Senator Steven Glazer remarks on Senate Floor regarding Senate Bill 126 (Charter Schools)

Senator Steven Glazer made remarks on the Senate floor regarding Senate Bill 126. The following is a full transcript of those remarks.

STEVEN GLAZER, Senator from the 7th Senate District: I want to thank the senator from Chino, her counterpart in the Assembly, the Assembly member from Long Beach, Governor Newsom and the stakeholders who worked hard on this issue over the last few weeks.

This is an issue that the Senator from Santa Monica and I have worked on for a number of years. It is true that charter schools receive public dollars and they should be under obligation to provide the same public disclosure or open meeting requirements that our other schools that are funded by the public must undertake. I would note a couple things about this legislation: one is it does provide an exception to the rule on conflicts by allowing teachers to participate in charter school boards, and I think that's a healthy addition to governance. We've done something similar at our university system by allowing faculty members to serve on our governing boards there.

Secondly the legislation has a point of sensitivity in regard to charter schools that are on tribal lands and I appreciate the author's work to ensure that we recognize the special status of a charter school I think there's just one on tribal lands.

You know in this space members has been a lot of contentious issues and controversy, a lot of rhetoric, and I'm happy to see the parties come together and finding common ground on this legislation.

I know that there are other issues in this space that continue to be points of contention. I appreciate Governor Newsom's request to the superintendent to form a task force to deal with some of the important issues regarding charter schools and that work will happen through the course of this year. It's my hope that the work that we do today, the passage of this legislation and the work that's going to go on with a superintendent and the governor will allow for some level of peace to reign in our land on these issues over the course of the of this year. And this legislation is a good start. It's found common ground, it has a balance to it, and I hope that that can set the right tone as the, the author said it during the committee hearing, set the right tone for the year and I thank her for her leadership on this.