Santa Barbara Unified School District has already paid Olive Grove Charter School more than half a million dollars this year and it is scheduled to pay the school just about $1.4 million in total for the 2018-19 school year. However, the School Board voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve two resolutions asking for a general waiver of the fees and responsibility as the Sponsoring Local Educational Agency (SLEA) or to have the responsibility reassigned to a district that is state funded and would therefore be reimbursed by the state for monies transferred to Olive Grove. The general waiver applications will be sent to the California Department of Education where they will decide whether or not S.B. Unified will be absolved from funding the charter.
Olive Grove has been around since the early 2000s but only this year is the district being asked to fund the school. Previously, the school was being independently run but in 2017 the California 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled that independent study charters, such as Olive Grove, could not operate in a district without that districts permission. In the spring of 2017, Olive Grove submitted petitions to the districts it was operating in, including Santa Barbara, asking to become a district sponsored charter. All districts denied the charter’s petition. Santa Barbara Unified staff cited “its inadequate educational program, the lack of transparent data, the incomplete educational planning, and weak student outcomes for Olive Grove’s current charter school,” and recommended the board deny the petition. Olive Grove appealed to the Santa Barbara County Board of Education where it was again denied, and then to the CA State Board of Education where it was approved in July 2018. By default, the districts that originally denied the petition become Olive Grove’s sponsoring local educational agencies and therefore take on the responsibility of partially funding the school in lieu of property taxes (ILPT).
Olive Grove is a school for students that are unable to work within the traditional school setting or are looking for alternatives. The school offers both textbook and online-based curriculum. The Santa Barbara location on the Mesa is currently serving 188 students. S.B. Unified has to pay Olive Grove for every student that it sees in its Santa Barbara location. However, the district has no access to verification that the kids that are attending the charter belong to the school district, said Meg Jette, assistant superintendent of business services. “They could take kids and put them in the Santa Barbara charter from Ventura,” said Jette. “Our property taxes are going to kids that don’t even live in the county.”