Another Parent, if I were you, I would re-direct your worries to the irresponsible shananigans brewing in the Dent Center (silencing thoughtful critics on the board, extending sweeheart contracts before the next election, etc, etc.) If you’re so concerned about “the students’ sake”, take note of how much damage this sort of mismanagement has already done to our district.

Like so many critics of charters and school choice, you leave out one small detail about the CVCHS conversion — the existing school and how well it is doing as a monopoly provider of public education to the students in its attendcance area. Did you subject the district’s educational “plans” to the same sort of scrutiny that you paid to the charter’s? Of course not, because the district doesn’t have such plans. In fact, it has never bothered to plan for the future to the extent that the charter organizers were asked to do. (Remember all of the granular questions asked about the CVCHS teacher schedule for 2012-13 — when NO school in MDUSD had such a plan itself?)

The point of a charter is not to achieve some ideal educational environment and program. That would be nice, but that is not the point. The point is to provide a BETTER publicly funded education ALTERNATIVE to the sorry schools being operated by by so many of our large district monopolies. It’s about CHOICE — you know, the kind of choice that you exercise in almost every other area of your life.

Clearly, the parents and teachers saw that CVHS was in trouble. We’ll see whether the parents and teachers who operate CVCHS — the adults with the most to gain or lose — end up providing a better education for those students. But one thing is indisputable: those families now have a CHOICE, where they didn’t before. We may soon see why the district (and their apologists) were so afraid to see that choice arrive.

I am sure you are allowed to enroll your child elsewhere. For those of us in CVCHS don’t you worry your little heart one bit, this is the best thing that could ever happen to us.

What I did not find was a well thought out educational plan for the students or a detailed financial plan for implementing anything. What was the educational philosophy behind the charter? How would it be different educationally from the current school? What research had they done to come up with a better way to educate the students? What detailed plans did they have and how did they tie to a financial plan? As a parent I could read the charter petition and see exactly what was new educationally and what was just a rehash of what was already being done. Believe me, there weren’t many new ideas.

I was also disappointed in how little research the teachers did in how to write a charter document and what had to be included. It wouldn’t have been hard to do. There was a lot of information online that detailed what other districts (ones that have a lot of experience evaluationg charter petitions) require. It was the same detailed info that MDUSD would require. The teachers could have saved themselves and the community a lot of aggravation if they had simply done their research.

In fact, it was quite clear that beyond discovering they could get more money by converting to a charter, they hadn’t done much research at all. What does it say about their research when one of the charter schools they named as one for us to emulate was recently involved in a huge scandel involving multiple teachers molesting students and very nearly had its charter revoked for poor management? If the teachers had done even the slightest research, they would have known that and not advertized them as a school for us to emulate. I really expected better of them.

One of the allowable reasons for a teacher trigger conversion is to provide a better work environment for teachers. I have no doubt CVCHS will succeed on that level – they’ve put themselves in charge. I’m more doubtful it will provide a better education for students. It was quite disappointing to see that the County Board of Ed warned CVCHS that the math plan they were proposing had already been proven to lower student achievement. Is that the best the CV teachers could do? It doesn’t bode well for the future.

I wish them well, I really do, for the students’ sake. But I am very worried.

If people want to see a genuine “hot mess”, just follow Theresa’s blog covering the corruption, dysfunction, and almost comic incompetence of the MDUSD leadership, which they insist on making so evident almost every week of the year. You can make insinuations about the charter, and apologize for this shrinking district, but the growing waiting list at CVCHS will tell the tale. No wonder that MDUSD dreads school choice. When parents have an opportunity to escape this laughing stock monopoly, they will do so.

I remember reading that one of the large school districts in SoCal was toying with the idea of refusing to have district staff work with charter petitioners on their petitions before they were brought to the board for a final vote. Their theory was that if the charter petitioners couldn’t even manage to write a decent petition, there wasn’t much chance they’d actually be able to run a school.

Did CVCHS get accepted into the El Dorado County SELPA?

I understand that CVCHS has adopted a half-in/half-out approach with UMDAF. They will be a member for fundraising purposes only, participating in the annual 5K run, but they won’t co-mingle their fees with UMDAF or the District. Do you know what effect this will have on financing sports in the remaining MDUSD high schools?

You mentioned changes to the ed. code regarding charters. What are the changes?

Thanks.