Teachers turned anti-charter activists have joined an effort to squash two charter school petitions.
Staff from several Morgan Hill elementary schools greeted parents Tuesday afternoon as children were being picked up from school with anti-charter informational material. One pamphlet had the headline, “Why You Should be Concerned with Proposed Navigator and Rocketship Charters in Morgan Hill” – along with an invitation to go online and sign the petition.
The teachers handing out pamphlets are among hundreds of other community members who fear the possible incoming of two new charter organizations will suck resources away from existing local public schools.
Mario Banuelos, who has three children who graduated from the Morgan Hill Unified School District and another in 11th grade, recently launched an online petition titled “Support Morgan Hill Schools, Stop Navigator and Rocketship Charters” this week.
The effort is in partnership with a group of “concerned [Morgan Hill] parents, community members and educators,” reads the petition byline.
“The petition was really started to reflect the voice of those who spoke in support of Morgan Hill Unified School District at the public hearings…[and] gives that opportunity for other parents who were not able to attend,” explained Banuelos, who is also the husband of MHUSD Interim Director of Personnel Fawn Myers.
As of Wednesday, there were 351 electronic signatures from citizens in the Morgan Hill, Gilroy, Hollister and San Jose areas, in addition to others from throughout the state and across the country.
The organized opposition movement is the latest development in a saga that’s been going on for more than six months, ever since Navigator Schools – a charter management organization that’s already successfully launched two schools in Gilroy and Hollister – filed a petition to open its third charter school in Morgan Hill in the fall of 2014. Shortly after came Rocketship, which submitted its petition to MHUSD in September.
The community-wide debate has elicited impassioned arguments on both sides of the fence from as far away as Chicago, where Catherine Feit penned her name to the petition and wrote, “Educating our children should not be a business!”
Teresa Sage, President of the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers, said the solicitation efforts were encouraged and organized by educators, parents and community members.
“It’s become absolutely a community effort,” she said. “Teachers are involved, too, who care deeply about our students and our neighborhood schools.”
Sage said the same efforts will continue in front of school sites throughout the district.
“I think at some point people have to understand the impact of charters on students and neighborhood schools,” she said. “I believe that the general public needs to know all of the information, not just glossy sound bites.”
MHUSD Interim Superintendent Steve Betando said earlier Tuesday the district office had no part in the campaign efforts in front of schools and was unaware of what the organizers had planned for later that day.
Betando said he does, however, keep tabs on the issue and receives emails each time a signature is added to the anti-charter petition, as well as a separate pro-charter petition. Both were started on the website moveon.org.
The pro-charter petition was launched by Ray Blanchard, a member of Navigator’s Board of Advisors, and has 135 signatures as of Wednesday.
Parent Liz Seminar said she had a “weird feeling” when she arrived to pick up her two children at Paradise Valley Elementary School Tuesday and saw teachers soliciting parent signatures. Seminar and others witnessed some teachers standing on the sidewalk in front of the school while a few other teachers were approaching parents on school grounds. Sage said solicitors were instructed not to do so on school property and, to her knowledge, that did not happen.
“It makes me feel uncomfortable going onto campus with that going on,” said Seminar, who has spoken publicly at board meetings in support of charter schools.
As it stands, MHUSD’s Board of Education voted 6-1 last month to deny Navigator’s charter petition and is expected to do the same at a Nov. 5 special meeting for Rocketship.
However, in accordance with state education law, a charter organization has the ability to appeal to the county if denied by the local district. Co-founder James Dent of Navigator Schools said his charter petition will be delivered to the County Office of Education Friday.
As for the online petition opposing his organization, Dent said it really doesn’t affect the course Navigator has charted.
“There’s a lot people who want charter schools and there’s a lot of people that don’t, but you have to respect the laws and respect the petition appeal process,” he surmised.
President Grace Mah for the County Board of Education will be part of that appeal process along six other members. When she learned that teachers were soliciting signatures from parents, Mah described the situation as “odd,” “blatant” and “unfortunate” since, from her perspective, teachers on school grounds should “remain apolitical.”
“I don’t recall anything that’s been this forceful and dramatic,” Mah said. “That’s really inappropriate.”
The hand-outs – two separate flyers, one with a link to the petition and another with a side-by-side comparison of MHUSD and Rocketship, in terms of curriculums, teachers, class sizes, support staff, technology, enrichment programs and student demographics – distributed Tuesday by teachers and parents claim the “opening of Navigator and Rocketship schools will CLOSE one of our current neighborhood schools.”
The pamphlet also claimed that Rocketship has a selective student enrollment; a narrow curriculum focused on literacy and math; that 75 percent of its teachers are college graduates with five weeks of teacher training; and employs a 45:1 teacher-to-student ratio.
“These charters market themselves to parents as innovative and personalized. They are not,” the pamphlet reads.
County Board of Education member Julia Hover-Smoot, a local resident and one-time MHUSD trustee, doesn’t agree. She says charters do offer innovative educational methods that are desperately needed in Morgan Hill.
“I know [MHUSD is] making some good efforts now. But they have had some difficulties in the past,” she said.
Betando argues MHUSD is meeting the needs of all students. He points to the district’s existing magnet school, Jackson Academy of Math and Music; the Dual Immersion Multicultural Education at San Martin Gwinn; and additional plans to create two more focus academies in 2014.
While teachers are concerned that two new charter schools will force the closure of one of MHUSD’s existing schools, County Board members say the financial impact on a district is not something they can consider when reviewing a petition.
Sage stressed that teachers have the students’ best interests in mind, first and foremost, and have never stated their stance has to do anything with job security.
Dent noted that Navigator has already collected more than 200 intent-to-enroll forms for the Morgan Hill Navigator school in 2015.
Next up: County staff and Board of Education members will review Navigator’s petition. The County will also hold a public hearing – just as MHUSD did – to listen to the recommendations of County staff, followed by a vote on the petition. If approved, the Navigator School in Morgan Hill would be under the oversight of the County.
