Troubled Charter School Gets Conditional Extension

The Antelope Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve a five-year conditional renewal of the charter for Desert Sands Charter School, officials said Thursday.

Supt. Robert Girolamo initially recommended that the board refuse to renew the year-old school’s charter amid concerns that Desert Sands misused state education funds on lawsuits, hired inexperienced employees and received state funding it didn’t deserve by overstating its enrollment.

At a Tuesday meeting between Girolamo and Desert Sands administrators, the required conditions for a charter renewal were laid out, said Desert Sands Chairman Jeff Brown.

Those conditions, which, according to district documents, were adopted by the board on Wednesday, included an agreement to decide by July 3 how annual audits would be handled. And by June 30, several decisions must be made, including how the school would obtain instructional materials and how employee background checks would be conducted.

Michael Finley, an attorney for the nontraditional school that has campuses in Lancaster and Palmdale, said he was pleased the charter was approved and is confident the school can meet the conditions.

“Our office and clients put a lot of time, resources and efforts into making sure that the school is providing the best service to its students,” Finley said.

Christopher Keeler, a school district attorney, said Desert Sands representatives “gave us a lot of information about many reforms that they had put in place or were putting in place that resolved many of the district’s concerns about the operation of the charter school.”