After exhaustively profiling their novel concept of a tradition-shattering modern-day charter school last night for the shrinkwrapped School Board, the two young energized founders reluctantly stepped back and began a nailbiting 27-day wait.
While the Education Code calls for the Board to make a determination within 60 days, the response time was halved because the Board’s out-of-sync summer meeting schedule would have put the School District out of compliance with the Code.
For their Innovatory School for Professional Youth (ispycharter@gmail.com), educators Jessica Jacobs and Florina Roldov envision not only a virtual campus but an unusually blended 370-member student body braced by an imaginative curricula that would jar the dentures of traditionalists.
The ambitious women will recruit two types of students, professionals – actors, musicians, athletes – and at-risk boys and girls for their charter covering grades 6 through 12.
Based on their presentation before a Board where two members, Laura Chardiet and Nancy Goldberg, were absent, Ms. Roldov and Ms. Jacobs seem to have comprehensively covered the most sensitive protruding points in their unorthodox but smoothly knit venture.
You Decide
They offered an ostensibly sound business plan suffused with support from notable elements of the Culver City business world and from the education community, plus a tested study agenda designed to stimulate teens without an appetite for standard schooling.
Board members Karlo Silbiger, the President, Prof. Patricia Siever and Kathy Paspalis predictably remained poker-faced throughout the video- and power point-punctuated presentation.
“I have no opinion on the charter application yet,” Mr. Silbiger told the newspaper this afternoon.
“I have not had a chance to read the entire application or hear from our attorneys. State law mandates that we approve all applications that meet state requirements, regardless of whether we like them or not.
“I will be following state law, as I have in the past.”
Retiring Supt. Patti Jaffe, down to the final two weeks of her 42-year Culver City career, said this afternoon the Innovatory School for Professional Youth “is a good concept for certain types of students.”
While this is the first time a charter school petition has come before the present School Board – together since December – the Board has been in this delicate, immensely sensitive position a number of times.
As Ms. Jaffe explained the scenario, the District’s standard public school network, underpinned with various branches of programs for slightly out-of- the-mainstream students, would be competing with I-Spy for the same state dollars.
‘We Won’t Be Taking Away’
Ms. Jacobs and Ms. Roldov have emphatically have maintained from early spring that their school would neither be a rival for dollars nor students (and the much-sought-after state funding of $6500 per student, based on Average Daily Attendance).
For the School Board, an intriguing undertone of this taffy pull is whether members should approve an ostensible rival for so-called student affection and state dollars.
The smelliest portion of this unattractive conundrum with offensive breath is that the Innovatory School for Professional Youth needs School Board approval to become certified.
If the Board declines the petition, Ms. Roldov and Ms. Jacobs have the recourse of turning to the LACO, the County Office of Education.
Meanwhile, back in Culver City, this potentially weird playlet has aspects of a divorced spouse being required to return to his former mate to obtain her approbation of the woman he wants for his new wife.
“In some cases,” said Ms. Jaffe, she would concur that the Board’s requisite approval of the I-Spy charter school is a corollary of two rivals residing beneath a common thatched roof.
Here is the innovative charter school-approval dilemma for the School District as characterized by Ms. Jaffe:
“Our District offers many good programs. If the charter is approved, we will lose students. When people take their children out and put them in the charter, we not only will be losing students in our public schools but funding as well.
“Our Special Ed funding goes to them. Our Title I funding goes to them. All sorts of things can happen.
“I don’t know what the Board is going to do. They will have to make a determination. If they decide this is something we really want, we really need, they would make that determination.”
As the superintendent, Ms. Jaffe said she has two principled arguments against the charter:
“One, we will lose students.
“Two, some funding for various programs will go to the charter school.”
The superintendent said she fears losing to the charter “kids from any one of our schools.”
Choices
If the School Board votes against the charter in 27 days, Ms. Jacobs and Ms. Roldov could be given the option of making adjustments and returning at a later date, a well-trod path.
If the Board votes an outright rejection, it must list reasons, and the charter school founders could use those in their appeal to the County Office of Education.
