GILROY—A Gilroy charter school that’s among the state’s top performers is the target of a Gilroy Unified School District probe that found dozens of problems ranging from misused funds to failures to support special needs students and Hispanic families.
A public hearing will be held on Thursday, Aug. 6 at GUSD headquarters to address the concerns, explore the future of Gilroy Prep Charter School and to give the public, school critics and the staff of GPS opportunity to respond.
Officials at GPS and its parent company, Navigator Schools, said in a note to the Dispatch that all of the identified issues have been resolved since the district conducted its audit and investigation and raised concerns.
“We took the concerns raised by the district very seriously and submitted a comprehensive response to the Notice of Violations submitted by GUSD,” said Kristen Carr, Director of Community Outreach for Navigator Schools.
“Of the 10 items within the scope of the audit, GPS was determined to be fully compliant on 7 items. Of the remaining 3, 1 had been sufficiently fixed by GPS and Navigator prior to the completion of the audit report; and the other 2 have subsequently been addressed,” Carr said.
The hearing was granted at the request of critics of the school’s management at Navigator Schools and its head, James Dent, a former Gilroy elementary principal whose detractors want him removed.
The seven ‘major’ concerns outlined in the board’s agenda are as follows:
· GPS funds were used for expansion efforts.
· Failure to implement education plans for special needs students.
· Unequal treatment of Hispanic parents and families.
· Did not provide a good description of GPS’s middle school curriculum.
· Questions about governance structure and appointment of board members.
· Protecting employees from unlawful retaliation.
· Concerns outside GUSD’s scope but responsibility of the Navigator Board.
Gilroy Prep, started by two Gilroy teachers four years ago, was approved by the GUSD to operate as a charter school. Charters schools are public schools that operate with taxpayer funds but are largely autonomous and are not required to have teacher unions. In the case of Gilroy Prep, its salaries tended to be higher than those in other Gilroy public schools and the school received hundreds of thousands of dollars in start-up grants. It also launched an ambitious expansion plan to bring it methodologies to other communities.
Charters do answer to the local school boards on fiscal and legal matters and program performance—which are the issues critics have seized on.
“GUSD has the obligation to put GPS on notice if it finds violations of GPS’s charter or violations of the law, according to a statement in the board’s agenda packet.
For nearly a year, critics have alleged core problems at the school, including turnover rates, the alleged intimidation of staff and teachers by management and money that was supposed to go classroom spent instead on efforts to expand Navigator into other communities.
Carr continued:“One of the items highlighted in the report, and since rectified was the accounting of funds spent on expansion efforts. Subsequent to the audit report, Navigator identified all charter school expansion-related expenditures which were inadvertently charged to GPS. All expenses have been reimbursed in full to GPS.
“A second issue of concern referred to an allegation that not all IEPs (individual education plans, for special ed students) were being properly implemented. After conversations with GPS, and upon further review by the district, it was proven that all 16 GPS IEPs were implemented correctly during the school year.”
For his part, Dent has acknowledged some of the problems. He attributed them to an overemphasis on academics and too little attention to the business side of things, but said things were being corrected by the addition of more administrative staff.
He was criticized harshly, for example, for putting his wife on the school’s payroll. He admitted doing so, apologized for a lapse in judgment and promised to refund all the money she earned.
But critics, lead by former Navigator Schools board member James Gargiulo, have also taken Dent and his administration to task for the amount of time and money that has been spent on often failed efforts to expand into other communities.
Navigator has a similar prep school in Hollister, but repeated efforts to secure permission from school boards in Salinas and Morgan Hill failed, leaving the perception that a lot of staff time and funding was wasted.
The Thursday, Aug. 6, public hearing begins at 5:30 p.m. at the GUSD administration building, 7810 Arroyo Circle, Gilroy.
