School District Board Rejects Charter School Proposal

A unanimous vote from the school district’s board of trustees Tuesday denied a petition for a charter school following in which dozens of parents and students turned out against it.

At that public hearing, Superintendent Stephen Hanke said he had long agreed with Dublin residents who were against the charter school petition, which proposes that Tassajara Preparatory would begin in fall 2012 with a freshman class of 216 students. 

He added Tuesday that staff review of the proposal after the hearing found that the petition itself fell short.

“From the very beginning I have mentioned on multiple occasions that there is a common theme: this is not needed and not wanted,” he said. “But now there is another piece: that the petition itself is not an appropriate petition.”

Among district staff members’ findings were that the petition’s supporting signatures could not be qualified, its expenditure and enrollment projections were flawed and it failed to serve special needs students.

Beverly Heironimus, assistant superintendent of business services, called cash management “a crucial part of our district” that was not addressed in the petition.

“Payments from the state can be deferred a month and sometimes a year,” she said. “A startup program like the one proposed would require a large investment of cash and there’s nothing in the petition to deal with those cash flow challenges.”

Valarie Williams, assistant superintendent of human resources, said the petition failed to define exactly who would provide extracurricular services for students.

“There seems to be an overreliance on volunteers for these extracurricular activities and in my experience … it is highly unlikely that these extracurricular activities would be sustainable over time and would be more likely to fail,” she said.

Williams also said the educational program within the petition failed to meet the needs of all students.

“There are no education targets for special education,” she said. “Where are the courses for students that are not at high skill levels?”

Before the vote, the trustees offered their views on the petition and the long-running debate regarding a charter school in Dublin.

Trustee Sean Kenney said the debate helped him make a conclusion on the concept of charter schools, which he said could stall progress in the district.

“Since I’ve been getting deeper into education and where we’re going in both the nation and DSUSD, I’m thinking that most charter schools are not the way to go,” Kenney said. “They are an encapsulation of public schools but with a selective group of students and teachers. I think that the work we’re doing in this district is very important because we’re changing the way public education happens. We have to keep the momentum.”

Trustee Amy Miller said she was disappointed in the points made by the petition’s supporters at last month’s hearing. Students’ needs presented in the proposal, Miller said, are already being met by the district.

“The key instructional strategies did not seem unique,” she said. “The petition talked about encouraging collaborative environments. Have they heard about the Professional Learning Communities at our district?”

Greg Tomlinson, the board’s vice president, also said the petitioners failed to clearly state how the district failed to meet current students’ needs.

“I’ve wanted them to tell us what we should be doing better and I have still not heard an answer to that,” he said.

President Dan Cunningham had strong words for Tassajara Preparatory’s founders and members of the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation, including John Zukoski, who spoke at September’s public hearing as a charter school supporter. (The corporation currently operates a Livermore charter school.)

Cunningham named Zukoski and the Around Dublin Blog that he publishes, saying the website is used to “attack our students and our schools.”

“When you look at the people behind that organization, it says a lot about it,” he said. “I refuse to support an organization like that because they’re not looking for the greater good.”

There was an opportunity before the Tuesday night vote for the public to speak, but the meeting room was almost empty, with mostly district staff members present. The trustees all voted to reject the petition; trustee David Haubert was absent. The petitioners can still appeal the decision to the Alameda County Board of Education.

The trustees also reached out to parents still in favor of a local charter school. Hanke said he felt they “were being misled with this petition.”

“I am reaching out to them and asking them to take another look at ,” he said. “[T]o the parents who are doubting, I ask you to be our guests at the high school so that they can see that, in this district, it is all about our kids.”