The Sequoia Breeze

Rebecca: Hello and welcome to the Sequoia Breeze Podcast. A breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca La Savio. Thank you for joining me today.

I hope that you find this episode helpful and informative for your homeschool and your family.

Welcome back. I'm happy to have Cynthia Rachel with me again as we do an update on what is going on with AB84. So welcome Cynthia. Thank you for coming back.

Cynthia: I'm happy to be here. Wish it was on better terms but always excited to talk about school stuff. So.

Rebecca: So a lot has happened since the last podcast that we recorded together. So if you aren't sure what AB84 is all about and you want a detailed overview, I would head over to that last podcast that you can see on YouTube or on regular podcast channel and listen to that and get all the nitty gritty.

We'll cover real quickly what it is and move into all the updates and where it's headed now. So can you give us a brief overview of. Sorry, go ahead and introduce who you are for people who didn't hear the last time.

Cynthia: And we're just jumping in like we're all good.

So I'm Cindy Rachel and I am on the steering committee for the alliance of Parents for Personalized Learning Education.

I'm also a charter school leader and a mom with two kids and you know, we all wear lots of hats. So.

But within this conversation,

the alliance which has the acronym of Apple, which is why it's so many words because we were trying to make an acronym that was easy to remember. Apple's goal is to help parents to, to navigate how do I advocate for issues that involve my child and their education.

And you know, it's very scary to think, oh well, do I just walk up to the Capitol, do I just call people like I don't know what to do. And,

and so for a lot of people that's too much of a barrier and they can't,

you know, it, it just all seems too big. And so we want to do it in bite size. Apple bite. Bite, bite size advocacy. So you know, make this one phone call or here's the address to send a letter or to click to have a letter sent on your behalf.

So really how can we make it as accessible as possible for families to be able to share their story?

Rebecca: So give us a, a brief overview of what is Assembly Bill 84, AB 84 and why are we talking about this?

Cynthia: Yes. So it's, it's the hot, it's the hotness for this legislative cycle right now. And AB84 was,

is authored and sponsored by assembly member Mayor Suchi who is the head of the Assembly Education Committee.

He's also running for Superintendent of Public Instruction. So there's a lot of like heaviness to you know, what happens with this bill. So the background on it is that there were,

there were criminals within the charter school sector almost 10 years ago. So this is like reaching way back but still using it as the catalyst to say that major reform is needed especially in that personalized learning flex based,

what the regulation calls non classroom based instruction to just say that we need, we need an overhaul there because this criminal activity happened.

But in doing so with presenting this bill,

it was 114 pages. I think it's up to 124 pages. It really.

They just threw. Every recommendation that was ever presented got thrown in where the folks that actually created those recommendations had made it their impression was that it would be used sort of like a catalog, like here are some ideas on how you could prevent fraud.

But they,

they took it meaning this, the Assembly Education Committee,

they took it as these all need to be implemented. And so that's really where they're coming from. And when you talk to them they say well that recommendation was in the FCMAT LAO report.

Oh, that recommendation was in the controller report.

And so that is really where they feel justified in making all of these decisions which include, you know, potential cuts to funding, limiting the community providers and partners that you can partner with as a school.

The credentialing piece, some of it got removed. But you know, there's been a lot of amendments that have happened over the last few weeks. So it is hard for people if they listen to the last podcast, we'll talk about some of the things that have changed.

Rebecca: Yeah, well, let's talk about. I know that there have been amendments made specifically in the. We spent a lot of time last time talking about 30% funding cuts.

So I know amendments have been made about that. From what I've heard it makes it more complicated.

Cynthia: So,

so there was like a little whiplash of amendments that happened June 2 and June 3. So June 2 there were these amendments and, and everyone kind of screamed that the sky was falling and there's no way we'll be able to continue to exist.

And it was very bad.

And then those very rapidly got amended again.

And now based on June 3rd is the last set of amendments we have. So if you go to the leg info page,

you want to look for the information that references June 3amendments. Because otherwise you're looking at old information.

And that's the number one reason that the author of the bill and many of the other elected representatives will dismiss your claims. If you say well you're going to cut me by 30%, they just dismiss you as having old information and not being up to date.

So, so it is important to change your talking points based on the new amendment. So they took out the 30% and like the tiered levels of funding that were put in originally in the bill,

they took it out,

they replaced it with existing law which is a non classroom based funding determination.

That in and of itself is like cool. That means we fought for the last five months to maintain the status quo. Okay, like we'll better than it was. But still like I thought you said, everything was really terrible, you know, so which one is it?

If it's like oh yeah, that's fine, we don't need it.

