The Senter Road Tea Party: A Closer Look at Charter Conversion and the Early Stages on One School's Revolution

On December 17 an event happened that took most of the ESUHSD community by surprise. The unruly bunch at Andrew Hill High School took an official vote to submit a letter to the district announcing their intention to covert to charter status by the start of 05-06. Though rumors had traveled to other sites, most of the staff at other schools learned about this event from the flurry of Mercury News articles appearing over winter break.

Reactions to the move have run the gamut. Employees at other sites generally believe that Hill’s staff is angry over the appointment of Silver Creek’s controversial Dr. Ana Lomas as the school’s interim principal, the party line Craig Mann and Esperanza Zendejas fed to Mercury News Information Minister John Fensterwald (read it here: ). A limited understanding of charter schools led others to quickly dismiss the idea as nuts, while some applauded Andrew Hill for, as one unruly reader tells us, “being at the heart of the East Side revolution.”

In a recent Panorama, astute district employees took note that Hill’s charter request was denied. That has left some observers wondering if the charter issue was just an idle threat. “Not true,” writes our Team Unruly correspondent from Andrew Hill. “We expected them to reject us. Now we’ll follow the letter of the law and give them a proposal they can’t refuse.”

Team Unruly has been following this story for a few months in order to give readers a balanced assessment of the true history behind AH’s movement, a better understanding of what a charter school is, and the impact such a move might have on the district at large.

To put one rumor to rest, the idea that this movement grew out of reaction to Lomas’ appointment is false. At first the AH staff was weary of the placement, but that weariness came from months of administrative instability (4 APEDS in two years!) at a school that over the past decade had the most stable administration in the district. And yes, Hill’s librarian Julie Pratico sent the Board an e-mail questioning Lomas’ placement, which received the Orwellian response from Board member Mann that left many district mouths agape. But as our AH correspondent writes, “We’ve come to appreciate Dr. Lomas. She’s very supportive of our school and staff.” What upset Hill’s staff more was the dictatorial process used to transfer Lomas to Hill. Unruly readers learned that YB’s staff slammed Bob Nunez when he announced Moser’s transfer to Piedmont Hills; a similar scene took place at Andrew Hill three months earlier.

But for Andrew Hill, that transfer decision was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The tension between district officials and Andrew Hill started in 2003 when teachers discovered their e-mails were being read, the international math teacher visa issue rose to the surface, and an active union site president’s open forum with a Board member turned into a Mcarthy-era investigation replete with a Superintendent and Board president directive to former Hill principal Bruce Shimizu to compile an “enemies list” of staff members.

A lot of what happened next can easily be ascribed to district incompetence rather than overt malfeasance, but the AH staff, battle scarred and war weary, remained suspicious. Solid homegrown programs were heading for the chopping block. Take, for example, the Jose Valdes program. Developed by the AH math teacher for whom the program is named, it had operated from the Andrew Hill campus for nearly 20 years. This school year, the chaos caused by the elimination and subsequent reinstatement of contractual class size limits forced the Valdes director back into the classroom for two periods. But that classroom was at Independence, and the program was forced to follow him. Then the school’s health clinic was targeted to shut down by the end of the first semester over a purported unpaid 30k bill. Given the current budget crisis, the district not having 30k to pay a bill makes perfect sense. But the staff was outraged to learn that theirs was the only health clinic being closed in the district. By the time Lomas was appointed, teachers already suspected the district was getting its revenge on the school.

If Zendejas does have a thirst for revenge, it seems to have come from a perceived slight over State Superintendent Jack O’Connell’s visit to the school last June. Zendejas contends the staff deliberately failed to alert her or other board members that O’Connell was coming, especially reelection-hungry Craig Mann and Juanitia Ramirez (it’s the other party line she fed to Mercury News reporter Jon Fortt—read it here: ) The Hill staff argues they did not get official word that O’Connell was coming until two hours before he showed up. Team Unruly has learned that Zendejas admits an e-mail was sent to her office that morning. She contends that she was at Evergreen preparing for O’Connell’s main stop that day. However, unruly district sources inform us she has a habit of rolling into the office around ten—about the time O’Connell showed up at Hill. Team Unruly also knows that Dr. Shimizu, if he had any sort of excuse for not contacting Zendejas in a timely fashion, had a good excuse: he was interviewing for the job he eventually would take in Fremont Unified High School District (check for his name under administrative services here: )

By the time Lomas was appointed to the site, the long-standing joke that the school should secede from the district became a viable option ripe for investigating. Someone proposed converting the entire school into a charter. Soon, pirate flags started to appear in classrooms and department offices. Calls were made, experts from charter groups were brought in, and the staff decided to, in their words, “fire a shot across the bow” with the December charter letter.

