Celerity Troika: Scores vs. Integrity

Last week, a bombshell dropped in the form of  20 megabytes of PDFs on the agenda files of the LAUSD Board of Education. Yes, buried deep within the most boring file ever was a something that rarely happens.

The charter schools division recommended the denial of seven charter schools.

One of those schools whose charter is slated to be denied is Celerity Troika, and the interests me because they are co-located on my campus.

I am going to start off by stating the obvious: I am not an unbiased source when it comes to Celerity. They are co-located on my campus. Several of my students used to go to their schools. I have also noted that their CEO was paid $470,000 back in 2013, which was the highest CEO compensation of any charter in LA. They also have the worst website I have ever seen…..check out the News section and tell me what it means.

Ok, enough….

I am going to try to remain unbiased, and to prove it, I’ll start off by saying this – Celerity Troika has some really strong scores. 68% of their students met or exceed standards in English and 67% met or exceed in math. That is much stronger than the schools around it, including my own school.

However, their school is actually very different from Burbank Middle School. And it is different from Garvanza Elementary, the K-6 school located right next door where they are also co-located.

Looking only at tested students (since we are comparing test scores), Troika is 67% socioeconomically disadvantaged, while Burbank and Garvanza are 88% and 90% respectively.

Another major difference is in the levels of parental education. Almost 50% of students at Celerity Troika have parents with some college education more. Compare that to Burbank and Garvanza, which only have 25% with the same level of education.

The two LAUSD schools have populations that are pretty similar, while the Celerity Troika, which is located on their campus, has a more educated, wealthier population. So can we even compare their to their local schools? 

But the biggest difference between the LAUSD schools and Celerity is that Troika has extremely small class sizes. Their eight grade class had 15 students last year. Their sixth and seventh grade classes seem to have under 26 students each (this is kind of a guess based on their enrollment).

To keep numbers that low, it takes quite a lot of money.

And that is where the controversy really comes in. The LAUSD board document highlights that Celerity Troika is financially unstable. Last year Troika borrowed $1.2 million from the other Celerity schools. And according to the LAUSD analysis, “Celerity Troika and CEG appear financially dependent on the transfer of funds in order to stay afloat”. 

The problem here is that Celerity Troika is borrowing money from other Celerity schools with no repayment plan, no interest agreement, and no plans in the event of default. If Celerity Troika were to go under, the borrowed money would never get repaid, and they would essentially be stiffing the other schools, possibly compromising the integrity of the educational program for their students.  

Let’s take this all in – Celerity Troika has strong scores compared to local schools. However, their population is pretty different from those schools, and they are financially in the red, operating based on some pretty shady accounting practices.

Celerity Troika’s data is unquestionably strong. What is in question is their integrity. And tomorrow, the board will decide whether a lack of integrity is enough to close a school down.