But then within that they also took language that's currently in regulations, not statute. So Ed code is statute. They took regulatory language which is open to interpretation and they're putting it into the bill which then becomes statute, which means it's law and there's no flexibility.

So that's the concern with the complexity is if something's in regulation,

we can have a conversation with whatever powers that be about a one off situation, a mitigating circumstance, why this didn't work.

And there's, there's give or there can be give.

If it's in statute and you miss that threshold, whatever it is,

that's it, there isn't that give. And so the concern that most people that are very well versed in the non classroom based funding determination,

their big concern is by codifying these regulations into law,

we lose that ability to, to deal with those mitigating circumstances. Those the best example for something that's fairly high level and maths easy is if there's a requirement that 40% of your of your revenue has to be spent on certificated salaries.

Those are teachers, anybody with a credential.

So 40%.

So if you are a school that hired a lot of people and they're all approaching retirement,

they typically have higher end salaries.

So if in one year, say you had 20 or 30% of your teaching staff retire and they're those high end, you know what you would say is a more expensive,

more,

more value employee,

when you replace them, you aren't often getting an influx of equal salary level, equal experience level.

And so maybe you hit that 40% with ease when you had a veteran staff,

but now you have a bunch of 1, 2, 3 years experience employees that you're hiring,

they're going to dramatically drop that salary percentage for a couple of years probably.

And if you miss that threshold, even by 1%, the cut can be 15% for two to five years.

It could be more depending on how far you miss it.

So if you're not able to plead your case and show that mitigating circumstance of hey, this is what happened.

Rebecca: Same number of teachers.

Cynthia: Yeah, we have the same number of teachers. We just had this, you know, this one year where a bunch of them retired.

If you don't get to say that,

then even missing it by 1% now has a ripple effect on your future years too, because it's not a,

a one for one. So if you miss it by 1%, you don't lose 1% of your funding, you lose 15 of your funding for the rest of that funding determination cycle, which is anywhere from two to five years.

Rebecca: So how do we talk to people about that? Like how, how is that quick talking point?

Cynthia: Yeah, well, that's. So when I share that example of like,

because they're, I will say in the conversations that I've had with the author, he will say we return to existing language. We only are, you know, we're codifying what's already in regulation.

And it so part of it, I would say that may not be a talking point that parents feel have to feel well versed and prepared to talk about. I think there's enough people having that conversation.

But really it comes,

it comes to the point of okay, we're putting existing language in. We know that the funding determination is already a challenging process.

We need to make sure that extenuating or mitigating circumstances are still a conversation that it can at least still happen. And it can't happen if it's an Ed code law.

It can only happen if it stays in regulation or in that regulatory language. So from from a parent perspective, I would say there's plenty of other talking points about how the bill is going to impact your child.

But about your school, I would just say the funding determination and the language that they're pulling into ed code that is currently housed elsewhere is what is going to cause issue and is that.

Rebecca: Happening for all schools, for all charter schools, or just for flex based school schools?

Cynthia: So the, not the non classroom based funding determination is specific to anyone that falls under that category of independent study,

which we prefer the name flex based because there's a lot of,

a lot of charter schools that operate under that model that have multiple classrooms. So non classroom based is really a misnomer. But yeah, it's anybody who, if you're signing an independent study student agreement, you know, if you're doing those kind of things, you're meeting with your teacher every 20 school days or every five days or,

you know, anything less than every day,

then it, then it's going to affect your school.

Rebecca: Okay, so we have basically the loss of 30 funding is fixed is sort of. Okay, so what are the other major concerns left in this bill?

Cynthia: Yeah,

so we still have the challenge of the restrictions that were placed on small authorizers.

So you're authorizing school districts. They have now said the most recent one is if they have,

let's see if the authorizing school district has less than 10,000 students, which there's a lot of students,

that they can only authorize an existing charter school that was in place before this bill, which is always.

Rebecca: True because there's a moratorium on Turkey right now.

Cynthia: There's a moratorium, but so part of it is they wouldn't be able to authorize going forward at all.

So they wouldn't be able to open a new school when the moratorium lifts. If they're under 10,000,

period.

If they are under 10,000 and are currently operating a charter school, then in order to continue authorizing that charter school,

then they will have to have at least four cabinet level positions within their district which include a cbo,

somebody over sped,

HR curriculum, and the superintendent can count as one of those.

Rebecca: So the district has to create positions.

Cynthia: New positions. Yes. And pay for themselves at cabinet level. Those are expensive positions. You know, you're, you're easily talking six figures.

And part of the,

the challenge that we have with that is that in and of itself was not a recommendation in any of the reports. The four I see it as they were trying to give some flexibility.

Like, okay, we think that you need to have somebody who's really good at these things.

