Top Takeaways Newsom’s plan focuses on strengthening financial oversight and auditing requirements. Critics argue that audits are designed to review records after misconduct occurs. The governor’s proposals omit elements some reform advocates sought, including more training and technical support for school districts and county offices of education that authorize charter schools. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a narrower set of changes than the sweeping charter school fraud reforms to prevent fraud sought by some advocates.In the budget trailer bill released this week, Newsom focused on strengthening financial oversight by expanding auditing requirements and auditor training for all school districts, county office of education and charter schools.But organizations that spent months negotiating last year’s charter school anti-fraud bills — including Senate Bill 414, which lawmakers passed but Newsom vetoed — responded by echoing the governor’s own veto language, saying the new proposals fall short. The governor’s auditing proposals, if implemented, would, for the first time, apply the same auditing rules and expectations across all public school systems — school districts, county offices of education and charter schools — rather than singling out charter oversight. $25 million recovered in charter school fraud case to support San Diego students, families The San Diego County Office of Education recently received a $25 million grant from fines in the massive A3 Education fraud case to support the county’s most vulnerable students and their families.In one of the most notorious scandals involving charter schools, the founders of A3, an online charter school empire, stole an estimated…
