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Orange County Classical Academy eyes traditional school campuses for its expansion

April 28, 2023

The Orange County Classical Academy, a charter school with a curriculum affiliated with a small Christian college in Michigan, wants to open a high school, possibly using classrooms and other spaces at an existing traditional campus.

The Orange school’s leaders are looking at facilities in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District as well as places in Orange and Huntington Beach as potential sites to house charter school students.

The school is considering those different options, among others, said Jeff Barke, Classical Academy’s co-founder and board chairman, to accommodate a growing number of families interested in its “classical” approach to education. But Barke offered few details on where exactly his school could go.

“We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire and we’re working on a number of different options,” Barke said.

The lack of publicly available information has left some parents, particularly in Placentia-Yorba Linda and Orange Unified districts, speculating about where the charter school known as OCCA wants to expand and whether it will affect their children’s schooling. They have also raised concerns about the process and whether the conservative board majorities have the predisposition to approve requests from the conservative-leaning charter school.

PYLUSD

In the Placentia-Yorba Linda district, or the PYLUSD, charter officials have identified four schools they believe would “be the best fit” for their program, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

In a March letter to PYLUSD board members, OCCA officials sought 12-24 classrooms and other spaces, including fields, parking, eating and office areas, in one of four schools they identified. Those schools are Rio Vista Elementary in Anaheim, Esperanza High in Anaheim, Bernardo Yorba Middle School in Yorba Linda and El Dorado High in Placentia.

The proposal outlined an annual base rental the charter would pay the district, starting at $189,120 beginning May 1, for 12 classrooms and other spaces, and going up to $249,120 in the fourth year, for 24 classrooms. The school would start with ninth-grade students and add a grade level every academic year until it reaches grade 12.

When PYLUSD Superintendent Michael Matthews sought additional information, OCCA attorney David Huff offered more specifics: The proposal requests to share library space three days a week for up to four hours a day and an auditorium or multi-purpose room of approximately 4,000 square feet for the same durations plus some evening and weekend times.

Other requested spaces included shared use of locker rooms, the gymnasium, bathrooms and a health or nurse’s room.

Huff cited higher “rental rates” as well: $225,835 for the 2023-24 school year, going up every year OCCA adds a grade, until 2026-27 when the high school is fully formed and OCCA would pay the district $315,835 annually.

That proposal recently circulated on social media, raising questions and concerns from some community members.

Here comes the OCCA… pic.twitter.com/NqJAvgb8MQ

— VoicesforPYLUSD (@NPylusd) April 23, 2023

“The district is not going through a transparent process,” said Placentia resident Julie Suchard, who worries that earlier endorsements and connections between some members of PYLUSD, OCCA Superintendent Stefan Bean and the conservative Orange County Board of Education will lead to a slam-dunk approval without proper vetting.

While information has been released to those who have filed public records requests, OCCA parents appear to have been kept abreast of the school’s planned expansion and were asked to attend PYLUSD school board meetings in support.

Ahead of an April 18 PYLUSD board meeting, Mike Davis, OCCA’s director of school development, gave parents instructions on how to “speak on our behalf during public comments” and asked them to arrive early to ensure they got a seat.

“While we do anticipate having the support necessary for approval, we want to make as compelling a case as possible by our turnout, our example, and by what we say and how we say it,” Davis said in the note to parents.

Asked how and why OCCA anticipated such support, Barke said: “I don’t know, except they are a charter-friendly board so the assumption is they would support us considering we are a ‘California distinguished school’ with a proven track record of excellence.”

“That’s what school board meetings are for: to advocate, to speak during public comments and to support your school,” Barke said.

Teacher unions, he argues, do the same.

“We advocate for our perspective, and the left advocates for theirs,” he said.

But the subject was never raised before the school board on April 18, and Barke did not say when OCCA plans to pitch its proposal publicly.

According to Leandra Blades, one of the district’s conservative board members, she and other trustees learned of the OCCA plan in early March, and it is being reviewed by the school district’s attorney.

“I don’t think anybody is hiding anything,” Blades said. “There have been no discussions about this.”

“I think people are probably overreacting a little bit,” she said.

Blades said she doesn’t have an opinion on OCCA’s proposal to use one of four campuses in the district, but if it comes to pass, she views it as “a landlord-tenant relationship.”

“I don’t see any harm if we have classrooms available,” Barke said.

Like other school districts across Orange County and the state, PYLUSD has seen a steady drop in enrollment, which affects how much funding it receives from the state. The district’s enrollment this school year is 23,138 compared to 25,741 in the 2017-18 school year, according to the California Department of Education.

OCCA

The Orange County Classical Academy opened at 4100 E. Walnut Ave. in Orange in August 2020 after the Orange Unified School Board narrowly approved its creation.

The school offers a curriculum based on the Barney Charter School Initiative, a project of Hillsdale College in southern Michigan, which focuses on “a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue,” according to the school’s online family handbook.

Critics have expressed concern that the curriculum, which focuses on Western civilization and classic texts, may have a cultural and religious bias. Hillsdale’s history program, the “1776 Curriculum,” appears to be partly based on former President Donald Trump’s “1776 Commission,” the New York Times reported. Hillsdale’s president, Larry Arnn, chaired that commission.