I understand that, but I feel like there's training that could be offered as an alternative, hiring full time staff when their district doesn't have those needs.

You know, they don't have a need for a full time cbo. They don't have a need for a SPED director if they're a small district and arguably they don't have that need as an authorizer.

Like that person's going to twiddle their thumbs, you know,

most of the time. Because authorizing has sometimes where it can be busy,

but it's not an Daily. They're not in,

you know, they're not at the charter all the time, they're not in meetings all the time. Even if they increased like tripled what they expected an authorizer to do, it still would not be equivalent to four full time employees.

Rebecca: And our charters have their own school boards and our own administration and our Right.

Cynthia: Yeah. And you have,

as a charter administrator, you, you are the one who is responsible for talking to them. And there isn't also a requirement that your charter school have those positions. Like you know, a lot of small charter schools, their superintendent or CEO does all of those things.

Like if you only have a couple hundred kids,

you're not hiring all those people, you might end up working with a back office provider and you know, they may be doing payroll for you and other things because you just don't need to do all of that yourself.

But you know, it just, it's an unnecessary burden on that small school district that will make it virtually impossible for them to continue authorizing schools that have been law abiding this whole time.

Which is the other challenge.

Rebecca: And isn't authorizing a charter school helpful to some of those small districts because they get a fee from the charter?

Cynthia: Yes, it's a, it's absolutely a benefit for them in a way that it isn't always seen as such a,

a benefit to a larger school district.

You know, they get on average 1% of our revenue goes to our authorizer oversight fees and that's supposed to cover whatever costs there are associated with oversight.

1% of a large non classroom based charter for a small school district to have influx into their budget is significant.

But if you are a school district that has tens or hundreds of millions of dollars coming in, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars is,

that's nothing in your mind. So the benefit to your community to be that authorizer is far less.

Where in one example, one of the authorizers that we've worked with, they were able to never have combo classes because of that authorizer oversight fee. They provided high quality authorizing.

They're very invested in our success.

We have a great partnership.

And their tiny school, even if they had declining enrollment, they had one class per grade level and they were able to support that without the concern of oh no,

you know, we don't have enough ADA from our own kids coming in and now we classes and that at a small school that is a, that's an annual challenge. You know, know, you get too many sixth graders and not enough seventh graders, there's going to be A combo.

So there's, there's very tangible ways that authorizing a charter school supports that community too.

And so we do have that conversation a lot with authorizers across the state and the small school districts association who represents them to say this is your fight,

like this is, this is a charter school law that will absolutely negatively impact your association's community.

And, and they are being vocal about it and they are working on that from that perspective.

Another one that is still a challenge for us is that they have not done anything around the,

the language that would prohibit us from partnering for extracurricular educational activities.

They use the words at the parents discretion.

And while we would love to be able to say oh, that doesn't apply to us because our teaching staff are the ones that approve all educational activities because they do.

They,

we are the,

the people that they're trying to change the operation of because they view it as the parents are the ones that are deciding and they don't like that.

They don't really have a reason to like it or not like it from a legal standpoint because ultimately there is a certificated teacher who is involved who is overseeing the educational plan of that child.

The only difference is we get to make that decision based on that individual student's needs and interests rather than having to weigh it against a whole classroom.

So if I go to my child's school and they're at a site based school and I say, hey, I think this would be a really great field trip for you guys to go on.

Like my kid will love it.

They're gonna look at it and they're going to say, okay, well we could do that, but like your child's really into dinosaurs, but the whole class isn't really into dinosaurs.

So we're not going to do that.

We get, as a flex based school,

we get to say that's a really incredible learning opportunity for your child,

end of story.

Let's do it.

We don't have to then make everyone else participate in it.

And so yes, the parent recommended it,

but the teacher is the one who's going to say yes or no. We just oftentimes don't have to say no because we have that flexibility to say, yeah, let's give it a try.

And then the parents,

you know, they, they do look at things and they're like, this did not work for my child, I don't want to continue it.

Okay, like, good to know it wasn't a positive experience.

You didn't feel like it was educationally valuable.

Let's look through and let's find something that could be better. And then we have that ability to pivot pretty easily.

That's just different than like a school district. You have to adopt your curriculum on a seven year cycle and you're stuck with those textbooks even though you thought they were new and shiny and fantastic five years ago.

Life changes and they're not new and shiny and they're not fantastic. And you found all the issues in them. You, you're still stuck with them until the next cycle.

So we have the ability to be more agile.

And part of that is that we partner very closely with our parents and say, okay, you know your child, so let's find things that will work best for them so that they're excited and engaged in learning, which means they're going to learn more,

like if you're not fighting them.

