Last week, Huntington Park took the extraordinary step of banning all new charter schools for a year. But unlike other places that have tried to untangle charter schools because of their unelected boards, or their effect on local school enrollment, Huntington Park was trying to make a different argument.
What was there reason for banning charter schools? Traffic.
They argued that new charter schools were creating unmanageable traffic across the small city.
And if you have ever been to Huntington Park, you know that traffic is a pretty big problem there. They have no freeways within three miles of the city. They have several tracks that can cause major delays when trains roll through. Trust me, I know, I once sat behind a train from 6:45 to 7:30, and then raced into my classroom before a 7:45 bell.
Oh yeah, did I mention that I taught at a charter school in Huntington Park for 5 years?
Meanwhile, charter school activists are up in arms over the thought that their options are going to be limited. The CCSA stated that they “will continue fighting for the political environment that we know is possible — an environment in which learning is prized above all else.” I don’t want to put words in their mouth – but their argument is essentially – great schools are more important that traffic problems.
But when I read that the city was accusing charter schools of traffic, I immediately recognized this an argument where both sides are right.
The city’s main argument is that charter schools are drawing in students from outside the city of Huntington Park. If that is true, then we should see an enrollment increase in Huntington Park schools. Instead, we see this:
Enrollment of all schools in Huntington Park has remained essentially flat since 1996. There has been no dramatic increase of students in Huntington park due to Charter schools.
Why not?
Because the charter schools are not adding more students; they are eating away at the enrollment of the traditional schools.
The enrollment of traditional (LAUSD) schools in HP has decreased by 32% since 2004. Meanwhile, the charter schools have simply filled in the gap, keeping the overall enrollment relatively constant. So if students are being drawn from outside the city, they are not really making a big impact on the number of cars on the street.
And on top of that, those new Charter Schools are some of the best in the city. KIPP Comienza was the second best school for low income students in city.
However, the real effect of the charter schools is to have dispersed the traffic across the city of Huntington park. in 1996, there were 7 schools in Huntington park, now there are 24. So instead of all of the traffic being focused around a few sites, the traffic is now dispersed around the city. These maps illustrates the difference.
So what you have is a bunch of parts of Huntington Park where there used to be no traffic, and now there are car lines at 3:00 PM. And to be honest – If I lived in a house for many years and suddenly there was traffic outside my door every day – I would probably report it as well.
So the traffic? It is actually a real concern.
To me, the solution seems simple: The city needs to work with all the schools (all 24 of them) to better coordinate the traffic and request that the schools coordinate their release times. An amicable relationship with the charter schools could probably help convince them to change their bell schedule to be more neighborhood friendly. One idea might be layered dismissal times – so that K-1 gets out at 2:20, 2-3 at 2:40 and 4-5 at 3:00. There are plenty of ideas that could solve these problems.
However, with an action like charter prohibition, escalation tends to be the next step. And it sure seems like we are in an era of great escalation around the topic of charter schools.