County and elsewhere are changes to the state law that took effect Jan. 1, making it easier to apply for charter status and harder for local school boards to deny the applications.

The new law increases the number of charter schools allowed in California from 100 to 250. It also gives local school boards the power to approve or reject charter school applications, though the boards may do so based only on the educational merits of the proposals.

The Halls, who have met resistance at several Orange County school boards this month, said they are not surprised by the controversy. “We’ve poked the beehive,” John Hall said.

“It’s a new thing, and the idea that other people can create choices is very difficult for them,” he said. “They’ve been without anyone really competing with them for the affections of parents.”

He blanketed Orange County with charter school proposals because there are only two charters here and it is near the company offices in La Canada, he said. He has filed petitions with the Anaheim Union High School District, the Garden Grove Unified School District, the Huntington Beach Union High School District, the Irvine Unified School District, the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District and the Santa Ana Unified School District, in addition to the Saddleback Valley and Capistrano unified school districts. School boards are expected to rule on the proposals in February.

In each case, the Halls are proposing a minimalist school that they describe as a “dropout recovery program” where high school students work independently, attending no classes and sometimes completing four hours of homework a day. They meet one-on-one with a teacher two or three times a week in a storefront office. The students could be dropouts, transfers from continuation or alternative schools, or those who have performed poorly in the classroom.

Many school districts already operate similar programs, but that is not considered a reason to deny a charter school proposal, according to the new law.

Some school administrators said they are concerned about the educational value of the Halls’ program.

“The thing about independent-study programs--if not carefully managed, they can be a loosey-goosey kind of arrangement,” Fleming said.

Orange County’s two charter schools are Santiago Middle School in Orange and the Community Home Education Program, run for home schoolers by the county Department of Education.

The Halls, both former teachers, already run nonprofit charter schools, using the same independent-study theme, under the name Options for Youth, in Burbank, Long Beach, Mount Shasta, San Gabriel, Upland and Victor Valley. They operate one for-profit school, under the name Opportunities for Learning, in St. Paul, Minn.

Besides the obvious financial benefits for the Halls, running a for-profit school would allow them to offer performance bonuses and profit-sharing for teachers, John Hall said.

About 10% of the nation’s 1,128 charter schools generate a profit, said Dave Deschryver, a policy analyst with the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D.C.

“You can probably expect more for-profit entities to give it a try,” said David Patterson, the director of governmental relations with the California Network of Educational Charters. He said for-profit charter groups have shied away from California because of its low per-pupil spending, favoring Massachusetts and Texas, among other states.

Deschryver said that local school districts should concentrate their evaluation of any charter proposal on its educational merits, rather than condemning it solely because it aims to make a profit.

“There’s a lot of rhetoric against it, but it really comes down to the services they offer,” Deschryver said.

But state officials expressed a cautious view. “I think local school board members should question it,” said Colin Miller, an education program consultant with the California Department of Education. “These petitions are approved at the local level, and a school board’s attorney should be looking at them.”