CSDC Legislative Update: Superintendent Doesn’t Understand Sponsored Bill

This week Vallejo City Unified School District outgoing superintendent William Spalding¹ remarked that there was a lot of “misinformation” about Senate Bill 1380, the far-reaching bill sponsored by Vallejo City and Napa Valley Unified that would stop student access to new and expanding charter schools in fiscally mismanaged school districts.

Superintendent Spalding said the bill “would not impact existing schools.” This inaccurate statement was a dangerous attempt to minimize the potential impact of the bill. In fact, SB 1380 would amend the Charter Schools Act to add broad and vague standards to the criteria school districts use when considering both petitions for new schools, and material revisions of existing schools.

Specifically, school districts with certain markers of fiscal distress could deny new schools and material revisions, regardless of merit or community need under SB 1380. The proposal would also stop certain kinds of countywide benefit charter petitions and reserve time for adjacent school districts and counties to pile-on during public hearings, if approved. Read CSDC’s fact sheet.

The California State Senate Education Committee will vote on SB 1380 next week. Will Superintendent Spalding be there? Will Napa Valley Unified Superintendent, Rosanna Mucetti, also be on hand to defend this charter killer bill? We know the education establishment will be lining up in support.

Make sure to email your state senator now, or better yet, join us in Sacramento, to set the record straight...

¹ This article was updated at 6:15PM PDT to correctly attribute the statement about SB 1380 to the outgoing superintendent of Vallejo City Unified.