California Watch

Parent advocates fear that the declaration of an emergency last week by the California State Board of Education in 1,000 mostly low-performing public schools will generate confusion among parents – without giving them the tools to enroll in schools with higher test scores, or to improve conditions in their own schools. 

Before it was approved, the Board of Education also provoked the ire of state Senator Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto.  He accused the board of trying to do an end run around a key amendment that he had inserted in the legislation which was signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger in January.  

The emergency declaration will require 1,000 "low performing" schools to inform parents that their children's school has been declared an "open enrollment" school by September 15  – which in theory should allow them to transfer their children to any school in any district with higher test scores in the state. 

But in the face of resistance from a range of sources, the board backed off its attempt to accelerate implementation of the law, and to mandate districts to allow students to transfer to other districts by November 1, and to force receiving districts to accept them by that date. 

Now all that school districts will be required to do is send letters to parents by Sept. 15 notifying them that they have a right to transfer. The "receiving" districts will not be required to admit students from other districts, at least not this year.

"Our concern is that parents will get that letter and will be needlessly alarmed," said Patty Scripter, an education advocate for the California State PTA. "They will be upset and ask, 'Why is my kid in this situation?' and not be able to do anything about it."

As I wrote last week, the emergency declaration states that the health, safety and "general welfare" of children in all 1,000 schools are at risk of "serious harm." 

When confronted by Simitian, the board backed off on what he charged was an attempt to rewrite a requirement in the law that allows "receiving" districts to deny students admission from other districts if they can show that admitting them would have "an adverse financial impact" on their district. 

In an highly unusual move, Sen. Simitian sent  an angry letter to the board – which in a telephone conversation last Friday he told me he personally wrote. 

"During my 10 years in the Legislature, I have never felt compelled to weigh in on a regulatory matter before your board," he wrote in the letter delivered before the meeting. "In this instance however, the proposal before you is so egregious that I simply felt that I must weigh in."

In an even more unusual move, Simitian appeared in person before board members at their meeting last Thursday to lodge his protest. "It was obvious on its face that the regulation was inconsistent and contrary to the plain language of state law," Simitian told me. 

Accompanying Simitian was Susanna Cooper, the chief education advisor to Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento – an indication of how seriously the Democratic leadership in the Legislature viewed the issue. 

Simitian explained that he had the amendment inserted in the law based on concerns from school districts who feared they would be forced to admit students from other districts, at precisely the time that they are being stripped of resources and funds to educate students already on their rolls. 

Theresa Garcia, the executive director for the board, said the board had already moved to axe the offending regulation before Simitian appeared at the meeting. It also abandoned its effort to require other districts to accept students who wish to transfer to them by Nov. 1.

In effect, as education consultant Bob Blattner pointed out to me, the practical purpose of the emergency declaration will be to publicize the list of low-performing schools – a list that will in any case have to be redrawn when the latest test scores are released. 

By approving a confusing, alarming-sounding emergency with little teeth, the board may be setting up parents for an exercise in frustration, the PTA's Scripter said. 

"We continue to be concerned about empty promises," she said.