Parents and teachers from Horace Mann Academic Middle School and Metropolitan Arts and Technology High School voiced their concerns once again at a San Francisco Unified School District board meeting on June 28.
Their concerns—the co-location of Metro, a charter school that will be taking up to 13 of their 33 classrooms—took center stage as board members expressed their astonishment at having only learned about the proposed move when opponents brought it to their attention during the public comment period of last week’s meeting.
“I need to assure you that the Board of Education did not know about this, we have a policy in place that was apparently ignored about community participation,” said Board Commissioner Jill Wynns at the June 28 meeting. “I’m just furious because it appears as if though everyone didn’t do their job.”
Metro is currently occupying the basement classrooms of Phillip and Sala Burton High School in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley. They submitted their proposal for relocation on October 15, 2009.
SFUSD administration members were surprised to learn that the population of the school on 23rd and Valencia streets would increase by about 200 high school students. Horace Mann teachers and parents found out after a June 14 memo in which SFUSD General Counsel Maribel Medina outlined the terms of the co-location.
“No one told me, I found out by chance,” said Claudia Ramos, a concerned parent. A teacher told her and her husband, Jose, of the situation at a community fundraiser in the Mission. Their daughter, Maria, will be starting the 8th grade at Horace Mann in the fall. “I don’t even know how to react, how can you place 10, 11, 12 year-olds with high school kids—17, 18, 19 years old. I’m worried about safety.”
Many from Horace Mann brought up safety and bullying. The Board, however, did not share this concern.
“We have had other co-locations between older and younger students (…) and we’ve never had any issues come forward,” said Commissioner Kim-Shree Maufas. “I don’t think that parents send their students to school to perpetrate on other students—no matter what their age.”
Officially, Metro cited lack of natural light in classrooms that are leaky and unpainted, as well as the lack of facilities for science instruction as reasons for wanting to relocate. But According to a conversation forwarded to El Tecolote between a Horace Mann faculty member and Bob Lentz, CEO of Envision Schools, the nonprofit organization that runs Metro, tensions between Burton and Metro students were one of the reasons for wanting to move.
“There is nominal natural light; we literally have to walk past the dumpsters to get to our classrooms,” said Metro teacher Tiffany Goeman, who also mentioned that Burton students routinely threw food at their classrooms. “This is going to be our fourth move in five years. It feels really unfortunate that this has transpired without a lot of opportunity for these communities to interact and come up with a plan on how we can do this.”
The staff at Horace Mann had a meeting on April 7 in which they voted against the proposed move. That was the last time they heard about Metro occupying their campus.
“We had a couple of meetings in April. In the final meeting on April 7 we voted overwhelmingly against it,” said Horace Mann Principal Mark Sanchez. They voted 16-to-4 against the proposal. “We also had a few community meetings with parents that were pretty sparsely attended.”
Unfortunately, a misunderstanding led Sanchez to believe that his staff was voting on a preliminary offer—one that could be rejected. That wasn’t the case. On April 1, the District had made a legally binding final offer to co-locate with Horace Mann for the 2010-2011 school year.
“I think that the district screwed up,” said Sanchez. “My understanding was that the agreement (in April) was non-binding. My mistake—what I should have originally done—was bring (Lentz) to my staff to present the situation when I heard about it in October.”
Metro found the only other official offer—continuing to share facilities at Burton—unacceptable.
“I think that the issue here is the issue of power dynamic,” said Wynn, referring to what many deemed to be a non-transparent process, and disingenuous behavior by Metro and Envision Schools. “But I have to add that there is nothing else I think that can be done (to stop the move).”
Proposition 39—voted into law in 2000—requires that the SFUSD provide facilities to charter schools. On May 11, the Board approved an enhanced community engagement policy to Prop 39 to be implemented next year. Had the measure been in effect this year, the district would have been required to solicit input from Horace Mann school site staff, students and community members regarding the co-location with Metro prior to any agreement.
“The best scenario is when an agreement is made between the two school communities,” said General Counsel Medina. “In a perfect world we should have communicated when their process started. The last thing we want is for parents to feel disrespected.”
One of the reasons that Horace Mann was selected was it’s current under enrollment status. In the fall they’ll have about 220. The campus was built to accommodate 600 students.
“When offering these sites we check for capacity. Horace Mann has capacity,” Medina added.
Metro sent their official offer of acceptance to co-locate with Horace Mann on June 18. The Board stated that they would look into alternative locations, but acknowledged that none of those options would be compulsory.
“The ball is in Metro’s court. You hold the all the cards,” said Board Commissioner Rachel Norton, aiming her comments at Envision Schools CEO Bob Lentz.
In a telephone interview with El Tecolote, Lentz confirmed that Metro will be going forward with the move.
“We’re moving forward to Horace Mann. Despite some of the feelings we heard, we’re still hopeful that we can still have a good productive relationship,” he said, adding that Metro is open to a number of collaborations including offering their college guidance program to Horace Mann students. “I think it’s time to move forward to see how the district and charters can work together to avoid this in the future.”
The school year is scheduled to begin on August 18. The co-location is set to last through the 2010-2011 school year.
“We’re not against Metro, a lot of our kids graduate from here and attend Metro. We’re against the way this entire arrangement was done–keeping us in the dark,’ said Horace Mann teacher Dinorah Salazar.
“Those kids are going to be surprised when they end up in this building again for high school,” she added.
Charter school operator Envision Schools runs three other schools around the Bay Area: City Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco’s Excelsior neighborhood, Envision Academy in Oakland and Impact Academy in Hayward.
Metro has 91 Latino students enrolled, many of them from the Mission, according to data from the California Department of Education. That same data shows that 68 percent of Horace Mann’s student population is Latino. Seventy-five percent of the senior class graduated from Metro in 2008, the most recent year for which that information is available.
“I think a big issue that was not discussed is justice. Legally, Metro did everything that they were supposed to,” said Valerie Barth, teacher and school librarian for Horace Mann. “But there’s no justice because the Horace Mann community was not informed about this process. We were not given an equal footing with the Metro community.”
Parents and staff from Horace Mann and Metro will be present at the next school board meeting on July 13 at 555 Franklin Street in the Irving G. Breyer Board Meeting Room on the first floor. Sign up for public comment begins at 6 p.m.