A Charter School in My District?
Not all charter schools are a good fit.
The Irvine Public School district that my kids attended is ranked as one of the best and most well-funded in the state, if not the nation. It would seem that charter schools would have little interest in her, but that’s not the case. I wrote this article back in 2019 but there is a lively national debate right now about where charter schools fit, so I thought I would republish it here.
This past Tuesday, I attended my second IUSD (Irvine Unified School District in Southern California) school board meeting ever. My children have been attending schools in the district since 2010. What motivated me to attend this meeting was that I received word online that a group of people was presenting a proposal for a new dual-immersion charter school in the district.
I’ve been asking the district nearly every year since 2009 when would they create a dual immersion program similar to the ones that exist in every school district that touches IUSD. More than once, I was told that there was not enough interest. I gave up asking two years ago believing that dual immersion programs were not part of the education agenda for the district.
I always found the excuses hard to believe because the proposal for this new charter school, the Irvine International Academy, has…
