CORAL Academy on the road of rejection -- again

It doesn't look good for the proponents of CORAL Academy, a proposed charter school in the Monterey Peninsula that's been trying to get approved for more than five years.

After being rejected twice by the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, and twice by the Monterey County Office of Education, CORAL petitioners turned to the state. Earlier this month, the advisory committee on charter schools recommended CORAL be rejected, using language that was pretty much used already by administrators at MPUSD and at MCOE.

"The CDE finds that the CORAL Academy charter petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the intended program, and the petition does not contain reasonably comprehensive descriptions of the 16 charter elements."

Further, CDE administrators say CORAL Petitioners are proposing a program to serve special needs population, but are not explaining how to staff such a program or how to pay for it.

"The petitioners significantly underestimated the number of support staff, side-by-side assistants, special service providers, health care professionals, and psychologists that will likely be required to appropriately serve the anticipated school population. Additional services that may be reasonably anticipated for the target population, such as transportation, extended school year, and alternative student placements have not been budgeted."

The advisory committee recommends the full State Board of Education hold a public hearing and reject the charter. On occasions, state trustees go against their staff recommendations and vote their way, but it's not common -- which makes an approval for CORAL unlikely.

No public hearing has been set yet. Stay tuned.