After a recent skirmish with the Morgan Hill Unified School District, Navigator Schools is pulling their charter application but vowing to resubmit a more complete version next month.
Meanwhile, Rocketship Education, a San Jose-based charter organization, has notified the district that it plans on opening another school within the city limits in 2014.
If both charters are approved, and their projected enrollment numbers are reached and combined with enrollments of Morgan Hill’s two existing charter schools, roughly 20 percent of the city’s 8,619 students would be attending charter schools in 2014.
Navigator Schools Co-founder James Dent, also principal at Gilroy Prep School, said the pushing back of the petition submission in no way jeopardizes Navigator Schools’ mission of opening Morgan Hill Prep in time for the 2014-15 school year. This would mark the third school established by the charter management organization, which founded Gilroy Prep in 2012 and is gearing to open Hollister Prep in the fall of 2013.
“When we open charter schools, it’s because we want to work side by side with a district and not in conflict with a district,” Dent said. “It seemed like it was going in the wrong direction with the district and that’s not what we wanted to happen.”
MHUSD Superintendent Wes Smith confirmed Navigator Schools’ petition has been pulled for revisions and the district is looking forward to going over the revised version.
Some of the issues MHUSD identified in Navigator Schools’ charter petition included non-compliance with No Child Left Behind legislation; inclusion of a family contract that stipulates mandatory volunteer time for parents; and a wrong starting year, Smith detailed.
“We believe this is the cleanest way to go forward,” said Dent, who plans on having the new petition reviewed by the California Charter School Association as well as Navigator Schools’ legal counsel to clear up any omissions or errors rather than take any legal recourse against MHUSD.
Smith maintains MHUSD wants to “work collaboratively with (Navigator Schools), or any group, that comes into town. I believe our actions clearly speak to that,” he added.
That includes new interactions with Rocketship Education, a charter management organization based in San Jose that Navigator Schools took several cues from when building its own curriculums and learning models.
Rocketship, which was approved by the Santa Clara County Office of Education to open more than 20 charter schools throughout the county, notified MHUSD administrators last week that its organization plans to open another charter in the city for the same 2014-15 school year as Navigator Schools. They met Thursday with MHUSD staff. Rocketship is open to using any existing MHUSD facilities or purchasing a long-term lease at a property for its school, according to Garcia-Kohl.
“Bottom line, we’ve been learning of the disheartening statistics around Latino students in Morgan Hill and we have a proven track record serving this population,” said Director of Community Development Jessica Garcia-Kohl for Rocketship Education.
By “proven track record,” Garcia-Kohl cited the successes of students at Mateo Sheedy Elementary School, which opened in 2007 in San Jose. With 89 percent Latino students, 87 percent students on free and reduced lunch and 63 percent English Language Learners, Mateo Sheedy scored a 924 on the Academic Performance Index – the state’s yardstick for measuring academic success. Sheedy’s 924 was the third highest API within the San Jose Unified School District.
Charter school leaders such as those at Navigator and Rocketship have identified Morgan Hill as a city that could use that kind of scholarly boost.
MHUSD has been plagued with a low graduation rate – the latest report released by the California Department of Education has the district at 78.4 percent, last among 12 districts in the county. While MHUSD is in the process of challenging the CDE’s statistics, it also has the second highest dropout rate in the county at 17 percent, which climbs to 21 percent for the Hispanic subgroup. The same Hispanic subgroup holds a 715 Base API, more than a hundred points lower than the White and Asian subgroups, according to CDE data. In addition, the CDE’s similar schools report card gave the lowest possible ranking to six MHUSD schools.
Garcia-Kohl said “the sheer demand of parents wanting us (in Morgan Hill),” as well as the urging of County Board of Education trustee Julia Hover-Smoot, a former MHUSD trustee, who, during a recent meeting suggested Rocketship consider setting up shop in MHUSD, were reasons enough to target South County.
“Honestly, they’ve been pleading with us to do so,” Garcia-Kohl said. “I think our goal in Morgan Hill would be the same as our mission everywhere else, which is to close the achievement gap … in our lifetime.”
Spreading successful learning models and closing the achievement gap – defined as the disparity in educational performance between students of different ethnic groups – is also a primary goal also outlined by Navigator Schools leaders. And they’re not off to a bad start: In its first year of operation, GPS broke the 970 API barrier – the state’s benchmark for this score is 800 – and is also the highest-performing first-year charter out of 500 in the state of California since 2006.
If MHUSD denies Navigator Schools’ new petition, the charter has 180 days to appeal to the county, which has 60 days to make its decision. If the county approves the petition, it will be responsible for operational oversight of Morgan Hill Prep instead of MHUSD, which, in accordance with Proposition 39 approved by California voters in 2000, must “provide local charter schools with facilities that are sufficient and reasonably equivalent to other buildings, classrooms or facilities in the district.”
CCOE Chief Strategy Officer Toni Cordova says the county uses the same evaluation criteria as MHUSD for reviewing charter petitions. There are 59 “independent” charter schools authorized – by a school district or the SCCOE – to operate within Santa Clara County. Rocketship currently has five operating charter schools. In order to start one in Morgan Hill in 2014, they must revise one of their other approved petitions and seek approval from the county.
There are currently two charter public schools operating in Morgan Hill.
The Charter School of Morgan Hill, located at 9530 Monterey Road in the far northwest part of town, opened in 2001 and has since boosted its enrollment to 520 students with yearly lotteries. In 2012, the charter recorded a 902 API, second to only Nordstrom Elementary (915).
Silicon Valley Flex Academy, located at 610 Jarvis Drive, is a public charter school that opened in 2011 and serves grades six through 12. According to the academy’s website, the fully accredited, hybrid school combines “the best of online education with traditional, onsite schooling practices.” The Flex Academy’s 2012 Base API for its 111 students tested was 792, according to the CDE, and received a ‘5’ state and similar schools ranking on a scale of 1 to 10.
Smith said the district needs “to have options that meet the needs of all our students.”
He will be leaving the district at the end of the month to serve as the Executive Director of the Association of California School Administrators. Smith will be replaced on an interim basis by MHUSD’s Assistant Superintendent Steven Betando of Human Resources.
