AB 84 undermines California’s expanded learning vision – and harms the students who need it most

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.

California is investing over $4 billion in the the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P) to help students thrive beyond the traditional school day. These programs provide academic support, creative enrichment, and safe spaces after hours — efforts that are rightly being celebrated as a way to boost achievement and reengage students.

But a bill currently moving through the legislature — Assembly Bill 84 — threatens to cut off those very opportunities for thousands of students in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

AB 84 specifically targets public charter schools that offer flexible, non-classroom-based (NCB) instruction. These programs, sometimes called flex-based or personalized learning schools, serve students who need a different approach to education, including those recovering from trauma, struggling in traditional settings, or living in rural areas with limited access to school programs. Instead of supporting their learning, AB 84 would prohibit these schools from partnering with local businesses and nonprofits to offer enrichment activities.

This would be devastating in communities like ours. Ocean Grove Charter School has served families in this region for 20 years and currently educates more than 1,000 students across Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. These students benefit from partnerships with organizations such as Santa Cruz Learning Center, Ace Music Lessons, Challenge Island and Drawn2Art Aptos, which provide music, STEM, art and hands-on learning experiences rooted in the community.

Here’s where the contradiction lies: School districts are encouraged to partner with community organizations under ELO-P, yet AB 84 would ban charter schools from doing the same, even when they use their own general funds to do it. The state is promoting enrichment in one setting and punishing it in another.

Families don’t choose flex-based charter schools on a whim. They choose them because their child needs flexibility, a personalized pace or a safer learning environment. In these schools, enrichment isn’t just a bonus — it’s central to how students learn and grow. For some, it’s what keeps them in school at all.

Flex-based charter schools already receive less state funding than traditional schools and are excluded from ELO-P grants. Despite that, they’ve made enrichment a priority by investing limited resources into programs that help students thrive. AB 84 would take that away, not because of poor outcomes, but simply because these students are learning outside a traditional classroom.

Let’s be clear: AB 84 doesn’t improve accountability. It doesn’t stop fraud, as supporters claim. It stops community-based learning. It blocks partnerships with environmental educators, theater groups, and local small businesses, only for students in certain public schools.

This creates a troubling double standard: Two students living on the same street could have completely different access to enrichment, based only on which public school they attend. That’s not equity. That’s exclusion.

If we truly care about giving all students access to creative, engaging, and community-rooted learning—especially in rural and coastal areas—then policies must support, not punish, the schools that are already doing that work.

We urge lawmakers to reject AB 84. Our students deserve opportunity, not obstacles.

Cynthia Rachel serves as the director of communications and development for Innovative Education Management, which operates South Sutter, Ocean Grove and Sky Mountain Charter Schools, tuition-free public charter schools serving over 8,500 students across California, including hundreds of students across the Central Coast and Monterey Bay regions. Readers can contact Senate education committee members to express their concern with the bill.