Letter: Charter school would have been redundant

Re: “Charter schools have a place in community,” Leader editorial, July 19. When arguing that the Giligia Charter Academy has standing to serve possibly under served portions of our immigrant community, the Leader fails to see how greatly this ill-prepared institution could have harmed the educational performance of the student population it aims to serve.

The legislative intent of the Charter School Act of 1992, allowing charter schools to be established, was to provide new options to teachers and parents of students whose school districts were failing. The law was to provide teachers and parents a space to innovate and try alternative methods of education.

Is it a fair claim that the district could be doing more to create campus communities that are more supportive of new immigrant populations? Absolutely. But, academically our diversity is helping our academic performance, not hindering it.

Giligia’s 145-page application did not cite new and innovative teaching methods to serve a particular population that the district isn’t already providing or isn’t close to providing. An immersion program in Spanish begins this coming year, and an Armenian program is in the works. This will contribute to the district’s academic offerings.

This application was put forward by parents who sought to branch off from an existing private school and create a school of their own. Creating a new school is a costly endeavor and the concept of public funding was probably this start-up institution’s only option. However, what the applicants failed to see was that their concepts, methods and techniques were not innovative — rather they were almost entirely duplicative.

In assessing this application it wasn’t only the absence of a physical location that should have prevented this school from joining the ranks of the institutions that this community has worked so hard to build.

Steve Ferguson
Burbank