Former charter school principal discusses charter-vs-district debate and the teacher strike

_{By The CATS Bulletin Editorial Board}

One of the most controversial UTLA agreements is that LAUSD will put a pause on allowing new charter schools to open up. UTLA wants to put a cap on charter schools because they say that charter schools take money away from LAUSD schools. Schools get money for each student that attends, so when those students leave and start going to charter schools, their former schools won’t get money for them anymore. Some also say charter schools provide a worse quality education, while others say they can provide a better alternative for educators and students who feel limited by LAUSD’s rules. 

Dr. Erica Hamilton, the former director of Pathways Community School, a charter school that closed down last year, had a lot to say about her experiences. 

Before starting her own charter school, Hamilton worked at Fremont High School, a district school. Her experience was frustrating. “Once I complained to a counselor that I had more students in my class than I had seats,” said Hamilton. “I was told, ‘that’s ok, some of them won’t attend regularly and some of them will drop out by mid-semester.’”

“We made plans to have a reading support class, organize PDs for ourselves, and implement alternatives to suspension and the school administration would step in and stop it from happening,” Hamilton added. “We actually once had an administrator come into a meeting to stop us from collaboratively planning to make us read an article on collaborative planning.”

Hamilton explained that she never wanted to start a charter school. She worked very hard to earn her own principal credential, and while doing that, she and other teachers from Fremont and families and students from the community were creating plans to open up a new LAUSD school to better serve the community. They created plans for a campus that would have four smaller community schools at a site called “Gage and Central”–yes, that school is now Diego Rivera. Things didn’t work out, however. “The plans that we wrote were approved by the LAUSD school board, I was selected by a committee to be the principal of the Public Service Community School (I had also earned my administrative credential while I was working on my PhD), and other members of the design teams were hired to be principals of their schools,” said Hamilton. 

“Then, the superintendent of Local District 7, George McKenna, removed all of us as principals and hired other principals. At that point, all of the teachers on the design teams who had planned to teach at Diego Rivera decided to stay where they were. I decided to start a charter school.” 

That charter school was Pathways Community School. 

Similar to what principals can do with LAUSD pilot schools, Hamilton now found herself with more freedoms running a charter school. “I was able to make budget decisions based on the needs of the students,” Hamilton said. “At Pathways, I didn’t pay myself a ridiculous salary, and we didn’t have a lot of middle-management or random programs that take up lots of money so we were able to have a student to teacher ratio of 25 to 1 and a student to counselor ratio of 100 to 1, plus a college counselor.  We were also able to provide our teachers with the resources they needed and have 1-1 chromebooks for our students.”

Even though Hamilton was a principal of a charter school and experienced the benefits of running one, she said it was a good idea for LAUSD to put a pause on opening new charter schools. “I think it’s a good idea to hit the pause button on charter schools for now and have an ‘uninterested’ body (e.g. not UTLA or LAUSD) conduct an analysis of how well they are serving all students AND the criteria for renewing a charter.” 

For Hamilton, she does not want to focus on the politics, but rather, the needs of the community and the teachers. “I never have thought that charter schools were the answer to education’s problems, all I ever wanted to do was serve the students in the community near Fremont and LAUSD was not doing that,” she said. 

“Even now, Diego Rivera…[seems] to be doing better for kids, but [other LAUSD schools] seem to be just doing more of the same. So that said, I don’t think that LAUSD is the answer either and I think that pointing to charter schools as ‘the problem’ is a red herring. LAUSD was not serving the students of South Los Angeles long before charter schools came around.”

Hamilton concluded, “I don’t know what the answer is, but I am happy that the teachers fought for and gained slightly smaller class sizes, more librarians, counselors, and nurses.  If there is an answer, it is with them.”