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LIVERMORE -- Undaunted by the state's rejection, administrators of the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation say they will resubmit an application to open a third charter school in town.
The application for Portola Academy was denied by the State Board of Education on July 19 by a 6-3 vote.
Bill Batchelor, the corporation's chief operating officer, said they will submit an amended application for the K-8 school within the next month.
The plan is to open Portola Academy at the former site of Portola Elementary School. In the state board's report, it said that the charter petitioners were "unlikely to successfully implement the intended program, and the petition does not contain reasonably comprehensive descriptions of the 16 charter elements pursuant to education code ..."
But Batchelor says organizers believe they can be successful.
"We are still committed to doing it," said Batchelor. "We are in the process of updating the petition."
The state board took issue with six main points in the petition, saying it didn't provide enough information on how to the school will handle its proposed diverse and under-served population; its financial plan was overly optimistic; it did not provide the required number of signatures required by state law; said its goals and student outcomes were subjective, noncommittal, not measurable and unlikely to be attained; and its admission procedure and expulsion policies did not meet state
"That was not one of the reasons from a legal perspective," said Batchelor about the signature point. "We cleared all the thresholds that we needed to."
Batchelor said this will delay the corporation's plan by a year and the 560 students that had signed up to attend this fall will be given the opportunity to apply again.
Tri-Valley Learning Corporation opened Livermore Valley Charter School, a K-8 school, in 2005 and Livermore Valley Charter Preparatory high school in 2010. Both of the petitions for the two high-scoring charter schools were denied by the Livermore and Alameda County school boards before being approved by the state board.
To view the state's report from the July 19 meeting visit: http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/sbedownload.asp.
Contact Robert Jordan at 925-847-2184. Follow him at Twitter.com/robjordan127.
