Board of Education Denies Charter Petition

A petition to bring another charter school in town was unanimously rejected Tuesday by the Board of Education.

The petition, submitted to the district in November by the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation, was denied because:

• it does not contain the required signatures;
• fails to provide comprehensive descriptions of legally required elements of the charter;
• and petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program described in the petition.

In addition, a district staff report said the petition's budgeted expenses for programs at the proposed charter campus were unrealistic.

For more information, view the attached district staff report and the adopted resolution turning down the charter school.

Bill Batchelor, the corporation's chief operating officer, said he was disappointed in the district's analysis of the petition and claimed inaccuracies in the staff report.

The proposed charter school, Portola Academy, would have been housed in the campus where the Livermore Valley Charter Preparatory High School is currently located on 2451 Portola Ave. — the former site of the school district's .

The corporation opened a high-school program at the Portola Avenue campus in 2010 with a freshman class of about 70 students.

Over the next four to six years, the campus on Portola Avenue is expected to grow to about 1,000 students and .

The corporation also runs a kindergarten through eighth-grade off Sonoma Avenue. The cramped school houses more than 900 students on a campus built for 500 students, with many classes held in portables, officials said.

Portola Academy was projected to house up to 560 students, officials said.

Batchelor said there are currently more than 1,200 students who are on a wait list or who have shown interest in attending Livermore charter schools.

"Your constituents are asking for this and they want this school," Batchelor said to trustees on Tuesday.

The Tri-Valley Learning Corporation is no stranger to having petitions rejected by local school districts.

In October, plans for a charter high school in Dublin were

The corporation appealed Dublin Unified's decision to the Alameda County Board of Education. The county board on Tuesday unanimously rejected the petition. For more on that story visit Dublin Patch.

The Portola Academy petition can also be appealed to the county board. If rejected by the county, the corporation then has an option of asking the state to review its petition.