Dolores Huerta Foundation vs. Bakersfield’s first charter school

Bakersfield’s first charter school opened its doors to hundreds of students last week in a victory for students and parents. The local teachers union brought in the big guns to fight against the charter — 94-year-old Dolores Huerta herself. Thankfully, Huerta lost.

There are nine charter schools spread throughout the most remote parts of Kern County, including four charter schools in Delano, and one in Arvin, Lost Hills, Shafter, Peak Mountain Club, and Ridgecrest, respectively. But no in-person charter school has existed in Bakersfield — Kern County’s largest city — until now.

The much-anticipated Central Academy of Arts and Technology (CAAT) opened in downtown Bakersfield on August 14, serving nearly 400 TK through 8th grade students. CAAT plans to progressively expand to serve high school students in the 9th through 12th grades over the next four years.

The enthusiasm of Bakersfield students and parents for the new charter school is clear: There’s already a waitlist for families eager to enroll. But getting the charter approved hasn’t been easy. In August 2022, the anti-charter (aka: anti-competition) teachers union successfully rallied the Bakersfield City School District to deny CAAT’s original charter.

At the time, CAAT executive director Joanna Kendrick said the district’s decision “…wasn’t a shock. Local districts aren’t always super welcoming to a charter school for many reasons.”

One of the reasons in this particular fight was the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a left-wing activist organization pulled into the case by Bakersfield’s teachers union.

According to the California Teachers Association website, “When a troubling petition for a new charter school in downtown Bakersfield reared its head, Steve Comstock, president of the Bakersfield Elementary Teachers Association, turned to the community to help fight it… [H]e engaged the Dolores Huerta Foundation, right down the street from his office, and its renowned labor leader for assistance.”

Huerta even made a special appearance before the Bakersfield City School District board meeting.

“There’s a movement in the United States to create more charter schools, but also to take that money out of public education,” Huerta said at the board meeting.

The teacher union’s talking point accusing charter schools of diverting education funding from the public school system is a fallacy that pretends charter schools are not public, when in fact, charter schools are public schools: They are open to all students, funded with tax dollars, and completely free to attend. Charter schools are open to all students regardless of zoning or a student’s residence, whereas admission to a traditional public school is determined by district boundaries and requires an interdistrict transfer for a student to attend a school they aren’t “zoned for.”

When a student moves from a traditional public school to a charter school, the average daily attendance (ADA) of the traditional school’s district decreases. ADA is used in the state’s formula for allocating education funds. Contrary to Huerta’s claim, charter schools do not steal money from traditional schools or take it away from traditional school students; the case is simply that when the traditional school’s attendance drops, the state’s funding formula reflects this decrease in enrollment.

Encouraged by Huerta’s faulty comments, however, BCSD rejected CAAT’s charter. CAAT appealed to the Kern County Superintendent of Schools and the charter was approved in January 2023 by a 5-2 vote. But that wasn’t enough for Dolores Huerta. Nearly a year after its approval and just eight months before CAAT’s scheduled opening, DHF sued the Kern Superintendent in order to block the charter.

Last month, the case was finally decided and the court ruled in favor of CAAT, which opened its doors last week.

“This ruling reinforces our rights as parents to have access to a free public school of our choice,” Joanna Kendrick said after the decision.

Which begs the question: Why would Huerta and her foundation, who are supposedly dedicated to advocating for the underserved, come out in opposition to a free public charter school in Bakersfield, a majority-minority city where only 27 percent of students meet state English Language Arts standards and just 15 percent meet grade-level math standards?

California Policy Center reached out to the Dolores Huerta Foundation for answers but has yet to receive a response. But the fact that Huerta and her foundation are working in lockstep with the California Teachers Association (CTA) is no secret. An article, “Celebrating Dolores Huerta,” in CTA’s California Educator earlier this year describes the partnership this way:

“Huerta has joined educators for major struggles over the past few years — picketing with her grandson and friends outside their school during the United Teachers Los Angeles strike; leading chants in the pouring rain during a rally for the Sacramento City Teachers Association strike; and heading a mile-long march through the streets of Oakland during the Oakland Education Association strike…

Huerta and her foundation have also fought alongside CTA to support schools and communities through Propositions 30 and 55, championed CTA’s legislation to reform charter schools, and voiced opposition to new charter school petitions in the Central Valley.”

Sadly, Huerta, who CTA says earned her teaching credential before co-founding the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, has aligned herself with union leaders instead of students. Kern County ranks in the bottom 10 percent of all California counties by public school performance — number 54 of 58 — and the vast majority of K-12 students are trapped in low-performing public schools that have been controlled by the teachers unions for decades. Charter schools are free public schools that offer families an alternative with better student outcomes.

The bottom line is that left-wing organizations like the Dolores Huerta Foundation and California’s teachers unions — including Bakersfield’s local union affiliate — oppose charter schools because they make the neighboring union-controlled public schools look bad. The union protects poor performing teachers, advocates more for students becoming social justice warriors than becoming proficient in reading and math, and operates with little accountability to the district or parents. Charter schools threaten the unions’ stranglehold on Kern County parents.

Thanks to CAAT, Bakersfield families now have an additional option when it comes to educating their children. And with another charter school, William J. Frink College Prep, opening next year, hopefully school choice is here to stay in Bakersfield.

— by Abby Lehnig, Kern Regional Director for California Policy Center