Editorial: L.A. Unified's new restrictions on charter schools go too far

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

61% : Each student brings in considerable state funding, which pays for instruction and a vast array of social and administrative services.
56% : Surely that's unnecessary when only 50 campuses are shared with charter schools right now; most of the district's charter schools have their own, independent campuses.
55% : Of course, traditional schools should not have to squeeze themselves into a corner of campus to accommodate a charter school.
53% : But there are charter schools that also are community schools; will the district give them preference?
51% : On Tuesday, the school board narrowly voted to adopt a new policy restricting where charter schools can share campuses with traditional schools.
48% : They are, for the most part, students who would have been attending traditional L.A. public schools but whose parents chose to enroll them in one of the nearly 250 publicly funded but mostly privately managed schools.
46% : The new policy may well violate the state Education Code that says that public school facilities should be shared fairly among public school students and that charter schools are entitled to rent parts of district schools.
45% : The policy is too vague to know exactly what the ramifications are, but one estimate by an L.A. Unified staffer said some 350 of the district's 850 schools would be off-limits to charter schools.
44% : And, if any further indication is needed that the intent is to shrink the influence of charter schools, the policy discourages allowing a charter on a campus if it could interrupt traditional feeder-school patterns.
42% : It's especially disturbing to hear board members Rocio Rivas and Scott Schmerelson implying that this is just the start of more policies to curb charter schools.
41% : But those concerns must come second to what's best for the public school students of L.A., whether they attend a charter or traditional district school.
40% : But this policy isn't about protecting necessary space; it's about squashing charter schools.
37% : In an era of falling enrollment, the district is in a tough position when it loses students to charter schools.

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