And we all know this, like,

we all know the things we avoid, that we don't want to do,

and the things that we are eager to jump in and do quickly. Kids are the same way. I mean, we're all human. So if we can find those things that can act as the carrot for our child to be engaged in learning,

we're so much better off.

Rebecca: Why,

for a man who wants to be in charge of the education of all of California,

why can't he rejoice in kids having the opportunity to learn the best way that they can?

Why would he not want to get behind that?

Because we all test right? We're all part of the same test scores in California. Why would he not want to see those things that will represent his success or not be as strong as possible?

Like what?

So what you're saying is,

I want you to answer that question if you have any thoughts on it. But at the same time, so what you're saying is there, that this bill will still knock out all vendors, whether you can be a, you can be a math tutor who was a retired math teacher and has a credential and we still don't get to work with you.

Cynthia: Correct. Because the language says that if the school is going to allocate funds for the educational enrichment of a child, that those services have to be provided by a certificated employee of the school.

So it would mean that if you had an instructional funding model, you could only use it to sign up for classes that your school is providing internally.

So if you would in that situation, to continue a partnership with that, that vendor, they would have to become an employee of the school,

which,

you know, for some may be an option, but if you're not credentialed, then no, it's not an option. And then also your school might not be in a position to absorb all of those payroll expenses.

Like an employee versus an independent contractor is a very different conversation.

Rebecca: Right.

Cynthia: And it also means that that independent contractor loses their autonomy and their own decision making because now they're an employee of your school.

And many of them were like, I'm good, you know, that I don't want to get into that bureaucracy. So it will still prohibit that those partnerships that we have and these public.

Rebecca: Schools do have the ability to use private contractors.

Cynthia: Yeah. And that is part of what we've, we've really been pushing this topic to where they even put in. This will not affect expanded learning opportunities programs. So expanded learning opportunities is before and after school and during intercessions.

The school districts and site based charters are required to offer nine hours a day of programming for their kids.

And they are encouraged to do so with the use of what they call community based organizations.

And they don't have to have a credential, they don't have to be an employee of the school.

And they tell them like you,

this is great. You know, can contact your parks and rec, contact the nature center, have them come out and do a class for your children. I just saw one where they brought in this huge dome into one of the schools here and it creates like a temporary planetarium, you know,

and they got to lay in there and they got to see all the stars and all of that.

And I would argue that's really valuable.

So our kids should be able to do that too, you know, and they, they should be able to have those opportunities. So we have been really trying to heighten that to say, why is a child that's, that is enrolled in a public school not given the same opportunities as a child enrolled in a different public school?

Because as independent study, we are not allowed to provide a service that in a child, in a site based school could not have.

But there doesn't seem to be that parody right now with the way that this bill is written.

So that's one that I think families can really talk about. Like, this is very valuable. This is something that enriches my child's education.

This, you know, this partnership is the reason that my child is engaged in learning again.

You know, this is why they're passionate about what they're doing and, and this is how it has benefited them academically. So if we can always keep the conversation around the kid and their academics and especially when parents are having that conversation.

That's powerful because you know your child's story,

you know where they struggle, you know where they excel, and you know how the opportunities through your school have improved your child's educational outcomes. And it may not be that they're on grade level.

We see that a lot of kids come to us because they struggled somewhere else, which means they're already coming in below grade level.

But we also have data statewide of within two years they're caught up and then they're continuing to excel.

So they don't come in and have a quick fix, you know, within a year that they're all the way caught up. But they are making significant gains every year that they're with us.

And that's powerful data to show that you don't have to sit in a classroom for eight hours a day to learn and to learn well and that there's a lot of different ways.

So you asked the question about Assemblymember Mayor Suchi and why he would do this. So I think as I mentioned, we have the criminal behavior of,

I don't know, whatever the 2017ish time period.

And I think part of the State's response to A3's actions is that they put the moratorium on charter schools. And at that time, I think it was a two year moratorium.

And they said, look,

we just got to stop growing new ones and we need to figure out what's going on. Is this a widespread issue, is this an isolated issue and we need to have reform?

And then Covid happened and they were like, oh, we didn't really have time to get to that.

So we're not prepared to,

to lift the moratorium. We're going to extend it and we're going to extend it again.

So the moratorium is set to, is going to sunset January of 2026, meaning that new non classroom based charter schools could open,

they could be authorized.

And I think that there is a feeling that something has to have been done. Like we had to fix the problem before we can, we can sunset it and allow new schools to be open.

And it wasn't until like the last 18 months that they even started doing the research. And that's when the FCMAT report and the LAO report came out, the state controllers report came out.

CCAP has a report, I mean every Alphabet out there has a report on what they think you could do.

