Ingenium Schools, an organization governing charter schools across L.A. County, had petitioned to open a school in Claremont, only to rescind that petition shortly after. Ingenium operates three elementary schools and one middle school and had intended to begin construction of a new school at the former Claremont Graduate University site on Foothill Boulevard just a few blocks south of CHS. However, dissimilar to their aforementioned schools, this new institution would have instructed kindergarten through twelfth grade students.
The decision to accept or reject this petition was going to be made at the CUSD Board meeting on December 21, 2017. However, Ingenium pulled their petition, prompting the school board to remove the issue from their agenda. While definite reasons for this action remain unclear, it was likely due to Superintendent James Elsasser’s recommendation to reject the petition. The Brown Act requires that all information involved in school board discussions must be made available to the public. Therefore, school board member Hillary LaConte believes that this public information may have dissuaded Ingenium from keeping their petition.
“Dr. Elsasser’s office was recommending that we deny the petition,” LaConte said. “I’m sure Ingenium was following the process. They probably realized that the staff was against the petition and they pulled it.”
School board member Steven Llanusa appears to be in agreement with Elsasser’s recommendation. He affirmed that he and the rest of the council would have unanimously rejected the petition.
“For me, the three most salient reasons to deny the charter are that the petition presents an unsound educational program for the pupils to be enrolled in the school, the petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition, and the petition does not contain required non-discrimination and enrollment affirmations,” Llanusa said. “The lack of clear non-discrimination statements in the petition was very disturbing to me.”
Since charter schools are privately managed, the quality of education in these institutions is very uneven across the U.S. As a result, many charter schools have failed after an incredibly short time after their openings, prompting general skepticism of the idea. CUSD had previously rejected a charter school petition in 2013 for the Embracing the Whole Child Arts and Technology Academy, citing possibility for mismanagement as a source for concern.
It is unclear whether or not Ingenium Schools will pursue the establishment of a charter school within CUSD in the near future. If so, Ingenium will need to alter its former petition to comply with the desires of the Claremont school board, advertise its potential to serve interdistrict transfer students rejected from CUSD, and overcome negative stigma against charter schools as a whole.