Is Moreno Valley Looking for Ways to Prevent a Charter School?

While it's tough to make a call based on one article, there are some interesting reasons that Moreno Valley School District decided not to accept the charter application from an interesting school.

Gabrielinos Charter Academy of Arts and Sciences applied as a school focused on performing arts and sciences. The school anticipated an initial enrollment of 300 students.

The District gave some reasonable cause for rejecting the application--inadequate budget and educational plan. However, some of the other reasons were not so sensible--the school would take students from the district and they didn't know what to do with extra teachers.

This shows a number of continuing problems with having school districts approving charter applications. The very reason for charters is innovation and parent/student choice for a different or better education. The school district has a vested interest in not allowing competition. The district can easily say that the school doesn't have an adequate educational plan because the district uses its own standard for deciding that (although some times districts apply state standards, which is appropriate).

A bigger issue is that the bureaucracy of a list of check boxes that may or may not have anything to do with student outcomes is applied to applications rather than an approach that favors innovation, we use a process that is structurally opposed to innovation. Moreno Valley may be biased against charters schools or its system may be biased against innovation and change. Either way, it's not the way things are supposed to be.