Is this the last dance? LA's anti-charter board votes to close popular school

Boys dance at Gabriella Charter School. Photo: Karla Gachet/Los Angeles Times

Gabriella Charter School met its academic targets, said Los Angeles Unified staff. The arts-enriched TK-8 school is fiscally sound. But the school board voted 4-3 to revoke Gabriella's charter to make space at a shared district campus, reports Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times. 

County education officials could renew the charter, but Gabriella would be "evicted from the campus and the dance studios built for its use," writes Blume. The charter, which specializes in dance, music and visual arts, was invited to share the Echo Park campus 16 years ago. It often serves as a feeder to the district's arts-focused high school.

It's not clear the move is legal, writes Blume.

Logan Academy for Global Ecology, which offers a Spanish-English bilingual program, also offers transitional kindergarten through eighth grade classes. Staff say they need more space to add middle-school classes. In addition, Logan is now a "community school" and wants space for support services, such as health care and counseling.

However, Logan's enrollment "has been trending downward, much like in the school system as a whole," writes Blume. In 2014, the school had 486 students. That had fallen to 362 by last year, and enrollment is down sharply in the early grades.

The charter school’s enrollment also is down, — but not as much, he reports. It peaked at 468 in the 2020-21 school year and was 396 last year.

Both schools primarily enroll Hispanic students from lower-income families. Gabriella posts higher -- though not high -- test scores, and has a much better attendance rate.

Trying to end the dancing at Gabriella is like "trying to do away with motherhood and apple pie, writes Jed Wallace on Charter Folk. Defenders of the status quo will "do almost anything to protect their turf" (and the teachers' unions).

Charter advocates need to organize, he writes. "We have to build the advocacy strength we will need to survive, and ultimately to thrive."

Florida is providing space for successful charters to expand, writes Eva Moskowitz, founder of the very successful Success Academy network, in the Washington Post. The state's Schools of Hope program "now requires districts to open unused public school space to high-performing charters." Funding is tied to performance, she writes. "After five years, only charter schools that move students from the lowest ranks into the top tier will continue to receive support."

In New York City, 22,000 Success "students — 90 percent Black and Hispanic and 74 percent low-income — routinely outperform their peers across New York state, often surpassing students in the wealthiest suburbs," Moskowitz writes. Success will open its first Florida schools in 2027.