San Diego County Board of Education to Act Wednesday on Petition to Keep Julian Charter School’s…
The staff recommendation was published minutes before Tuesday’s 6 p.m. open-meeting law deadline. It’s here.
The staff recommendation was published minutes before Tuesday’s 6 p.m. open-meeting law deadline. It’s here.
The meeting and vote are 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 20, 2018, at the San Diego County Office of Education, 6401 Linda Vista Road, San Diego, CA 92111.
My message, personalized and emailed tonight to each of the five board members, follows:
Dear [board member]:
I write as a…former lawyer, Congressional staff director, and appointee in two Presidential administrations who has taught English at the JCS San Diego Academy of Creative and Critical Thought for six years, and who has also taught at our Pine Valley site. My mother served two terms on the Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Education, so I’m familiar with the challenges you face as you serve San Diego students. I’ve spent this evening reading the recommendation your staff published to your website a few hours ago and urge you to use your judgment to serve my current and future students.
Your staff proposes two findings to support its recommendation that JCS -Cedar Creek seek charters from local districts instead of from you:
I. Even though the JCS programs currently serving students in San Diego County are educationally sound, they could be delivered via one or more charters granted by local school districts instead of under a County charter. Indeed, the draft resolution states that “The Board supports the local operation of the Julian Charter School — Cedar Creek,” although it adds the unrealistic and unreasonable prescription of accomplishing that “through the local district charter authorization process,” presumably before school starts in two months. State law merely requires that a charter show “reasonable justification” as to why services cannot be delivered under one or more local charters. In other words, the staff recommendation to the Board doesn’t see a “reasonable justification” for why students would be better off under a County charter than students would be under one or more district charters.
II. Denying the charter won’t affect the operations of Julian Charter School.
The answer to the first finding is that it is up to you, the Board, to determine what is “reasonable.” Is it reasonable to affiliate with districts that have slandered your operations? Is it reasonable to affiliate with districts that have sued you to deny you the opportunity to serve students and their families who proactively seek you out to find better educations for themselves? Is it reasonable to expend resources on multiple agreements with multiple organizations depending upon where optimal meeting places for your students might be in any given school year?
You need not find that a countywide charter is the best option; you need merely be “satisfied” that there is “reasonable justification” for not seeking a charter from a single district. If cultural conflicts, litigation history, excessive operational costs, reduced flexibility, multiple reports, and all of the other badges and incidences of multiple applications and multiple reporting aren’t plausibly reasonable, what is? Our learning model allows for very small sites in any district within reasonable commuting distance for our students and faculty; isn’t it more reasonable to permit the county to oversee such programs flexibly, at least while these programs remain so small?
Your staff recommendation states that “the purpose of the countywide charter statute is not to circumvent the general geographic limitations on charter schools, but instead, is for special circumstances in which countywide status is necessary in order to serve students’ needs.” This is exactly the case with the petition you are considering Wednesday in which we have special circumstances that make it possible for you, as a board, to serve students’ needs most effectively by agreeing with your staff that our charter is educationally sound and finding, in the judgment and discretion that you are elected to exercise, that the most reasonable way to serve student interests is not to deny the charter on doubtful legal grounds but to approve it wholeheartedly on substantial educational grounds.
If the number of students or the size of a site in any single district grew large enough, it would be entirely reasonable for the County to then order JCS to seek a charter within that particular district; denying a countywide charter now, however, would mean that we might never get to that point. While our current charter’s student population and faculty comprise a tiny fraction of a percentage of the students and faculties of any of the districts from which we attract students, our programs are 100% of each of our students’ formal learning lives. It would be most unreasonable to affirmatively subject our current students and professionals to more legalistic uncertainty and more anxiety about the futures of our unique learning journeys when, in all fairness, a County charter is the most reasonable solution under any practical and realistic approach available today.
The second finding is false on its face unless Julian Charter School is defined to exclude its current students, teachers, and families. Denying the charter would have severe detrimental effects on the operations of JCS. The staff recommendation neglects to consider that integral parts of learning, even in independent study programs, are peer collaboration and teacher instruction. Students choose the San Diego Academy of Creative and Critical Thought and other JCS programs and sites specifically for our unique and personalized blends of independent study, collaboration, and instruction. Closing the sites from which students graduated and promoted last month will most assuredly impact the learning of today’s Julian Charter School students, staff, and families who will be unable to find any comparable free programs in August. To assert otherwise is pedantic bureaucratese.
The Board should find that the history of litigation, the costs of multiple charters, the delays inherent in the charter petition process itself, and all of the facts and circumstances faced by the students, families, and staff of the charter school make granting petitioner’s charter not only consistent with sound educational practice, but — by far — the most eminently reasonable choice.
Thank you for your consideration of the best interests of our students. I look forward to hearing your discussion Wednesday.
Sincerely,
Paul Wilkinson
Teacher
Julian Charter School
(202) 207–****