#AnotherDayAnotherCharterScandal

The Parasite Tries To Replace The Host

NVMI wants to evict a public school from its campus. An LAUSD Board Member looks to move it onto one of his schools. It should be shut down.

“So I would propose: why don’t you move VOCES onto another campus?”

- Daniel M. Epstein

The hostility that the North Valley Military Institute (NVMI) community shows towards the public school that it shares a campus with was on full display at the LAUSD Board Meeting on January 17, 2023. The charter school’s Treasurer, Daniel M. Epstein, called into the meeting to criticize the Valley Oaks Center For Enriched Studies (VOCES) for being too “woke,” and operating a program that is not being chosen by parents. Epstein did not address accusations from the VOCES Magnet community that the presence of NVMI on the campus is causing some parents to avoid choosing to send their children to this public school.

Even in the best of circumstances, having a charter school co-located on a district campus creates difficulties for a public school. Space in district schools that are used to provide special education services, music classes, computer labs, science labs, and parent centers are considered “vacant” under the rules used to implement PROP-39. As a result, these programs are often displaced when the charter school moves in.

When the charter school is poorly managed, the problems for the public school multiply. Would you want to send your child to a campus where an administrator who lived with the principal was accused of “abhorrent child sex abuse”? Would your concerns be heightened if the charter school still employed a staff member who was named in that lawsuit for allegedly hosting a “school-sponsored party at his home” where the administrator “played a sexualized game of truth and dare” where “students were forced to kiss/lick [the administrator’s] feet and beard”? Or that members of the VOCES community expressed concerns about sexual harassment by NVMI students and the bullying of a child with a disability?

Even with all of these complaints, the LAUSD is still willing to provide space to NVMI under PROP-39. The district’s Charter School Division (CSD) did cite the school in a letter dated December 1, 2022, for providing attendance…