By Glenn Wohltmann
A dispute over more than $200,000 between the college and a Livermore charter school may be resolved, although the details have yet to be worked out.
The issue dates back to the 2013-14 school year, college officials confirmed, when instructors from Las Positas began teaching some upper-level classes at Livermore Valley Charter School.
“The charter school asked the college to enrich its programs by offering college-level classes on their campus for their students that would basically replace (some) high school classes,” LPC President Barry Russell said, adding that Las Positas sent in instructors for calculus and advanced English. “When we teach a class that is not open to the public and is specifically for a group. That group has to pay the total cost of the instruction, by law.”
The deal worked fine at first, Russell said.
“They paid the first semester, but then they didn’t pay that bill afterward,” he said, explaining that both schools changed administrations while the deal was in place.
“There was a mismatch. When the bills got there, they didn’t know what they were for. They didn’t pay it and so then it was back and forth. The end result was they have a bill of $208,000,” he said. “We are not asking them to pay interest. We would be happy if they paid the balance.”
The prep school has agreed to pay off its debt, but the two schools are still working out the specifics, according to Guisselle Nuñez, spokesperson for the Chabot-Las Positas Community College District.
“LPC has reached out to LVCS to collect payment, and continue to work with them on an expedited payment process,” Nuñez said. “The focus remains to get the full outstanding payments collected.”
Russell said Las Positas will continue its arrangement with the school through the end of the semester.
“We’re finishing out this semester. They did start the first part of English and they had one group of students that needed the second part. We’re finishing off that second English class so those students don’t get stuck, then we’re done offering those kinds of classes so we won’t have this problem in the future,” he said.
And similar problems are unlikely to crop up in the future.
“Kind of unrelated to them not paying their bill, we’ve rethought using our resources to fund classes for a closed section,” Russell said. “If we’re going to find a math teacher – which is difficult to find – we want to use them for our open classes and not for a closed class.”IOU 