From an Unruly perspective, the district’s response to that letter has been nothing short of fascinating. While they eventually issued the formal denial of the request, the Board worked quickly to build diplomatic ties to the school. On the first day back from the holidays, the staff had a three hour meeting with Trustee Lan Nguyen. Dr. Zendejas, who had refused to set foot on the campus after the embarrassing events of the May board meeting, arranged a couple of meetings with select staff members (she has yet to meet with the staff at large), attended the school’s “Parent Empowerment Conference” (editor’s note: see “letters to us” to read about her speech to the audience), showed up unannounced for a student award ceremony, and, of course, didn’t miss a beat with a photo opportunity (read about it here: ).

Since the start of March, all but one of the Trustees (Mann—who else?) has met with the staff to discuss their concerns. Herrera met with the staff twice, which you can read about here: . In spite of the district’s attempt to make nice, the Board’s decision to move forward with lay offs fueled the charter fires.

Another rumor to put to rest is the perception that Hill’s staff wants to break away from ESTA. Our Team Unruly correspondents from Hill tell us nothing can be further from the truth. Some of ESTA’s most active members work at the school, including bargaining team members. They want to follow the model other conversion high schools have implemented in Southern California: autonomy from the district, solidarity with the union.

The single biggest event took place in early February, when the staff hosted a working meeting and presentation by Paul Minney, a lawyer whose primary expertise is charter school law, and Mimi Test, vice-principal of East San Diego’s Helix High School, the first conversion charter high school in the state. Board members reading this article will squirm to discover reps from other schools attended that meeting, including Yerba Buena, Overfelt and Piedmont Hills. And yes, Team Unruly was there, taking copious notes on charter schools and what the conversion process entails.

There are a lot of misconceptions about what a charter school actually is. There is also a lot of data that leads people to believe that charter schools aren’t any better than traditional public schools. That data does not distinguish between the two types of charter schools, “start up” and “conversion”. Start-up charters are the ones that public school entities at every level despise. They are small, usually non-union schools that draw students, and hence ADA, into their programs. The district where the charter school resides has very little control over the management and funding of the school. While there are some successful start-ups, there are many more that fail. A number of factors go into that failure: inability to attract quality teachers and the lack of union protections come to mind. But perhaps the single greatest reason for their failure is their operators, with most created by people with no background in the enterprise of education. They fail within a couple of years because they lack the day-to-day expertise of running a school. And most charter schools are start-ups.

In contrast, a conversion charter is by definition an existing public school that turns into a charter. Evidence shows that these schools are thriving, primarily due to “bottom-up” instead of “top-down” management. Teachers in charter schools are much more involved in site-based administration; mostly through committee work. The teacher looking to leave at 3:15 each day won’t survive long in a charter school environment. But realistically most teachers in traditional public schools don’t work to the 3:15 rule unless forced by stalled contract negotiations. They sit on school site councils, advisory boards, and technology committees, to name a few. They do all of this for free, in hours long past the confines of the contractual day. We don’t even have to mention coaching, club advising, or paper grading. The difference, according to Mimi Test, is their teachers get paid for the extra duties they complete. Given that the people running conversion charters are well-versed in navigating the bureaucracy governing public education, it’s easy to see why these schools are successful.

But that’s not the primary reason behind their success. Studies by the Rand Corporation and others documenting schools with repeated success in meeting or exceeding state and federal test scores have found that a stable administration that fosters collegiality through site-based control over curriculum and budgetary decisions are the primary factors behind those success rates. And this phenomenon is consistent nationwide, whether a school is charter or not.

Charter schools are public schools. They receive their primary funding from ADA, just like traditional schools. Since East Side is not a “basic aid” district, the school would receive the base level of funding it currently gets from the state. The difference lies in who controls the money. Charter law appears to be written in favor of the charter school, not the local school district. The school controls their money, and if they so desire, they can keep their accounts at the County Office instead of the district. Charter schools also receive their full share of Title I dollars, as well as additional funds from the state tied to what is called the Charter School Block Grant.

