The California Charter Authorizing Professionals (CCAP, pronounced “SEA cap”) is a nonprofit association founded in 2013 by a group of experienced charter school authorizing staff members from school districts and county offices of education around California, who came together to strengthen charter school authorizing practices.

CCAP’s mission is to “advance quality public education for all students by providing professionals with the support, resources, and collective voice necessary to foster high-performing, fiscally sound, autonomous, and accountable charter schools.”

CCAP collaborates with the California Department of Education and the Santa Clara County Office of Education in implementing the Charter Authorizer Support Initiative (CASI), funded by a federal Charter Schools Program subgrant to expand and strengthen support for charter school authorizing through training and networking, with a special focus on small and/or rural authorizers. CASI also reinforces the objectives of Charter Authorizing 2.0 (CA2.), CCAP’s vision for advancing equity and access through quality authorizing.

CCAP has also partnered with the Colorado Association of Charter School Authorizers (CACSA), and the Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers (FACSA), to launch the National Network for District Authorizing (NN4DA), to support state-level initiatives that strengthen the charter school authorizing practices of school districts. NN4DA, which has expanded to include additional state partners is the next generation of CCAP’s previous collaboration with CACSA and FACSA, known as the Tri-State Alliance, which also was funded through a federal National Charter Schools Program Dissemination Grant.

CCAP also is proud of its strategic partnership with California’s Small School Districts’ Association (SSDA). All SSDA members automatically are members of CCAP at no additional cost, and SSDA and CCAP collaborate to support small districts in fulfilling their charter oversight duties.

CCAP develops and disseminates toolkits to help school districts and county offices of education with often complicated charter school authorizing processes so that they do not have to create as many policies and practices from scratch. CCAP’s Resource Library includes these and other tools, from across California and beyond. CCAP is continually adding new resources, news items, and information to its website and provides periodic email alerts and newsletters with important information for authorizers, other education officials and professionals, and policymakers. Join CCAP’s circulation list here.

In the aftermath of the A3 charter school fraud case, CCAP convened a broad-based Anti-Fraud Task Force that in May of 2024 issued a report of 20 recommendations for charter schools, authorizers, school districts, and policymakers entitled “Protecting California Public Schools Against Fraud: The Charter Sector and Beyond.”

Charter authorizing professionals interested in participating in CCAP’s work can visit the membership page for details.