Capistrano District May Secede From State Control

All those rules. The state Education Code dictates everything from how often football uniforms should be sterilized (at least once a year) to whether schools may use armored vehicles to transport money to banks (yes, they may).

Those reams of clunky state regulations--spelled out in the 11-volume, 8,731-page Education Code--stick in the craw of Capistrano Supt. James A. Fleming. So he has been quietly floating a plan for his school system to secede from the state bureaucracy by becoming California’s first charter district. By slashing prescriptive rules, Fleming hopes to see improved student performance and more innovative schooling.

At a board meeting Monday, Capistrano school trustees may decide to study the concept of converting each of the district’s 41 campuses to charter schools, thus freeing them from many onerous rules. Permission to convert all of a system’s schools was granted to large school districts Jan. 1 under a revision of the state’s charter school law.

The superintendent, however, wants to take it a step further, advocating a legal interpretation allowing the whole district--rather than its individual campuses--to sever itself from the state bureaucracy.

Fleming considers the creation of a charter district the ultimate in local control, freeing principals from paperwork and allowing elected trustees greater control over finances.

“The continuing and increasing flow of paperwork demands is literally killing us out in the field,” Fleming said. “While we’re required to jump through all these hoops, I’ve been observing the charter school movement and thinking, ‘If it’s good for the goose, why couldn’t it be good for the gander as well?’ ”

If trustees and teachers agree, and financial issues balance out, Capistrano is in line to become the first California school district to split completely from the state Education Department. It could also become the test case of the fledgling charter district movement--a bellwether suggesting how the state will react to large-scale defections and what provisions such districts will have to meet.

About 10 other school districts from across the state are watching with interest, according to the California School Boards Assn.

So far, two of California’s 1,000 school systems have converted all their schools to charters, although their headquarters still must follow state dictates. Both are in the Central Valley, and neither has more than 2,000 students. A one-school district in the Central Valley is in the pipeline to convert to charter status as well.

The fast-growing Capistrano school system, by contrast, educates 42,000 students, making it one of the state’s dozen largest districts.

In exchange for pledges of higher student achievement, charter schools are freed from most state regulations, and they gain greater control over finances and curriculum. California’s original charter school law, which took effect in 1993, allowed districts to convert all schools to charters, so long as no more than 10 schools partook.

The recent revisions changed all that, but left some details muddy.

Now, districts looking to convert to all-charter status must receive approval from both Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin and the State Board of Education. To win approval, districts must clearly delineate standards of achievement for students, be in sound financial health, gain consent from at least half the faculty members and write a provision allowing students and staff to transfer if they don’t choose to be part of the charter system.

Still unclear are several crucial matters: Would Capistrano get a funding boost by converting all its schools to charter schools? Could it still be eligible for state bond money for constructing new schools? Could the revised law really be interpreted to release whole districts from regulations or merely liberate the schools within a district, leaving administrators at headquarters still swamped with paperwork?

Those concerns could be deal-breakers for Capistrano, a district that will need state building money to keep pace with rampant enrollment growth, Fleming said.