L.A. charter group gets grant to open 13 schools

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad has committed more than $6 million to a charter school group to help it expand its presence in Los Angeles. The $6.5-million grant to the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools from Broad's education foundation, along with $3.5 million raised by Alliance board members, clears the way for the group to open 13 middle and high school campuses by 2010 in impoverished neighborhoods where traditional schools are foundering.
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EARLIER: Two of the more successful charter-school companies in Los Angeles have sued the Los Angeles Unified School District. They contend that the school district has failed to make space available for their students as required by law. In separate suits Green Dot Public Schools and PUC Schools assert that the school district is violating a state law that stipulates "reasonably equivalent" facilities for charter schools. L.A. Unified, the nation's second largest system with more than 700,000 students, asserts that its policies are legal and that it offers space where it can in an crowded system.

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Despite a California law that calls for public school campuses to be "shared fairly" between traditional schools and independently run charter schools, dozens of other charters in the Los Angeles Unified School District have nothing like a regular school to call their own. Charter schools operate out of churches, high-rises, warehouses and portable buildings slapped down on parking lots. (Los Angeles Times)