From Paula Stapleton, parent, Rancho Palos Verdes:

Families move to Palos Verdes because it offers children what is perhaps the best public education in California. Residents are passionate about their children’s education and the public school system that provides it. They contribute to PTA, booster clubs and the Peninsula Education Foundation, volunteer in classrooms, and donate countless hours for the common good. Currently, the district is threatened with a three to four million dollar budget shortfall and the community is rallying to protect their children from the resulting fallout. With every dollar critical, it is increasingly challenging to ensure that all children continue to receive a top-notch public education. The proposed TIP Academy PV runs counter to this goal. Common sense dictates that having to support a new school site while maintaining current sites will be costly. Having the charter school open to any student in the state of California (required by law) whose ADA will only cover a portion of their educational costs will further contribute to the fiscal crisis.

TIP proponents questioned about the cost to the district can only respond that they “expect” PVPUSD will make appropriate decisions about declining enrollment and act reasonably in incurring oversight costs. They implicitly claim their desire for a different learning environment for their own children trumps the common good.

Palos Verdes schools can measure the success of its students by their outstanding test scores. TIP Academy professes they do not “teach to the test”. Not surprising since the TIP Encinitas School, on which they are modeling their program, has lower test scores than the schools in Palos Verdes and, in fact, score in the middle of the pack within their own district. The “test” they refer to measures mastery of the California State Standards of which all schools, charter or not, are required to teach by law.

The concept of “differentiated instruction” which TIP proponents claim provides the required innovation to justify the charter school is not new, revolutionary or cutting edge. It has been a staple of teacher training for over 25 years and is provided to Palos Verdes teachers on a continuing basis.

The bottom line is TIP Academy will siphon funds from existing students and has nothing new or compelling to offer. It’s a risky financial and educational experiment that must be rejected!