School 94501/94502

At its meeting Tuesday evening (April 22), the Alameda County Board of Education voted 6-0 (with Dennis Chaconas absent) to deny the charter school application of the proposed new NCLC charter school in Alameda.

As you may recall, after the AUSD school board voted 5-0 in January to deny NCLC’s charter school application, ACLC-NCLC appealed to the Alameda County Board of Education. The County Board held a “public hearing” on the charter appeal in March and then made its decision denying the charter at Tuesday’s meeting.

At Tuesday’s meeting, there was some disagreement about (1) how much time (if any) speakers pro and con would be allowed (since there had already been a public hearing on the matter. Ultimately both the “yes on NCLC” and the “no on NCLC” had ten minutes - I was one of the “no” speakers) and (2) NCLC’s attempts to add new information about curriculum, facilities and finances to their application (NCLC contended that it was “supplemental information” rather than “new information”).

The County staff recommended strongly that the Board deny the charter. If you are inclined to read the County’s “Petition Review Executive Report” and “Review Summary,” you can link to them from Mike McMahon’s website here under “April.”

NCLC now has the right to appeal this denial to the state. Based on what happened at the County meeting tonight, I expect that sooner or later the applicants will either appeal to the state or reapply to AUSD for a charter application.

But for now, NCLC does not have a charter to operate a school and it seems it would be quite difficult for NCLC to open a new school in the fall.

(You may also recall that, as The Island reported on April 10, Renaissance Leadership Academy has also appealed to the County to reverse the AUSD school board’s rejection of their charter school application. I do not yet know the timeline for the County’s public hearing and/or action on that item.)