A lawsuit alleging that summer school tuition fees imposed on public school students, from kindergarten to high school grade levels, violate their right to a free public education.
The Dec. 8 lawsuit alleges that school districts attempt to get around the state’s constitutional protections of a free public education by enrolling students to summer programs outsourced to outside entities or “education foundations, which charge students tuition and then funnel monies received back to the district,” the complaint states.
The State of California, the State Board of Education, the State Department of Education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and are named as defendants in the case for “inaction” against the alleged violations, the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit outlines one example involving SPUSD representing the alleged violation against public school students. The document names South Pasadena Education Foundation, a nonprofit established in 1980 to supplement the district’s budget, and alleges that the tuition fees for enrollment in summer school classes awarded credits to SPUSD students and used SPUSD-employed teachers and SPUSD facilities to return $666,016 back to the district. Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that the state never conducted an audit of the student-imposed fees.
According to the SPEF website, “Funding does not go towards administration salaries/expenses or other areas such as basic classroom and custodial supplies.” Rather, fees collected from summer school enrollment, creative after-school elementary school programs, extracurricular summer camps and other programs are used for “identifying, developing and implementing K-12 curricular pathways to help prepare students for college and careers,” which manifest as funding for elective and art courses and optional pathway opportunities.
In response to the allegations, SPUSD Superintendent Geoff Yantz said in a statement to The Review, “South Pasadena Unified School District’s Education Foundation — SPEF — is an independent, nonprofit organization. The accredited SPEF Summer School program is legally compliant with California Education Code and SPUSD Board policies.
“SPEF offers a summer school program with its own employees providing education services to students in the San Gabriel Valley. SPEF is a separate entity which is not prohibited from providing educational programs for a fee and has obtained its own accreditation for its summer program from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
“There is no legal violation on the district’s part by accepting credit for a student participating in a nonprofit educational foundation’s program. No-cost credit recovery programs are offered to South Pasadena High School students during the school year and throughout the summer. SPUSD also promotes and accepts credit transfer for students attending other high school course credit programs, many of which are offered at no cost,” Yantz said.
Vanaman German LLP, a private firm focused on public interest cases revolving around education, and Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project, a pro bono legal services provider protecting the rights of disadvantaged children, are partnered to represent the case’s plaintiffs — two students and a parent associated with respective school districts.
Attorney David German explained that “this lawsuit effects so many people and we’ve talked to many families; in a case like this, you choose representative plaintiffs from different districts rather than signing up every person who [this issue effects].”
The lawsuit identifies “disproportionately and severely disadvantage[d] students of color from low-income families” as being the most affected by the fees imposed for summer school programs.
German noted that, though there are other correlations associated with a student’s academic performance, “students with greater socioeconomic challenges are exactly the students who had the greatest loss from the pandemic-related school closures and the greatest amount of regression in their academic performance.”
The California Department of Education defines “socioeconomically disadvantaged” students as students who are eligible for free or reduced-price school meals, who are “migrant, homeless, or foster youth, or where neither of the parents were a high school graduate.”
The U.S. Department of Education released a study in 2021 reviewing the disproportionate effects on students of marginalized or underserved backgrounds, following the COVID-19 pandemic.
In one observation, the study found that “emerging evidence shows that the pandemic has negatively affected academic growth, widening pre-existing disparities. In core subjects like math and reading, there are worrisome signs that in some grades students might be falling even further behind pre-pandemic expectations.”
The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress system is a facet of the CDE that monitors and assesses the progress of students in English literacy, math and science at various grade levels, ranging from 3rd to 11th grade.
The CAASPP’s Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments for ELA and Mathematics is an annual measure used to assess student performance and knowledge in English and math, while also identifying and addressing any gaps in student performance.
According to 2021-22 CAASPP SBSA data, 35.24% of California students of socioeconomic disadvantaged status met or exceeded the state standard for ELA and 21.23% of California students with the same socioeconomic status met or exceeded state standards for math.
For the same school year, CAASPP data indicates that 69.60% of SPUSD students of socioeconomically disadvantaged status met or exceeded ELA state standards and 60.92% of students met or exceeded state math standards.
Comparatively, CAASPP data reports that 82.49% of SPUSD students who are not socioeconomically disadvantaged met or exceeded state ELA standards and 77.89% of students with the same socioeconomic status met or exceeded state math standards.
“It’s not about money, it’s about convincing state agencies … that monitor and enforce the laws, with respect to public education — we want them to create a system where fees are not being improperly charged and that public education is a free community good within the state,” German said.
As it stands, the lawsuit is in the “initial stages” and “in superior courts, things move pretty slow,” German said.
“The way these [cases] are negotiated and settled out depends on how the litigation goes,” he said about settlement terms.
“We believe that this system of parallel schools has to stop and directly disadvantages students who can’t access it. … Obviously [the educational foundations] are providing a service that people want to access, but whether or not they are selling public education for a fee is really the question,” German said.