HART LIKELY TO RENEW CHARTER FOR INDEPENDENT SCHOOL AFTER ISSUES RESOLVED.

Byline: SUE DOYLE Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA -- A continuation school that was recently at risk of losing its charter with the William S. Hart Union High School District will likely have it renewed next year.

Opportunities For Learning, an independent academic program that serves about 2,500 Santa Clarita students, had came under scrutiny by the district in February for its standardized test scores and for what appeared to be a high dropout rate.

But district officials said the charter school system has since provided documentation to show that its program is working and is keeping students in school. Given that information, they now expect that its charter will be renewed.

``I think the whole relationship has been strengthened by this wake-up call,'' Leslie Crunelle, assistant superintendent of education services for the district, said Monday.

The district agreed in February to work with the independent school system for three months before putting it on notice that it could end its charter. The start of that notice would have come this Wednesday at the school board meeting.

Since February, district officials say it has received new information about Opportunities For Learning that has influenced its renewal decision. One major contributor was the charter's Similar School Ranking, a comparison of like schools that was recently released by the California Department of Education.

The state calculation gave the Santa Clarita charter an eight out of possible 10 points, said Bill Toomey, Opportunities For Learning director of instruction.

``For us, that definitely shows we're making a ton of progress,'' Toomey said.

In addition, Toomey said the school system is collecting better information on its students when they leave the program and is following up with where they go.

In the past, students who left the charter were often labeled in the books as dropouts, while other reasons for leaving the school, such as to enroll in another program, were not considered. But now their reasons for leaving are documented better, said Toomey.

In the 2003-04 school year, 393 students, or about 26 percent, were listed as dropouts. The year before, more than 600 students were considered dropouts.

Also, the school system tested its students this spring on the state's standardized tests that will show its Academic Performance Index rank and other information. The state is expected to release these results for all school districts in August.

Although the school system conducted these tests last year, the testing wasn't always done in the past, leaving no measure of its academic performance based on state standards.

Toomey said it has been difficult in the past to test Opportunities For Learning students on the state exams because the school doesn't follow a traditional structure.

Opportunities For Learning serves students who have been expelled from traditional public high schools or have dropped out of school to work. In some cases, the students were home-schooled and do not want to attend traditional high schools.