After months of volleying back and forth between district staff and charter school leaders, as well as dozens of testimonials from parents and educators on both sides of the fence, the Morgan Hill Unified School District’s Board of Education finally voted Tuesday to reject Navigator Schools’ charter petition.
With the boisterous and impassioned crowd inside the Britton Middle School gym whittled down from hundreds to only dozens – following a 3.5-hour public hearing regarding a separate charter petition by San Jose-based Rocketship Education – the School Board followed the district administration’s recommendation and voted 6-1, denying Navigator permission to open one of its schools within district boundaries in the fall of 2014.
Trustee Rick Badillo cast the lone opposing vote.
Navigator Schools co-founder James Dent said Wednesday morning his staff has already begun the process for appeal to the County’s Board of Education, which includes submitting paperwork by the end of the month. Navigator will also submit a Prop 39 facilities request to MHUSD by the Nov. 1 deadline. Under Prop 39, school districts are required to make “reasonably equivalent” facilities available to charter schools upon request.
Dent is still confident that Navigator will open a charter in Morgan Hill by its targeted date.
“I think it was a fair process. I think they followed the requirements, but I don’t think it was a collaborative process,” explained Dent, detailing how Navigator worked more closely with district staffs in Gilroy and Hollister to address concerns and answer questions, prior to opening charters in 2011 and 2013, respectively.
He also reminds: “At GPS, we opened up with the highest Academic Performance [Index] in the history of California.”
In its first year, GPS, Navigator’s flagship school, scored a 942 on the 2012-13 Academic Performance Index. The API is the state’s yardstick for measuring academic achievement.
Of MHUSD’s nine elementary schools, four eclipsed the 800 standard: Charter School of Morgan Hill (893); Nordstrom (892); Paradise Valley (854); and Los Paseos (822).
But API success at GPS wasn’t the focus of Morgan Hill district staff. They picked apart Navigator’s educational program, calling parts of it “unsound,” “insufficient” and “not adequate” during a 1.5-hour presentation led by Interim Superintendent Steve Betando. Researching and putting that presentation together consumed more than 150 hours of staff time, according to Betando.
“If they had spent 10 of those hours out of the 150 working with us, a lot of things would have been cleared up to their satisfaction,” said Dent, who hopes to still work collaboratively with MHUSD staff if the petition is approved through the County.
Instead, Betando and district staff – who pointed out several times during their presentation that efforts were made to contact Navigator and give them the opportunity to supply additional materials before Tuesday – concluded the charter organization’s petition did not adequately address a handful of concerns. Some of the issues outlined by MHUSD include the implementation of Common Core Standards and effective, comprehensive strategies to meet the needs of the targeted English Language Learner students as well as special needs students with moderate to severe disabilities.
“Based on the careful and thorough review given to the petition … I respectfully recommend to the Board of Education that The Navigator, Morgan Hill Prep, charter petition be denied,” concluded Betando, reading from his 75th and final slide of the district’s charter review presentation.
Local attorney Armando Benavides, an advocate for at-risk students and supporter of both charter petitions who speaks regularly at Board meetings, said the Board’s vote reflects “a disconnect” between the trustees – as well as teachers who spoke against the charters – and the parents demanding another option for their under-performing students.
Another parent, Angelique Vaca, whose son previously attended Los Paseos Elementary School, spoke during the meeting. Vaca was told by her son’s teacher that he was failing the second grade and should repeat it. Instead, Vaca transferred her son to Rocketship Mosaic in San Jose, where the now fifth grader is proficient in reading and writing as well as advanced in mathematics.
Benavides questioned how trustee Claudia Rossi could opt to send one of her children to a private, Catholic school and how Betando could choose to send his daughter to a charter school, but deny Morgan Hill parents a choice.
Benavides belongs to PACT, or People Acting in Community Together, that first reached out to Navigator earlier this year and asked them to bring a charter to Morgan Hill.
“It is ironic that our two educational leaders who exercised choice and pulled their children from traditional schools … have deprived parents of the choice of a top excellent charter school, Navigator, for their children,” Benavides said.
After trustee Badillo publicly questioned Rossi about her choice to send her child to a Catholic school, she responded by stating that her decision does not come at a cost to the taxpayers; is not a reflection of how she feels about MHUSD schools; and is solely based on her strong religious beliefs. Her opposition to the charter petition, she continued, is based on the particulars of how Navigator plans to cater to students with severe disabilities.
Trustee Ron Woolf, who seconded trustee Bob Benevento’s motion to deny Navigator’s petition, touched on the economic impact of opening a new charter school in the district.
“Do you know that taking 1,200 students out of our school district is going to put every single school in this school district and the district itself in dire financial straits?,” he claimed. “After having spent 35 years as a teacher and administrator, I know that learning is more than a test score … public education should be obsessed with high quality teaching and learning, not high stakes testing.”
Some of the MHUSD teachers, who spoke out adamantly against the Navigator and Rocketship charter petitions, brought up the recent passing of state Assembly Bill 484, which suspended all Standardized Testing and Reporting assessments, known as STAR. This includes the API scores.
“(The passing of AB484 proves that) the school accountability system has always been broken. It acknowledges that there is so much more to a school than a single number,” said Principal Glenn Webb of Britton Middle School.
“Public education is the one place where we all come together with the opportunity to forge relationships and find common ground, regardless of our diverse backgrounds,” Webb continued. “I fear for our community and, ultimately, for our nation if we lose that.”
Board trustee Amy Porter-Jensen expressed her fear that adding more charters to Morgan Hill on top of the existing two – Charter School of Morgan Hill and Silicon Valley Flex Academy – would further segregate the student population.
“I’m not pro-charter or anti-charter,” she said. “I want to see every kid get a good education.”
Rocketship Education’s charter petition was discussed in a public hearing prior to the Navigator vote as more than 50 community members went to the podium. The district now has 30 days to schedule a vote on Rocketship’s petition.
