Charter Status Pays Off, in Cash : Vaughn school has $1.2-million surplus in first year of statewide program

Forget bake sales. Principal Yvonne Chan dreams of bigger things, such as who should be her school’s investment counselor. She’s going to need one.

Last year, Chan’s Vaughn Street Elementary School in Pacoima applied for and was granted charter status within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The statewide charter program allows a limited number of public schools to operate independently of their parent districts while continuing to receive district funding. The school changed its name to the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, but that was hardly the only difference.

Chan and her charges have rung up a surplus of $1.2 million this year, an astonishing feat in a school system that has been forced to cut more than $1 billion from its budget over the last several years. Another LAUSD charter campus in the Valley--Fenton Avenue School--is projecting a $200,000 surplus. These examples are two of the best arguments yet for site-based management.

First, Chan scaled back administrative costs. Vaughn did its own hiring rather than paying the district for personnel services. Public schools are also funded according to student attendance, and Vaughn achieved a daily rate of 99%. Telephone calls were made to students’ homes whenever they were absent, and incentives for perfect attendance were created.

Chan will use the surplus to buy surrounding properties for use as a cultural center and library, and for more classroom space for a school so overcrowded that it needs three rotating schedules to accommodate its students.

Such extra effort is essential at Vaughn. Its students, who are mostly Latino and poor, live in one of the San Fernando Valley’s toughest neighborhoods. Vaughn students are among the lowest-achieving in a district that as a whole was lackluster in the recent California Learning Assessment System exams.

What Vaughn has saved can now be directed toward improving academic performance. In the meantime, its noteworthy success ought to be studied closely by the rest of the LAUSD.