Board of Education Opposes Bill That Takes Aim at Charter Schools

By Jack Bradley

The Orange County Board of Education passed a resolution June 2 to oppose a bill that it claims would harm charter schools.

Introduced by California Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell (D-Long Beach), AB 1316 will move through the State Assembly in June.

The bill would cut funding by 30 percent for non-classroom-based charter schools, Orange County Board of Education president Ken Williams said in a statement. It would also prohibit charters from receiving funding for students who transferred from outside their home county or school district, he said. Charter school operators would also be hit with higher operator and administrative fees, he said . . .

Lance Izumi, a senior director at the Pacific Research Institute, said the bill would potentially be a “deathblow” to virtual charter schools’ funding since it will not allow out-of-county students to attend them.

“What you’re going to see is a lot of kids who access these schools, especially from rural areas, are going to end up being disenrolled,” Izumi told The Epoch Times.

Izumi said he believes the bill resulted from parents’ “dissatisfaction” with the public school system.

“Because of the poor performance of the regular public schools with distance learning, a lot of parents are looking at these non-classroom-based charter schools, which do specialize in remote learning,” he said. “I think that [the CTA is] worried about kids leaving the system, and they want them back.”