Administrators who oversee El Portal Leadership Academy riled
trustees during a two-hour presentation that glossed over the
school’s financial and academic failures, trustees said.
Administrators who oversee El Portal Leadership Academy riled trustees during a two-hour presentation that glossed over the school’s financial and academic failures, trustees said.
The heads of the Mexican American Community Service Agency recently came under fire for misappropriating $140,000 from employees retirement accounts at Gilroy’s only charter school – 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 last week that the organization could “easily” owe up to an additional $400,000 to its non-school employees.
However, of the 200 pages of material – packaged attractively in a binder displaying a photo of El Portal’s campus framed by a rainbow – that MACSA administrators gave to Gilroy Unified School District trustees just hours before Thursday night’s board meeting, only one page addressed the debt the organization owes its El Portal teachers. The other 200 pages were comprised of class schedules, print-outs of educational Web sites, handwritten planning calendars and demographic data on El Portal’s students. MACSA administrators took nearly two hours to present the material, which tried to “divert attention” from the organization’s financial mismanagement and painted an “intentional or negligent misrepresentation” if the school’s academics, trustees said.
“You’re going to have to respond to us somehow about the allegations,” said trustee Mark Good, referring to the possibility that the organization originally did not reveal the entirety of its debt, which could have neared $800,000.
However, the organization’s Board President Louis Rocha said he was not ready to respond.
“MACSA’s board has taken steps to correct mistakes made by a few administrators,” he said. “The board is aggressively following this and monitoring this. Our commitment is to make every employee whole by June.”
Rocha said it would be “irresponsible” to report out on something that was still being looked into, but he assured trustees that the issue “is not a systemic problem,” as trustee Denise Apuzzo publicly worried. Apuzzo also pointed out that “there seems to be a lack of remorse,” but Rocha said the notion that the nonprofit was shirking its responsibility was “inflammatory” and “far from the truth.”
“If you need an apology, I did give that at our board meeting,” Rocha said. He said the agency’s actions were wrong, but they were carried out by a select few.
In addition to Rocha’s assurances, MACSA supporters listed students’ numerous accolades including community contributions and college admissions to various state schools.
However, trustees’ fears were not assuaged, and though MACSA administrators used the word “collaboration” multiple times during the presentation, trustees said they felt they were being purposely misled and that their questions were being dodged. In particular, trustees were puzzled by MACSA’s apparent lack of a response a financial audit that the district commissioned earlier this year from a consulting firm for $10,000.
Though MACSA didn’t enumerate the specific issues it had with the audit at Thursday’s board meeting, a letter Rocha and MACSA’s Chief Executive Officer Olivia Soza-Mendiola wrote to the school board read: “It would be remiss for MACSA to not publicly state that the TSS report was prepared with total disregard to an honest and comprehensive process to ensure that data collected was accurate. The report … was prepared with minimal input by MACSA … A reoccurring question arose throughout the entire TSS report as to whom at MACSA did the auditors speak to?”
The auditors said they could not speak with Soza-Mendiola because she was absent from work. When approached for comment after the meeting, Soza-Mendiola turned away and, when pressed, replied “No comment.”
“At the last meeting, you got up and said there were a lot of lies in the report,” Apuzzo said during the meeting. “I would like to know what the lies are. We paid $10,000 for a report from an outside agency that has nothing to gain from scourging El Portal.”
GUSD officials and MACSA administrators also clashed over testing data and the vision for El Portal’s future students. GUSD trustees accused MACSA administrators of comparing inaccurate numbers in order to present their students’ performance on state tests in a more favorable light.
“We should agree to compare the same populations and these numbers don’t do that,” district Superintendent Deborah Flores said.
In addition, trustees questioned whether El Portal was living up to its charter to educate a diverse student body.
When MACSA Director of Education Services Sandra Madrigal and El Portal Principal Graciela Valladares outlined some of their ideas to boost enrollment in the coming years – working with El Observador and Damian Trujillo from NBC 11, hosting a “fiesta” to showcase the school and urging current students to recruit their friends and family members – Apuzzo said she didn’t feel, as a non-Latina, that she would be welcome at El Portal if she were a child.
“Are you no longer trying to become a diverse school,” Apuzzo asked. “El Portal’s already 95 percent Hispanic and the recruiting strategy appears to be ‘let’s keep it Hispanic.’ It doesn’t seem like a good way to diversify.”
“I’m hearing your point of view,” Madrigal said in a measured tone. “I’d love to sit down with you and talk about other kinds of strategies.”
MACSA’s Deputy Director Maria Elena De La Garza also implored the school district to provide her with the eighth grade enrollment lists – “one of the hiccups this year” – so that MACSA could reach out to future students.
Trustees will consider three options at future board meetings: pulling the charter, sharing the management of El Portal with MACSA or relying on assurances from MACSA that things will change. The dozens of El Portal students who shared impassioned stories of success and pleaded with trustees not to shut down their school at the last board meeting were absent Thursday night.
When school board President Javier Aguirre tried wrapping up the debate, trustees continued to express their doubts about the academic and fiscal viability of El Portal. Though Soza-Mendiola acknowledged that “we crashed and burned for a year there,” she and her administrators said that El Portal “is on the mend” and “in a place where we can really start developing the school to where we need it to be. I feel that we’re at a place where we can rebuild.”
Trustee Rhoda Bress wasn’t so sure.
“We have received annual reports from El Portal on a regular basis and every time, there have been problems with the academic achievement,” Bress said. “Every year, there have been words about how that was going to be improved. It hasn’t happened. I’m concerned that there’s not enough of a foundation to move ahead.”
Trustees plan to respond to MACSA’s presentation at a May 7 board meeting and hope to have a resolution in place by the end of the fiscal year, Aguirre said.