But so I think in his mind he's the head of the, you know, he's the chair of the Assembly Education Committee, which is like you know, the highest education person in the assembly,

he's running for state superintendent of public Instruction. And so in his mind, he's got to get to the bottom of this before he goes into office. If he were to win.

It is also, you know, a very us versus them, union, non union issue.

And labor,

labor lobbying is the highest in this. I mean, financially, it's the largest contributor in the state on a monthly basis.

So there is a lot of financial interest in the teachers association keeping things the way that they want them.

And so there is a component of that, the challenging thing, and the really sad thing is there's,

there are a lot of flex based schools that are unionized, and many of them are unionized through cta, which means that their union dues are going to kill their school.

And I've never really understood that. I've never understood how you pay dues to an organization knowing that they advocate for you not to exist.

But that's, that is kind of the challenging reality in California when schools have unionized,

especially schools that are operating in a different model, to know that they,

you're a part of an organization that doesn't believe that what you do is of value or should be allowed to happen.

So,

so that's kind of the political game and the political world that Marisucci is in. I think some of his intent, his intentions are honorable,

but I think that it's, it is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Like, you had a,

you had a, an organization that went into the charter sector to commit fraud,

and the charter sector said, hey, they're committing fraud and you did nothing. And now you want to seven, ten years later hold us all accountable for what we did not do?

You know, we didn't break these laws.

We were not a part of this. We were the whistleblower saying, hey,

you guys have to do something about this.

And nothing had happened. So that's where the challenge that we have is. We don't need sweeping regulation.

We need to go in and very thoughtfully say, okay, so this happened.

Where'd the wheels fall off?

And I think the wheels fell off at the California Department of Education. Because when we all called and said, hey, they're breaking the law. They shouldn't be doing this,

they just were like, well, we, we can't do anything about that. And I thought,

if you can't, who can? Yeah, isn't that your job? But okay. But then all of a sudden, you know, it got to $400 million in fraud, and then everybody's upset and everybody's crying fingers.

Yeah. And basically saying, oh, you all are bad.

So I think that,

you know, every sector has challenges. Every sec,

every, everything that involves humans has the potential for a human to act inappropriately.

And that, that is the reality of being human.

But I don't think that that means that you don't allow a sector of education that has been successful to not exist or to make it so challenging that they're forced to close because they cannot comply.

That to me, is not how you actually serve kids best.

Rebecca: And I know how very hard the administrators of our schools work to be above board, to be, you know, have clean audits. Like, they work really hard at it.

I, I've admired them for that even before AB 484 appeared. And if only there was.

Doesn't feel like there's a real conversation of like, what are the needs and what are the real problems? And it's, it's, yeah, it's assumptions and broad strokes.

Cynthia: Yeah. It really is a situation where something sounds good on paper like, oh, yeah, yeah, don't have small authorizers, you know. Yeah, oh yeah. They don't know what they're doing or, you know, whatever the claim is, or they don't have the capacity.

That's my favorite. They don't have the capacity. And my argument is the smaller the school district,

the more attention things, the more capacity they have potentially. Because they gave an example in one of the meetings of, well, we talked to a school district that only had four students.

Like a teeny, tiny rural school district that was an authorizer.

Okay, well, one, those four students should be receiving the best education possible. This is only four students.

It might as well be one of our students if that come on over.

But also,

every single dollar of our oversight fee could go to hiring somebody to be a good over, you know, good authorizer. Like,

you don't have conflicting priorities. You have your four kids to keep track of and educate.

And then you have, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars that you don't have to, you know, you're not having to invest those anywhere in particular except for making sure you're a good authorizer.

So if you're a good authorizer, you're going to make the time. You're going to go to board meetings, you're going to review financials,

and it's not going to take you all day. It's not going to take you time every day to do this. It's just, you know, maybe weekly or monthly you're checking in on stuff.

There's Presentations to your board, your emailing back and forth,

all of that can happen. And arguably it could happen even easier with a tiny little district because then you just hire some if you really feel like, okay, we have these four kids, we're gonna pour everything into them and it's a principal slash teacher slash bus driver slash cafeteria person.

Cool,

you got that. But now you have this oversight chunk of money that could then if you didn't feel like you were equipped to do it, then you could hire a charter liaison who could do that.

And,

and that would be their whole job because you have four students and you focus on those four students and the charter liaison focuses on the charter.

So there's a lot of ways to do it. But stuff that makes sense on paper, it just doesn't pan out in, in real life as to what that impact will look like.

Rebecca: So Cindy, what should we all be doing at this point? So where, where is the bill has passed the Assembly.

Cynthia: Yes.

Rebecca: And it's headed to the State Education Committee.

Cynthia: Senate Education.

