Faculty, staff and parents at Alma Fuerte Public School, a small TK-8 charter school in Altadena, are facing the prospect of having to move their campus in a leased Pasadena Unified property to a different facility this summer.
Schools officials said that PUSD wants Alma Fuerte to relocate from its current site, the former Edison Elementary School at 119 W. Palm Street in Altadena, down to the former Cleveland Elementary School campus at 524 Palisade Street in Pasadena. Cleveland was closed in a cost-cutting move in 2018.
Alma Fuerte has been renting campus space at the Edison Elementary School campus from PUSD since April of 2017, and renewing its lease each year, because of Prop 39, which allows such an arrangement to benefit small charter schools within a district’s boundaries.
According to the California Charter Schools Association, “Many charters are forced to spend a disproportionate amount of their budgets to rent facilities, even though they’re public schools. This is money that would be better spent in the classroom.”
“Proposition 39 was written to ensure that all public school students share equally in district facilities,” said the association. “Charter school students were to be given equal access to district facilities, if charters are able to meet certain eligibility requirements.”
Alma Fuerte School Director Laurilie Keay, and Adriani Leon, Operations Manager, laid out the scenarios for the campus’s future in a town hall Zoom meeting held Thursday.
“We apply every year for our space, and it’s always a battle,” said Leon.
According to Leon, PUSD leadership wanted to move the campus to the former Cleveland site last year but dropped the idea due to the pandemic.
The current PUSD plan is to move Alma Fuerte to the former Cleveland campus and to move the Odyssey South charter school campus into the facilities Alma Fuerte will leave vacant.
Keay added that the current offer from PUSD is preliminary, and said, “What we are trying to do is negotiate a longer-term lease” at the current campus.
Leon said that the move would displace families of all the schools involved. According to Leon, none of the parties involved have asked to move and that all would prefer to stay in their current locations.
The moves would require “considerable effort and spending for all parties involved, including PUSD,” Leon added.
The Cleveland campus is a considerably larger property than the Edison campus, it was pointed out during the meeting, with a large grass field, a large existing garden, a newer play structure and a shared outdoor learning space. Alma Fuerte would also share space with a pre-school which could serve as a “feeder school,” said the presentation.
A long-term lease would also be provided with the move by PUSD.
But the presentation also said that Alma Fuerte would lose its “sweat equity” in the old campus and that moving would be costly, and difficult to coordinate in the midst of the summer school program.
Should Alma Fuerte contest the PUSD offer, said Keay, then it would be forced to sue the PUSD, at an estimated cost of $70,000.
The presentation labeled that scenario “a hard fight, with a lot of unknowns,” and said that Alma Fuerte could “still lose.”
Leon told the meeting that a decision needed to be made quickly.
The majority of the parents in attendance at the meeting seemed to back the decision to fight for the current campus.
A number of parents also voiced agreement with the idea that “Wherever the school goes, that’s where we will go.”
Parents at Alma Fuerte are asked to fill out a survey with their opinions at https://forms.gle/
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6 thoughts on “Local Charter School Faces a Moving Decision”
We don’t want to move. PUSD, please grant a long-term lease for our current school site. Alma Fuerte has amazing teachers, staff, students, and families. We are happy where we are at. Please don’t unnecessarily disrupt all of our families!
This is a wonderful school that cares about every student and their families. It would be very sad and counter productive to make them move spending money that could be focused for students’ needs. It is time to support them and not make them move.
My child attends Alma Fuerte Public Charter School in Altadena, California. My family and I have supported Alma Fuerte’s vision since the school’s inception.
The school is my child’s second family, her home away from home.
In a ever changing world, with the pandemic causing havoc, fear, uncertainty and doubt, this is one less thing our children do not need to experience.
There are plenty of empty school buildings
(non-occupied) around town the district can choose from. In my opinion, there is no valid reason to disturb the children’s peace, and cause additional psychological trauma that the pandemic has not already caused.
PUSD, please reconsider your position and give our school a long term lease. Allow our school to continue to grow and our children to feel safe.
Alma Fuerte Public School continues to grow year after year since it’s inception.
School diversity is good! It gives parents choice and allows the parents to place their child in a learning environment that they feel is best, in order for their children to thrive academically.
There is not another school I am aware of, that offers Alma Fuerte’s Entrepreneurship curriculum starting in elementary school.
The pandemic has highlighted our communities economic weaknesses. Businesses are shutting down left and right, disappearing from our beautiful cities landscape month by month. Businesses gone, that have been around since I was a young student in PUSD twenty plus years ago.
As a community, we have a lot of work to do to rebuild our community better than before. PUSD is going to need our children. If there was ever a time a school like ours was needed, it is now! Alma Fuerte is unique, and it’s birth place should be preserved.
Again, PUSD respectfully allow our children to continue grow and learn without causing them more anxiety or stress.
Our children thank you for it!
Thank you,
Soprinye Dappa
AFPS parent
Not sure what PUSD is trying to accomplish with this other than to make two charter schools use their resources to effectively switch campuses.
These charter schools do a wonderful service by educating our youth. They take pride in how they take care of their facilities. If you don’t believe me go visit and PUSD campus and a charter school and it’s quite evident who does more with less.
PUSD should be embarrassed and ashamed. Anyone been to the PHS football stadium? Compare that to Arcadia, Monrovia, Temple City. It’s frightening to think of where all the money goes.
Quoted from the article:
“According to the California Charter Schools Association, “Many charters are forced to spend a disproportionate amount of their budgets to rent facilities, even though they’re public schools.”
Hah! Public in that they take public money, but that’s it. In California, Charter schools are allowed an automatic waiver from most state laws, regulations, and policies governing school districts. They are not required to serve students with special needs (ie those with an IEP). Their teachers do not need to be certified by the state. There are plenty of examples of charter schools in LA county that are below the bar or even fraudulent. (Failing their students include charters run by companies PUC, Kipp, Green Dot, and Camino Nuevo. Downright fraudulent: A3 Charter Schools, Today’s Fresh Start charter schools)
You don’t want your kid in a Pasadena public school? Fine. But don’t make the rest of PUSD pay for it.
Save the sob story. Move campuses if you want, but the guaranteed lease is a gift from the state. Where you get your lease is not a guarantee. Be happy you have one.
We want to keep our campus! There’s no reason to move us to another campus. Our kids have their friends, they feel their campus is their own home, they put so much love and effort to build strong friendships. Our kids have already gone through a lot, the pandemic, losing their freedom (even to going to school), losing part of their family and close friends. Now when they feel little safe, they have to fight another battle, they don’t want to move, we don’t want to move. Please let us keep our campus and keep the school community we have built. My 2 daughters start the kinder garden here since the school was founded in 2017 and it will be devastating for them and for all the kids if their memories are destroyed. We need this campus for our kids with Special needs, they feel it as their second home. We at Alma Fuerte we have so many different hard stories and most of them with a happy ending because of Alma Fuerte. #saveourcampus #wetrustyou #Victorgordo #saveourkids #almafuertepublicschool #donotgivewronginformationtopeopleaboutcharterschool #pasadenanow #ourkidsarethefuture