Senator Bill Dodd, D-Napa, bills himself a moderate with pragmatic priorities. So, it’s puzzling that he’d introduce Senate Bill 1380. SB 1380 would authorize school district boards to deny charter school applications if it had closed a school within the past five years. It would also gut county education boards’ authority to overrule the local board’s denial.
Elected school board members are politicians. They can be beholden to political donors, and sometimes donors’ priorities don’t align with families’ need for better public school options. Taking away oversight over school boards’ decision-making would grant them excessive power.
Dodd’s rationale is the misguided notion that when parents enroll their child in a public charter school, they drain school districts of funding. But charter schools are public schools: free and open to all. They are part of California’s public school system; they simply operate independently of district bureaucracies.