Rebecca: Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, the Senate Education Committee. So it's going to go through the same path in the Senate that it just went through in this, in the Assembly. So that happens when.

Cynthia: Okay, so may 30th or no, what was it? June 6th is when. Or June 5th is when it passed out of the assembly floor. And it was a very close boat.

And you can go to Apple's page to see the little video debrief I did on that.

But from there now it'll go to Senate Education Committee. We do know it's going to be a contentious bill and they are planning as of now, the plan is that it'll be heard the last week that they are allowed to look at policies or a bill has to get out of the Policy committee by June,

July 18th. So we have a month from today and July 16th is when the Senate Education Committee's last hearing is. And so it is expected to be heard that day at 9am in Sacramento at the swing space slash annex building, whatever you want to call it.

So it will go there and then if it moves out of that committee,

then it would go to the Appropriations Committee.

But in between there they go on a three week spring break or summer break.

So all legislators leave after July 18th and they're gone for three weeks. They come back in mid August.

So then from August to September they're just looking. It'll go to the Appropriations Committee.

That's where they're going to look at the financial impact to the state.

If it passes there, then it would go to the Senate floor. The Senate would vote on it. If there's amendments along the way in the, the Senate, which we were promised amendments, he made a verbal comp commitment on the assembly floor that there would be further amendments.

If there are amendments, then it has to go back to the assembly as a whole for either a yes or no. Either they accept it or they don't. They don't get to amend it again.

They don't get to tweak it.

It's just take it or leave it.

And if the, if the Senate says yes and the assembly says yes, then it would go to the governor's desk. And that happens between September and the middle of October and then he has the opportunity to sign it, veto it.

And I think there's a third option where it passes without a signature.

So he has to actually veto it for it to fail at that point.

But Senate Education is going to be a really interesting committee.

It is a smaller committee because there's half as many senators as there are assembly members,

which also means they represent a lot more people.

So, you know, chances of,

chances are that you,

depending on where each of you live,

one of your representatives may be on the Senate Education Committee or somebody who's nearby. You know, and when you call,

if you're going to call,

I encourage you to call their district office. So the 916 numbers that are floating around on the Internet, they're good.

It's, that's the, for the Capitol office.

But you're also getting someone on the phone that's getting hundreds of calls a day.

They're not nearly as excited to talk to you.

If you call the district office, you're getting somebody that lives in that community.

They want to talk to you. They want to hear your story. They also have the capacity to hear your story because it's, you know, at the Capitol office, people are coming in all day long.

They're wanting to schedule meetings. It's a very fast paced building.

But if you call or you visit the district office, then you're going to get somebody who's like, oh my gosh, you came, you're here. Yes, we would love to talk to you.

You know, they're just excited and they.

Rebecca: Tell all of it, right? What, they keep track of everybody that calls.

Cynthia: They do typically, like, tally,

you know, are you in favor pose? And they do report that back. And if you go in person or you want to mail something to them, I highly encourage you to bring student artwork or a letter from a student.

You Know, something they could hang on the wall. And it just. It humanizes what is otherwise a very bureaucratic process.

So you can write letters. You can also submit letters through the position letter portal. On the California Legislator position letter portal, you can write a letter as yourself.

If you are a part of a mom's group and you want to write a letter on behalf of that mom's group, you don't have to be, like, formally recognized. You can just select an organization, and if it doesn't exist in there yet, you can add it and then submit a letter.

If.

If you do it based on a.

An organization, then when they do the bill analysis, they will list every organization that wrote in opposition and in favor of a bill. So then you can see,

like, when it went through the Assembly Ed Committee, there was like,

three or four organizations in favor of it, and then multiple pages of organizations opposed to it. So it feels good that there's a lot of people that are in this fight.

You know, it still passed, but we knew it was going to at that point.

But, yeah, writing letters,

calling. I really encourage people, please be respectful. Even if they say they're in favor of this bill or they think it's necessary.

Ask questions, learn their perspective.

We don't get anywhere if we get nasty on the phone, if we name call, if we. We are slanderous, like, none of those things help us, and they actually work against us, because then they're like, well, I'm definitely voting for this bill because that lady was terrible.

So please be respectful. If you go to their office and they're not, no one's available to talk.

Just say thank you and can I leave a card? Or could I schedule a meeting at another time?

And then the biggest thing you can do, which it's not something right now, but after the legislative cycle is done,

keep those relationships up.

You may have had to make a cold call this year because this is your first time doing it,

but if you can go to their town hall events or if they do a great job and you want to go to their fundraiser events or, you know, you see them out in the community and you say, hey, thank you for supporting charter schools again.

You don't have to have a big speech. They don't have time for a big speech. But if you can just be like, oh, my gosh, it was so great to see you, and thank you for what you said about charter schools.

