Two trustees are leaning toward closing Gilroy’s only charter
school and the five other trustees are seriously considering the
possibility.
Two trustees are leaning toward closing Gilroy’s only charter school and the five other trustees are seriously considering the possibility.
An incriminating report the school district released earlier this year revealed that El Portal Leadership Academy – a Gilroy charter school run by the Mexican American Community Service Agency – faces charter-threatening academic and financial hurdles. Not only did the agency skim about $140,000 from its teachers’ retirement funds, the school has also fallen behind academically on state standards for about six years running.
“I’m leaning toward revoking the charter,” said Gilroy Unified School District trustee Mark Good. “It’s outrageous. Money is disappearing. They have poor test results … I have no faith in their credibility.”
Though Good said anything is possible at Thursday evening’s board meeting, he felt the school board “bent over backwards” to accommodate MACSA when they stayed until midnight at an April board meeting to hear the agency out.
“I felt there was a lot of denial,” trustee Tom Bundros said of MACSA’s presentation. “I didn’t get a strong sense that they understood what had gone wrong, that they had taken responsibility for what had taken place and that they were prepared to act accordingly. I heard excuses.”
Trustees left the April meeting with three options to consider: pulling the charter, sharing the management of El Portal with MACSA or relying on assurances from MACSA that things will change.
Trustees are not considering letting the school continue as is. However, most trustees were wary of co-managing the school. Several trustees said it would be overstepping the bounds of the school’s charter.
“I don’t think that’s our role as board members,” trustee Fred Tovar said. “I don’t even want to be involved in co-managing (El Portal).”
Trustee Francisco Dominguez said he was interested in exploring what shared management might look like, but also said he didn’t believe MACSA could convince trustees that the agency could turn El Portal around.
“Before we pull the plug, I want to make sure we couldn’t do anything else first,” he said.
Trustees were concerned that by shifting from the role of overseer to co-manager, the district could lose some of its already strained resources to the charter school. Bundros said that rather than share management responsibilities with a school that’s floundering, it might make more sense to fold El Portal students into the facilities the school district is already managing.
The agency recently came under fire for misappropriating $140,000 from employees’ retirement accounts at El Portal. While the organization has paid back about $103,000 to its Gilroy employees, it also had a debt of $250,000 owed to teachers at its San Jose charter school, Academia Calmecac, and sources revealed that the organization could “easily” owe up to an additional $400,000 to its non-school employees. A union representative with Service Employees International Union – which represents these employees – did not return phone messages.
The agency is scheduled to make a $20,000 payment to El Portal employees later this month and plans to be caught up by the end of June. The Santa Clara County Office of Education has also brought in a state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team to conduct an investigation of MACSA’s two charter schools. The District Attorney is waiting for the Office of Education’s report before making any decision about prosecution.
Chronically poor test scores further compounded trustees’ worries about El Portal. MACSA administrators provided trustees with about 200 pages of material just hours before the April meeting, but the information did little to answer trustees’ questions, trustees said.
MACSA Board President Louis Rocha and Chief Executive Officer Olivia Soza-Mendiola did not return phone messages.
Trustee Rhoda Bress said co-management is “almost a tacit admission that they cannot do it alone.”
“None of the choices are pleasant,” Bress said. “They’ve had several years to get this school on track and it hasn’t happened.”
Trustees are also waiting to hear back about a particular grant MACSA factored into El Portal’s operating budget. The application for the Bank of America Neighborhood Builder award – a $200,000 grant MACSA will receive over the course of this year and next – specifies that the funds may not be used for primary or secondary education. Trustee were concerned that the agency was using one-time grant money to fund ongoing expenses and that the agency was violating the terms of the grant altogether by using it for the charter school.
“They’re saying they can do anything they want with it,” Dominguez said. “I have questions about whether or not I believe them.”
At a previous meeting, trustees asked MACSA to quantify the total amount it owed its employees’ retirement accounts. Rocha told the school board that MACSA’s board was looking into the matter and was not prepared to answer the question. With no information to indicate otherwise, Apuzzo said she doesn’t see how the agency can turn the school around.
“I haven’t seen evidence so far that they can do that,” she said. “Either MACSA does it right or we revoke the charter.”
