Granada Hills High Pushing for Charter Status
Granada Hills High School, one of the highest-achieving schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, is campaigning to become a charter school, a change that officials say could lead the way for other academically prestigious campuses.
The Los Angeles Board of Education, which has a majority supporting charter schools, is expected to review Granada Hills High's petition later this month. If approved, the 3,800-student school would become independent of the district in September for at least five years, free to pursue its own curriculum and policies while still receiving public funds.
Only two other district high schools -- both magnets with enrollments half the size of Granada Hills -- did better in state standardized tests last year. A Granada Hills conversion would represent major evidence, national charter advocates say, that such top-scoring schools are dissatisfied with constraints from their school districts and that charter status can benefit them, not just academically failing campuses.
"What's happening is an increase in recognition that even high-achieving schools aren't serving everyone as best they can," said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based organization that promotes charters. "Their ability to do well for everyone is hamstrung by district oversight."
According to the center's statistics, Granada Hills would be the largest school in the country to convert to a charter.
But whether the Los Angeles district is willing to let go of such a campus is complicated by other issues, including the effect the conversion would have on crowded conditions at other schools and the fate of 200 mainly minority students now bused from downtown and the East Valley into the suburban, West Valley setting. Granada Hills High has one of the district's largest enrollments of white students in a Los Angeles high school -- 43% -- with 25% Latino, 25% Asian and 6% black.
Charter advocates say they would continue to bus students and maintain the teachers union contract. Also possibly influencing the decision will be the results of national studies on charter schools' effects on student achievement, segregation and resources.
The movement at Granada Hills High began 1 1/2 years ago, spurred by disputes with the district over calendars, discipline and, not surprisingly, money.
