On March 14, 2025, the Third District Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court judgment setting aside the State Board of Education’s (“SBE”) decision to reverse decisions denying the Mayacamas Charter School petition made by the Napa Valley Unified School District and Napa County Board of Education. The court of appeal found that SBE failed to adhere to its limited scope of review established under Assembly Bill No. 1505 (2019-2020 Reg. Sess.) (“AB 1505”) when considering administrative appeals of local school district boards’ and county boards of education’s denials of a charter school petition. A significant victory for local school boards, the decision confirms the Legislature’s intent to give local school boards primary authority over decisions to approve or deny charter school petitions.
With the passage of AB 1505 in 2019, the Legislature drastically revised the process for establishing charter schools—placing this authority primarily in the hands of locally elected officials sitting on local school boards. Under AB 1505, SBE’s role when considering administrative appeals from decisions by local school boards denying charter school petitions is limited, and it may reverse those decisions only where a charter school petitioner has established that each of the local boards abused their respective discretion.
On September 15, 2022, SBE reversed decisions by the Napa Valley Unified School District Board of Education (“District”) and the Napa County Board of Education (“County Board”) denying a charter petition to establish the Mayacamas Charter Middle School (the “Mayacamas Charter”). In rendering its decision to reverse the local boards’ decisions, SBE failed to apply the deferential abuse of discretion standard of review dictated by AB 1505 and generally applicable to all quasi-legislative agency decisions.
The District and the California School Boards Association’s Education Legal Alliance (“CSBA”) separately filed suit challenging SBE’s decision to reverse the denials of the Mayacamas Charter. On June 29, 2023, the trial court issued a final ruling in favor of the District and CSBA, determining that SBE had failed to correctly apply the deferential abuse of discretion standard of review.
On March 14, 2025, the Third District Court of Appeal agreed. In its opinion, the court found that the alleged impartiality of the local boards is not a valid legal basis to set aside a decision to deny a charter school petition and that even if it were, there was insufficient evidence in the record to support SBE’s conclusion that the District’s consideration of the Mayacamas Charter petition was biased or otherwise unfair.
The court went on to reject SBE’s determination that the County Board’s findings were improper or untimely. The court clarified that a charter petitioner’s appeal from a school district’s denial is not complete until the petitioner submits its appeal petition to the district office, along with a signed certification that the petitioner deems the appeal to be complete. The court also concluded that the County Board’s written denial findings may be ratified even after the County Board voted to deny the Mayacamas Charter petition. Additionally, the court found ample evidence in the administrative record to support the County Board’s findings that Mayacamas Charter was demonstrably unlikely to serve the interests of the entire community due to anticipated impacts that the proposed charter school would have on the District’s staffing and fiscal condition.