You know, they're really important to my family.

Cool. And then it's just keeping those,

you know, those connections warm rather than calling and having this big ask of, please oppose this bill.

It's going to harm my family when they don't know you or your community.

So for charter school leaders, it's a great opportunity in the fall to invite them out to your school to tour to.

If you don't have a school site but you have a park day, invite them to the park to meet the families. You know, invite them to go to a field trip.

They might say no, but chances are they'll send someone like one of their staffers will come and through that they will absolutely report back. That's their whole job is to, to go to see something and report back.

So, so don't be discouraged if they sent a, a staffer and you were really hoping they would come. If they can be there, they will. But if they send a Stafford, those people are really on top of it and they get face to face time with their elected representative all the time.

So they get to report back on your behalf. So it's a powerful relationship to build.

Rebecca: And you're.

Are you still doing a, like,

I don't remember what you're calling it, but sort of a, here's a task every day that you can do the Apple, Facebook.

Cynthia: Yeah. So we did a, we did a seven day push, like seven day of bite size advocacy. And we're,

right now we're just kind of cycling through them again because they're good things. If you didn't do it last week, they're still good this week. If you're going to write a formal position letter, it has to be in by July 10th for that July 16th hearing.

And so we're just encouraging people, you know, make those phone calls. I've seen some groups, a group went to the Capitol yesterday and went and knocked on lots of doors and talked to people.

You can do that. There's groups next week that are doing like silent protests at their local or silent assembly, whatever you want to call. It may not be a protest because it may be somebody that's in favor of supporting us.

But they're going to their district offices and the last round of those, we actually heard from a lot of people that, that our groups were extremely polite,

very helpful. They called ahead and said, hey, we're planning to be there. Is there a good spot that we could say stand?

You know, we don't want to get in the way. You don't want to impede traffic or anything like that. So what could we do?

So that has been encouraging to hear. And then a lot of times, if There's a little crowd of you. Somebody's going to come out and talk to you. They're going to want to know what's going on.

If it's somebody that's already supporting us and opposing the bill, then just dropping off a thank you card or, you know, you don't have to stand outside for a long time and feel like you have to stand, spend your whole day, especially in the summer, it's miserable right now.

But you know, just drop in and say, we just want to say thank you. Or you know, we, we understand that you don't know where your senator stands on this bill.

Are there any questions that we could answer to to help them to understand how this is going to impact our students? Or can I tell you my child's story about why this school is so important to me as it is now and I don't want it to be changed.

I think things like that make it less adversarial and just bring it to like, this is why this matters to me and I hope that we can have a conversation about it.

Rebecca: I called my assemblyman before the floor vote and then later I sent an email and after the vote I got an A long email back and I'm sure it was a form letter, but it was still like, hey, thank you for contacting us.

Here's how I voted, here's why. Like it was so they. There was response, you know, it wasn't. And everybody I talked to on the phone was helpful. Ask questions like, is there anything else you want to say?

Do you want to call back? Like it was,

it was a person I'd ever done any of that. And that was so it. And I think that intimidated, but it went well.

Cynthia: That's good. And that's one of the things where I feel like it's all very daunting until you do it one time and then it's like, oh, that was it. Like when you call,

you don't have to be equipped to have a 45 minute discussion about the bill.

You can.

All you're going to do is say, hi, my name is Cindy Rachel and I live in Yuba City. And I'm asking for the Senator to oppose AB84.

And they'll say, okay, we're going to, you know, take that down. And then if you feel like it, you could say, is there someone I could speak to that I could talk a little bit more about the bill if you wanted to.

But again,

you can just end with, I'm asking the senator to oppose this bill.

Thank you so much.

That's it. And on the Apple Facebook group we have a link. Charter School development center actually did a click to dial campaign. So all you do on your computer is.

Excuse me,

you, you click on the link,

you put in your address because it's going to pull up who your senator is and then you click to call them and it calls them for you.

So you don't even have to look up their phone number. You just say, I live at, you know, this address and it's going to find you the right person and you're going to talk to them.

So you know, there's a lot of ways to do it where it's not hard. If you don't want to talk to anybody on the phone, you can. Absolutely. There's a click campaign to, to send an email.

Yeah.

Rebecca: You have to know their email address. You just fill out the.

Cynthia: Yeah, you just need to know your address and they will send it to who it needs to go to. And if you send a letter through the position letter portal, it goes to the education committee and then it will follow it through the Senate.

So it'll go to Appropriations too.

Rebecca: Maybe I can, we can find that link and add that to show notes so that families can just click to go to that place to send. Yes.

Cynthia: And I did just put it in the Apple group.

