Photo by Tiffany Szerpicki

Photo by Tiffany Szerpicki

UPDATE:  The State Board of Education unanimously voted to approve the charter petition of Rocketship Teaching, overruling the recommendation fabricated by the California Department of Education to deny the petition entreatment.

A battle over whether a nationally acclaimed charter school organization will be allowed to open a schoolhouse this fall in San Francisco volition come to a head today, months subsequently the San Francisco school board voted decisively to deny the schoolhouse a charter last fall.

The State Board of Pedagogy is expected to vote today on the petition submitted by Rocketship Educational activity to open a lease uncomplicated school in San Francisco's Bayview Hunters Point, a low-income, various neighborhood with a heavy concentration of African American residents.

Rocketship Education, which currently operates five charter schools in San Jose, has been hailed for its hybrid model of instruction which integrates regular teaching with using computers to allows teachers to give students more individual attention.

Merely last August its petition to open the school was decisively rejected on a 6-0 vote by the San Francisco board. By law, Rocketship is permitted to appeal that decision to the State Board of Education. The state board will hear that appeal at its meeting in Sacramento today.

The California Section of Education is recommending to the state board that information technology decline the petition, but for unlike reasons than those cited by San Francisco. Further complicating the picture is that the state's Advisory Commission on Charter Schools, which is appointed by the state lath, is recommending that the board approve the lease petition.

Rocketship officials were reluctant to criticize the department, only expressed optimism that their charter petition will be canonical. "We are eager to partner with the state and the school commune on this very important work," said Evan Kohn, Rocketships' senior policy managing director. He said Rocketship schools have achieved results similar to schools serving far more than affluent pupil populations.

Just concluding month, Rocketship got a far more than enthusiastic reception than it got in San Francisco from the Santa Clara Canton Board of Education. The board voted to approve Rocketship'due south petition for twenty additional charter schools in eight different school districts in the county. That is in addition to the v San Joe schools it already operates or has received charters for.

"Rocketship has shown what works," San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed told the lath before it made its determination. "Let'due south accept it, let'southward replicate it."

In one case all Rocketship's Santa Clara County schools are established by 2016, it volition have enrolled some 15,000 students.

Amongst the reasons cited by the San Francisco schoolhouse board in its 31-page deprival were the following:

  • Rocketship presented an "unsound educational program" for its students.
  • It failed to "provide a clear and comprehensive description of the proposed English/language arts and social science core curriculum."
  • It had a "major misconception as to what mathematical conceptual agreement is."
  • It failed to have "reasonable comprehensive description" virtually health and safety procedures, student discipline and school closures.

Kohn politely took issue with those conclusions. "We have an admittedly sound teaching plan," he said.

In its recommendation to the State Board of Education for deprival of Rocketship's petition, the California Department of Pedagogy focused on what appear to be relatively minor issues compared to the multiple harsh criticisms in San Francisco's deprival.

The department's concerns focused on whether Rocketship could cover "debts or liabilities" in the event its San Francisco school had to close. It also said that Rocketship had failed to explicate how grant funds would be spent on individual schools, how debt service payments would exist made, or what kinds of services will exist provided for the fifteen percent direction fee described in its petition.

"Nosotros do believe that these are minor findings which we will be happy to address," Kohn said. "These are not-problems."

Kohn said there is an urgent need for the services Rocketship is proposing to provide. "Nosotros are eager to partner with the land with this very important work," he said. "There is an opportunity for the state to close the achievement gap in places like Bayview Hunters Bespeak."

Just an additional complicating factor is that while the state lath has the potency to result a charter, it is already burdened with having to oversee 32 other state-authorized charter schools because of limited oversight capacity. This represents a far larger role than that envisioned past the state'southward original 1992 Lease School Human activity, which predictable that local school districts would be the main issuer of charters. That is yet the case, but as a result of denials for charters at a local level, the state board has concluded upwardly granting charters to a growing number of schools.

The Little Hoover Commission has recommended a separate state charter authorizing and oversight commission. Simply Sacramento insiders say that such a commission is unlikely to be constituted, and then the state lath will remain the body of last resort for organizations similar Rocketship whose petitions for a charter were turned down at a district and county level.

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