Why We Couldn't Sign CVUSD's Charter M.O.U.s
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Versión en PDFOn December 1st, 2009, the CVUSD School Board voted to deny the BRIDGES Charter Petition. We are saddened by the process that led to this resolution.
El 1o de Diciembre del 2009, the mesa directive del Districto de Conejo nego la peticion para la escuela Charter PUENTES. Nos entristese el proceso que resulto en esta decision.
The School District received our 207 page petition, which had been thoroughly vetted by our legal counsel, on September 29th. It was officially delivered to the School Board Trustees on October 6th. The District staff took 6 weeks to offer any feedback to BRIDGES. When they did, it was at the close of business on November 10th, the day before the Veteran's Day holiday. They had finally gone over the document with a fine toothed comb (to their credit), and their response was in the form of a 16 page list of questions about issues they wanted further detailed or clarified. The due date they set for our reply was November 19th at 5pm...the night before Open Classroom's biggest event of the year, Harvest Festival. We responded, on time, with 21 pages of answers.
The District then contended that several of our answers didn't satisfy their concerns; so, on Tuesday, November 24th (the day before the Thanksgiving holiday ...coincidence?), 50 minutes before the close of business, Superintendent Contini sent BRIDGES 2 Memorandums of Understanding, or "M.O.U.s" (one regarding Special Education and one regarding "General" operations) with a directive to agree to ALL terms and conditions set forth in both MOU's by Monday night (one day before the School Board vote), or else District staff would recommend that the School Board Trustees deny our charter. Many of these terms and conditions (as well as arbitrary due dates not required by CA charter law) were unreasonable in scope and purpose. Furthermore, many issues that Staff deemed "deficiencies" we simply disagreed with. Our attorneys have facilitated over 200 successful, operating charter schools in California, and every section of our petition was fully vetted by them to be in compliance with charter law.
In order to respond to the two MOUs in advance of the School Board vote scheduled for Tuesday, December 1st, the founders of BRIDGES Charter School severely compromised their Thanksgiving holidays. Our legal counsel had advised against categorically agreeing to all the District's terms and conditions, since some were clearly not in the best interest of BRIDGES (like a 3% of revenues oversight fee when the usual standard is 1%), so, in a good faith attempt to compromise, on Monday, November 30th, we sent back "redlined" versions of each MOU, indicating which items we could agree to and providing alternative language for those we could not.
The next day (during school hours) District staff emailed their response, in the form of revised MOUs, to our lead petitioner (a teacher who was in class all day, followed by an afternoon staff meeting) and somehow expected her both to review them (They are lengthy, legal documents that require attorney oversight) and to convene our Charter Board to accept them BEFORE the 6pm School Board meeting that evening. This was impossible.
Consequently, the MOUs Superintendent Contini held up for public view the night of the School Board's vote, over which everyone debated yes or no, had not yet been seen by Lori Peters, our lead petitioner. In fact, when the MOUs were sent via email to Conejo Elementary, the school email system was down. So few of the BRIDGES' Board or founding members had actually even seen these revised MOU's, though we were repeatedly asked to sign them during the School Board meeting.
Also, to set the record straight, CVUSD never offered to meet with us to actually discuss any of their terms (contrary to Superintendent Contini's statement). Had the District been genuinely interested in "working things out" (as some School Board Trustees indicated at the meeting), District staff could have started a dialog and negotiations well in advance of mid-November. The fact is, they ran the clock out on BRIDGES, and created a "lose-lose" scenario by offering terms that they knew we could not agree to.
Agreeing to an extension would have severely threatened our ability to complete the appeal process to the County and State by the charter deadline of March 15th, so we asked for a yes or no vote, to allow BRIDGES to move on, if necessary, in a timely fashion.
We continue to seek a positive, collaborative relationship with CVUSD and the School Board Trustees. The handling of our charter petition by District staff is now history, and we will move on to appeal to the Ventura County Board of Education for their authorization (as MATES did).
BRIDGES will open in September 2010 as proposed.
Thank you all, we still have much work to do.