Politically charter schools were modeled after the free market aspects of private schools. One could argue they were created as a moderate response to the extreme anti-public education voucher movement. But what began as an anti-public education, competition-driven market experiment with public school dollars can also be called a model socialist co-op where the workers control the means of production, in this case, curriculum and instruction. That’s the kind of professional empowerment educators dream of having. But it’s not a panacea. By law a student is not compelled to attend a charter school. A charter school also does not have any formal attendance boundaries, just like private schools. The school has to consistently work at promoting itself with the public. And charter schools can elect to set admission requirements, which is antithetical to the mission of public education.

Helix High School’s history is a compelling case for charter conversion. After a few years of lackluster test scores, teachers at the school developed a plan to raise academic expectations, culminating in a simple graduation requirement: a senior year academic project. They proposed their plan to the school board but were rejected because the board felt that if Helix raised their academic standards, then all the high schools in the district would need to raise their standards, which the board didn’t want to do. The teachers and site administrators responded by rallying together and moving forward with charter conversion.

Mimi Test earned the most applause when she went into detail about Helix’s governance and budget. Once the school converted, they entered into negotiations with their district for everything from food service to pool cleaning. And each time the district said they could provide the service, the school responded by asking, “What are you worth?” In most instances, the district had to go back and figure out an actual dollar amount to charge; the Helix governing body had the authority to accept or reject their offer. According to Test, once the district learned they could lose a service contract with one of their own high schools, the quality of the district’s service rapidly improved.

Helix’s credit standing also improved as a charter. Instead of waiting weeks or months for an RPO to be processed, checks were cut within a 24-hour period. Vendors enjoy doing business with the school because they know they will be paid on time.

Another round of applause came when the crowd learned about the administrative structure of the school. The governing board at the school site has the hiring and firing authority over the school’s administrators, not the district. Helix’s current administrative team has been in their positions for over a decade. And the teachers are still part of the district’s local union, enjoying all the protections of the collective bargaining agreement. The teachers are also compensated for all of the extra duties they perform at the school. And while Helix’s parent district has been running in the red for a couple of years, Helix has consistently been in the black.

Any staunch public education supporter has to remain skeptical about charter schools from a philosophic perspective. The charter movement is the current darling of educational reform. Politicians on both sides of the aisle call for more funding for charter schools because they’ve convinced themselves and the public that the school system is an irreparable mess. The charge is ripe with irony. In the same breath that Schwarzenneger called for a revision to Proposition 98, he wanted to increase funding to charter schools. Charters are also a backhanded way to spur reforms to a bloated education bureaucracy; they have, by law, more flexibility in spending and governance, while traditional schools remain trapped in a system lawmakers are quick to blame, but aren’t quick to fix.

There’s no doubt Hill’s movement is a reaction to current district administration and its failed edicts. But those familiar with the school know they have the most to lose under a slash and burn administration. AH is the only school in the district, and one of a few in the state, to meet both its API and AYP goals three years straight. They have programs serving all types of students. Unruly correspondents from the school tell us they have parents choosing to send their kids to Hill instead of private schools. The new state term for this particular brand of urban paradox is “HP 2”: high poverty, high performing. It’s a change in public perception that took over twenty years to create. Even at the risk of exacerbating a district budget crisis, the staff doesn’t want to lose what took so long to build to the destructive whims of a short-term superintendent and an opportunistic school board.

The bottom line is charter conversion is a risk not every school in East Side will be willing to take. A lot of what makes a charter school successful depends on the ability of the staff to work towards a common goal. Hill has a cohesive staff; it’s hard to judge if other schools do, but the recent layoff has done more for solidarity than district administrators want to admit. And while there are those who view Hill’s plan with a skeptical eye, there are others waiting to see if the plan will work. In Team Unruly’s collective opinion, Mimi Test made a compelling argument in favor of site-based management, which might not be a bad experiement for the East Side Board to initiate district-wide.

It sounds as if Andrew Hill will start that experiment whether the Board, ESTA, or the other schools want them to or not. A rough draft of their charter proposal has been written, with an eye towards presenting the proposal to the Board by the end of the year. And how will that Board react? It’s hard to say for sure. Team Unruly has learned Craig Mann told the Mercury News he was against the move, which will be hard to justify without sounding like sour grapes, given his propensity to brag about his support of the district’s other charter schools (Were you really surprised? Look here: ) No matter what happens, Team Unruly will keep you posted as this watershed event unfolds.