Barke describes the curriculum this way: “It’s the education our founders received, the way education used to be, and was dramatically changed over the last generation.”

A leader in the Republican Party of Orange County, Barke has at times been a controversial figure. He’s a doctor who has advocated against vaccines and masking, once pulling out a gun during a video to say that a concealed weapon offered more protection against COVID-19 than a face mask.

Barke said he wanted to open OCCA — co-founded with Mark Bucher of the libertarian California Policy Center — after he lost a reelection bid to the Los Alamitos Unified School Board.

Less than two years after it opened, OCCA sought to leave Orange Unified for a new charter, this time under the umbrella of the Orange County Department of Education where the Orange County Board of Education trustees are considered “charter-friendly” and regularly approve charter requests.

In February 2022, the Orange County Board of Education approved OCCA’s petition to expand from a TK-8th grade school to a TK-to-12th grade school. Mari Barke, Jeff Barke’s wife and a county Board of Education trustee, abstained from the vote.

Trustees also consented to OCCA’s request to open new campuses. The 173-page petition to the county at the time stated that OCCA had identified four prospective school facilities within the following school districts for expansion: Capistrano Unified, Huntington Beach City School District, Huntington Beach Union High School District and Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified.

But first, the school wants to create a high school.

Its Orange campus enrolls 529 students and has a waiting list of some 900 families, according to Jeff Barke, and it cannot accommodate more students.

While the school got the thumbs up from the county to expand over a year ago, finding land has proven difficult, Jeff Barke said. Other areas the school may consider, he said, include the Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach where trustees are considering closing down campuses due to a drop in enrollment as well as private properties where the school can either rent or build upon.

Orange Unified

Orange Unified is another district where OCCA has considered expansion.

Earlier this month, some parents at Esplanade Elementary, which is adjacent to OCCA, expressed concerns about rumors that their campus could either close or be forced to share facilities with a charter school.

“Esplanade has been a second home for my family for over 29 years,” parent Veronica Cisneros said in Spanish to the Orange Unified board. Is it true that the school could close, she asked the board. “I want an answer from you.”

Cisneros and other Esplanade parents waited until almost 2:30 a.m. during a mid-April meeting to address the board during a public comment period held at the end of a meeting lasting more than seven hours. But as is typical, board members did not respond.

Barke referred questions about Esplanade to the district.

In February, OCCA proposed leasing a vacant portion of Esplanade for up to three grades, but it has since rescinded that “letter of intent to lease,” Orange Unified officials said.

In May 2022, Orange Unified entered into an agreement with OCCA to pay out $200,000, spread out over four academic years, in lieu of the district providing the charter school with facilities, as required under state law.

California’s Proposition 39, passed by voters in 2000, mandates that school districts must provide charter school students with facilities that are “reasonably equivalent” to those used by students in traditional schools, as long as the charter has at least 80 students who live in that district.

Some residents say they worry OCCA is attempting to bypass the Prop 39 process to avoid more scrutiny for the facilities the charter is requesting and in communities where they will get less pushback.

It has yet to be determined whether OCCA will eventually share a campus with a traditional school or if a school might consolidate two half-empty campuses and provide the other to OCCA, Barke said.

There are 1,285 charter schools in California. They are tuition-free public schools, funded by taxpayers, that are exempt from many laws governing school districts.

The California Charter Schools Association does not track how many share campuses, but it is not uncommon, officials said. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, there are 297 charters. About 75 of those share campuses with a traditional school, said Ricardo Soto, an attorney for the association.

Charters

Some parents fear that if a charter school utilizes some classrooms, it could eventually take over the whole campus. That happened in Mission Viejo in 2012, one year after Oxford Preparatory Academy began sharing a campus with Barcelona Hills Elementary.

In Orange County, four charter schools authorized under the Orange County Department of Education share facilities with district schools or centers, according to that county agency. They include Sycamore Creek Community Charter which sits on the Oak View Elementary campus in Huntington Beach.

Educators and school district leaders have traditionally been leery of most charter schools.

A few years back, for example, Capistrano Unified officials asked the College and Career Advantage Regional Occupational Program, or ROP, to move locations so that the district could move a charter to ROP’s old spot and avoid placing it at a high school campus, said Kim Thomas, the director of instructional services.

“The fear when a charter comes in is that they’re taking money out of the district’s pocket, and if they’re sharing space, (the traditional public school) could lose even more students,” said Thomas, a PYLUSD parent.

“I’m in public education so I believe in public education. And I don’t want to see anything pulled away from that,” Thomas said. “But I understand why some parents are looking for an alternative if they’re not happy with services provided.”

Sharing campuses has become more common in some spots, especially at L.A. Unified, but how well the sharing goes depends in part on the administrators running the show, said Brianna Garcia, vice president of School Services of California, Inc., a Sacramento-based school consulting company.

“Sometimes they get along great and they do things jointly and it’s a beautiful relationship,” Garcia said, “and sometimes it’s a complete nightmare.”

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