Charter Won't Share Space at Franklin in 2013

will go another year without sharing its campus space with a charter school, according to the school's teachers union representative Monica Whalen. 

A message posted on June 7 on the "Save Franklin" Facebook page--a group of teachers and students that oppose charter school co-location at Franklin--stated that "No charter is comingt to Franklin!!"

In May,when officials from Los Angeles International Charter High School (LAICHS) declined an offer from LAUSD through California Proposition 39 to move its operations to Franklin's campus.

However, almost immediately after LAICHS declined the offer due to concerns that their students , Franklin administrators were informed that Partnership to Uplift Communities (PUC) charter schools were now considering a Proposition 39 offer from the district.

Proposition 39 requires public school districts to provide charter schools with facilities roughly equivalent to those of public schools. Among its provisions is one that requries districts to offer unused public school campus space to charters.

Whalen was an adamant opponent of co-location, saying it would limit Franklin's students' access to resources and materials.

"Their students would have access to our library to check out books, but we wouldn't have any checks to see they got returned," Whalen said, in attempt to sum up what she thought was an unbalanced relationship between charters and public schools through Prop. 39.

Whalen told Patch she believed that Franklin's potentially expanding on-campus Los Angeles Community College program and its currently unclear administrative picture--a new principal has yet to be named for the outgoing Joseph Nacorda--contributed to PUC's decision not to co-locate at the campus.