Chartered Schools

The Legislature gave overwhelming bipartisan approval Thursday to allowing a major expansion of California's charter school system. Gov. Pete Wilson said he will sign the legislation authorizing the expansion as early as today.

With its computer-filled classrooms, extended school year and fat budget, the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center has become a national symbol for what charter schools can accomplish. Innovative and trend-setting are among the words that visitors, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, have used to describe the Pacoima elementary school, where trees are pruned, classrooms are colorful and parent-volunteers seem to be everywhere.

A bill that would allow a group of acclaimed alternative schools based in East Los Angeles to reopen as a charter program sailed through the state Legislature on Thursday. "We're dancing in the streets," said Brother Modesto Leon, executive director of the Soledad Enrichment Action centers. The 25-year-old program has received high praise for reaching at-risk youths, many of whom are on court-ordered probation or have been kicked out of public school.

A state watchdog agency released a glowing report on charter schools Thursday, saying the experiment to free 100 campuses from government regulations should be expanded to include any school ready to accept responsibility for its actions. Gov. Pete Wilson immediately embraced the Little Hoover Commission report, which landed just as state legislators begin to seriously consider lifting the current 100-school cap on charters.

For at least a decade, educators have wrung their hands over a simple but profound problem that seemed to defy solution: American children attend public school far fewer days than students in countries that are our economic competitors. Now Yvonne Chan, the principal of the Vaughn Street 21st Century Learning Center in Pacoima, has found a way around the limits of state funding.

* Principal Mary Ann Owsley, Santiago Middle School, Orange \o7 When classes begin Sept. 5 at Santiago Middle School in Orange, it will operate under the first charter in Orange County. Under state law, charter schools may vary from the education code and take a flexible approach to staffing and teacher credentials. At Santiago, the 948 students will wear uniforms and attend interdisciplinary classes. The state, local school board and the school's teachers approved the charter last year.

The first comprehensive review of the Los Angeles Unified School District's nine charter schools--presented to the Board of Education on Thursday--documented marked improvement in attendance, integration and parental involvement. But it found no corresponding increase in student test scores at the seven elementary schools measured, even though under state law improving academic performance is one of the primary reasons for establishing the largely independent campuses.

School board members took the first step Thursday toward declaring freedom from the state for some of the district's 36 schools in creating their own curricula, managing their own finances and even hiring teachers without credentials.

Disgusted with public school regulations and eager to advance their own educational philosophies, Orange Unified School District trustees are considering a proposal that would free some of its schools from state control by establishing a multi-campus charter school. The charter would allow participating schools to create their own educational programs with state funds, but be exempt from state education regulations.

Elementary school teachers at two Los Angeles Unified School District charter campuses have withheld their union dues for the last two months in a dispute over health benefits that pits the charter school teachers and administrators against the unusual alliance of the union and the school system.