Caprice Young new superintendent of Gulen operated Magnolia Science Academies

Did Caprice Young get the Turks out of the dog house or is it more smoking mirrors of the Gulen Islamic Movement?

Proposed new campus 

One of the more interesting developments in California in recent years has been charter schools – public schools operating outside most of the state education bureaucracy’s red tape. And one of the leaders of that movement, Caprice Young, has just begun her first full year heading the troubled Westminster-based Magnolia Public Schools, which runs 11 charters in California.

Their local school is the Magnolia Science Academy Santa Ana, with 150 students, grades 6-12. Currently located in Costa Mesa, next year it will move to a new campus at 2840 W. 1st Street in Santa Ana, expanding to 660 students in grades K-12; then it will grow gradually to 1,020 students.

A pioneer of the charter movement as the president of Los Angeles Unified School District board from 1999 to 2003, Young helped expand district charters from seven to more than 40. A vicious campaign by the teachers unions pushed her off the board.

She didn’t stop, but founded and led the California Charter Schools Association from 2003 to 2008. Since then, she told a meeting of the Register editorial board, “I’ve turned around broken charters.” In 2010, she saved Inner City Education Foundation charters in Los Angeles.

A devotee of Alexis de Tocqueville and his book, “Democracy in America,” Young enthused about how the French visitor was impressed with 1830s Americans solving their own problems without recourse to a gigantic government bureaucracy.

“That’s really what charter schools are all about,” she said. “Local parents begin fixing our own schools.” In the case of the Gulen operated charter schools, it's foreigners fixing nothing and stealing American money. 

The charter movement sometimes is criticized because some of its schools fail due to financial or other problems. But that’s a feature, not a bug. A big problem with traditional public schools has been that the worst of them, instead of being shuttered, too often are shoveled even more taxpayer dollars. With charters, the bad ones close fast – or are rescued by Young.

MPS nearly ended up in the dustbin of educational history. In January, the Los Angeles Times reported, a LAUSD audit found MPS “was $1.66 million in the red, owed $2.8 million to the schools it oversees and met the federal definition of insolvency.”

Enter the feisty Young. In March, MPS and the LAUSD came to an agreement to keep the charters open. Then a May 7 report by California Auditor Elaine Howle concluded, “[T]he Foundation and the academies have improved their financial position, but should strengthen some of their financial controls.” Some of the academies “were insolvent at points during the past three fiscal years, partly because of state funding delays.” All academies were solvent by July 2014.

The audit also looked at academics and found, “[T]he academies generally had higher APIs than their authorizing” school districts’ regular schools.

Young promised an even greater emphasis on academics, stressing STEM: science, technology, engineering and math. “Orange County is a hotbed of entrepreneurialism,” she said. “It needs employees. The fastest way to get out of poverty is with STEM subjects.”

A criticism sometimes leveled at charters is that they shun lower-performing students. But the state audit found, “The academies’ charters also outline their plans to recruit low-achieving and economically disadvantaged students.” The audit cited demographic data showing the percentage of “socio-economically disadvantaged” students at Magnolia Science Academy roughly was the same as all students in Orange County, about 50 percent.

Young also lamented schools too often “lack attention to gifted kids, who will be our future technology leaders,” and promised to make sure they got adequate opportunities and challenges.

I’ve been writing about charters since they started in the early 1990s and have known Young since 2003. Magnolia’s new location in Santa Ana will be four miles from the Register. I’m looking forward to reporting on their progress.

MAGNOLIA SETTING UP BOOTHS AT STREET FESTIVALS TO ENROLL STUDENTS