Rebecca: Okay.

Cynthia: I think also so but yeah, anything to just make it easy for people to just click, click in the link for the show notes and get it. It you just, and then you just upload a PDF so you could ask chat GPT to help you write a letter.

And you know, again, it doesn't have to be long. It doesn't.

It really is just, it's more about just telling a little bit about why this is a bad bill for your.

Rebecca: Child and we need to wrap up. But I do want to ask you before we leave, is there any hope?

Cynthia: I always have hope.

So it, it's hard because I,

I'm not at the point where I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm,

I, I still think it's very 50 50.

I, I know for sure there will be amendments. I just don't know if there'll be amendments that we like or not, you know, that make it any better.

Rebecca: So you anticipate this passing. It's whether or not there are amendments that make it functional before then.

Cynthia: I don't want to say I anticipate it passing.

I still think that we have the ability to make significant change and really educate people about the realities of running a charter school and why this bill is unnecessary and it doesn't do what it set out to do.

I think that's the hard thing is the intent behind it is one thing, but the reality of it is another.

So I think that there is absolutely still a lot of opportunity for this bill to to be stopped.

And I also was absolutely floored with the number of assembly members that voted no or who abstained from voting at all. If we had talked in January and you had told me that we got almost 50% of the assembly to say no on a bill brought forward by a prominent Democrat,

I would have like laughed you out of the room.

So people listened. People expressed great concern. There was over 90 minutes of debate on the floor. It's the most there's been all season.

It really was not cut and dry.

And I think the only reason it did pass is because he made a whole bunch of verbal commitments to make amendments and that we're still going to work on this bill.

Had he not done that, I don't, I actually don't know that it would have. And it was nerve wracking to watch.

But so that does give me some hope there that we made a lot of movement and we still have time to make more.

Rebecca: So is it the same in the Senate that it's a 50, 50 vote?

Cynthia: Like yeah,

yeah, it'll be. So I think there's 40 senators they need, they'll need 21. I think it's just 50% plus one.

And it's another super majority situation, which is challenging. But again, we made a lot of movement on the assembly that I would never have thought.

Rebecca: But this isn't an inherently partisan bill like we're not talking about.

I know it feels that way in some ways, but on the other hand, like we're just talking about.

Cynthia: It becomes a labor issue and that's the problem.

So because of the labor backing of the bill, now it, it becomes partisan. I think the hard thing for a lot of charter folks is the Charter Schools act was brought forward in California by the Democrats.

It was a Democratic initiative. Like this was their thing.

And over the last 30 years, they have slowly moved away from innovation and education. And they really are. It's still this one size fits all. Whatever the teachers union wants is what they feel is necessary so that that's where the conflict happens.

It shouldn't be partisan because it's kids and how do we serve kids best? How do we make sure that the schools that are serving them are doing their job well,

but it becomes partisan so that's where we're dealing with that. But I think we still have a long road of opportunities to stop it. It could also turn into a two year bill, which means that it doesn't move forward this year,

it has that opportunity again next year. But then that gives us time to actually have conversations when we're not in like the throes of the legislative season, to actually sit down and say, yo, here's what you know.

Rebecca: Yeah, right.

Cynthia: These are the things that could actually work. And then as a aside,

there is a parallel bill. Senate Bill 414 is going through and it's in the assembly now in the same way that the AB84 is in the Senate. So they've swapped, they're into the other House.

And that one is the one that if somebody says we need charter reform, then we would say, Great,

we have SB414 as a, as a common sense alternative to AB84.

So you don't have to have like a lot of nitty gritty info about 414. But you can say like this is the scalpel where 84 is like a chainsaw.

You know, like we need to go in and make targeted changes, but we don't need to change the access to educational opportunities in the way that 84 does.

And that's where we can have that.

If you really feel that something needs to be done differently, great. Here's that alternative over here. You could do that without killing our opportunity to exist.

Rebecca: So listeners, head on over to the Apple Facebook page and website and check out the show notes for links to all of that, links to being able to send some letters to the Education Committee.

And don't stay silent,

have your favorite vendors calling people too. And it really isn't intimidating. So we need to speak up.

Thank you for listening. Cindy. Thank you so much for being here.

Cynthia: Happy to do it. Thanks for having me.

Rebecca: Thank you listeners for joining Cynthia, Rachel and I today as we gave an update on the progress of AB84, the bill that is such a risk for charter schools. I hope that you will take some of those action steps that she mentioned.

I also hope that today has been a breath of fresh air for your homeschool, even though it's a tough topic. If you have any questions, I hope that you will email me at podcasts@sequoiagrove.org I've been your host, Rebecca La Savio, thank you for joining the Sequoia Breeze Podcast.