"our school's math performance makes a compelling case for renewing our charter"The Charter School Industry spent millions of dollars trying to get Los Angeles voters to give them a school board that would refuse to hold their publicly funded private schools accountable for the public money they receive. Fortunately for students, the election results were not as charter schools had hoped. Instead of seating more clones of Nick Melvoin, the Board now has a majority of members who campaigned by supporting public schools.
- KIPP Sol, whose students scored 90.8 points below the state's standard
Although they have a mandate to finally clamp down on the rampant mismanagement, corruption, and academic failure throughout the Charter School Industry, the current board has taken a more conservative approach, renewing the vast majority of schools that have submitted renewals of their charters. The four rejected at the Board's meeting in January stand out as notable exceptions to a renewal process that continues to favor allowing these schools to continue operating, even with questionable results.
Of the four charter schools whose renewals were rejected, only Ivy Bound Academy has started winding down its operations, with its governing board considering a "Closure Resolution" at its meeting on February 20th. The other three, KIPP Sol, Los Angeles Leadership Academy (LALA), and Crete Academy, have ignored the overwhelming evidence supporting their closures and appealed the LAUSD's charter denial to the County. These appeals will be considered by the Los Angeles Office of Education (LACOE) through its unelected Board.
Los Angeles Leadership Academy (LALA)- An initial Public Hearing was held on March 4, 2025.
- The LACOE Board will vote to approve or deny the appeal on April 15, 2025.
When the LAUSD last renewed LALA in 2016, it did so with a series of benchmarks meant to ensure the failing charter school would improve its performance. Nine years later, it is clear that enforcement of these conditions was nonexistent as the charter school continued to fail its students. For one of the benchmarks, it "did not meet the benchmark in any of the years in which data was available."
The results for English Learners were particularly dire, with only 22.1% of students with this classification making progress. This represented a 49.4% decline from the previous year.
Six of the seven LAUSD Board Members voted to deny this school's renewal petition. The only holdout was the Charter School Industry's shill, Nick Melvoin.
- An initial Public Hearing was held on February 11, 2025.
- The LACOE Board will vote to approve or deny the appeal on April 1, 2025.
The KIPP chain of charter schools has a concerning record in Los Angeles, where they have tried to build a school facility on a toxic waste site and failed to pay $28,111 of fees incurred after one of its schools demanded more space from LAUSD students than the law entitled it to receive. The LAUSD Board still renewed three of the four charters the chain submitted for renewal. Sol Academy was the only exception.
The management of Sol has been a disaster, with four different "school leaders" over the past six years. "During the 2022-2023 school year, every member of Sol's leadership team was new to their role, and more than 50% of classroom positions were either vacant or held by teachers in their first year of teaching." Predictably, this resulted in lower academic performance:
Last year, the school's students experienced further declines in performance:
The vote by the LAUSD Board to close this school was the closest of the four denials with all three Board Members elected with the financial support of the Charter School Industry voting to keep it open. If LACOE upholds the denial of the charter, Sol will join the three KIPP schools that the chain voluntarily closed last year due to low enrollment.
Crete Academy- An initial Public Hearing was held on March 18, 2025.
- The LACOE Board will vote to approve or deny the appeal on May 13, 2025.
This charter school prides itself on focusing on the needs of homeless students but cannot accurately say how many of its students lack housing. At the LAUSD hearing, co-founder Brett Mitchell Jr. claimed that a third of its students were unhoused in front of a slide prepared by the school that said "15% of Crete students are experiencing homelessness." The renewal petition claimed the correct number was 15.2%. The School Accountability Report Card (SARC) shows the school said 21.1% of its students were homeless.
When confronted by these discrepancies in data reported by the school, Mitchell refused to explain why they were all different. Instead, he was affronted by the idea that his remarks would be questioned.
The SARC report on file also shows that the school does not employ either a psychologist or a Social Worker. This seems unusual for a school catering to a student body that would be more likely to have experienced trauma due to their housing insecurity. It would also explain why nobody warned Dr. Hattie Mitchell, the school's other co-founder, that bragging about not contacting the Department of Children and Family Services after encountering a mother who was "clearly unable to care for [her] kids" likely exposed her for not following mandatory reporting laws.
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