Parents and teachers from Horace Mann Academic Middle School will be taking the mic this evening at the last board meeting for the San Francisco Unified School District this year.
Last week they learned that the student population of the school on 23rd and Bartlett streets would increase by about 200 students. But the increase is not due to a surge in enrollment; Horace Mann is currently under enrollled at about 235 students.
The new students are from Metropolitan Arts and Technology High School, a charter school that will be taking up to 13 of Horace Mann’s classrooms. Metro will be there for at least the next year. This is the fourth time in five years that the charter school, which first opened in 2005 on Treat Avenue in the Mission, has moved.
Metro is currently occupying the basement classrooms of Phillip and Sala Burton High School in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley.
Metro submitted an official request for the facilities at Horace Mann for the 2010-2011 school year on October 15, 2009, according to a June 14 memo from SFUSD lawyer Maribel S. Medina.
“No one told me, I found out by chance when I ran into a teacher this weekend,” said Claudia Ramos. She and husband, Jose, were told of the situation at a community fundraiser for a farmers market 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.”
The staff at Horace Mann had a meeting in April in which they voted against the proposed move. That was the last time they heard about Metro occupying their campus.
“We took a vote as a staff (in April) against them moving in. We were then told they weren’t coming.” said Horace Mann teacher Gail Eigl. They voted 16-to-4 against the proposed move.
Horace Mann Principal Mark Sanchez did not respond to El Tecolote’s request for comment in time for publication.
Every parent at a meeting held by Horace Mann teachers last night in the sixth grade annex building expressed concerns about safety, in particular bullying. All of them, including the teachers, were also bothered by the lack of communication and transparency between the two schools and their faculties and staff.
“We didn’t find out until a meeting last week,” said Dinorah Salazar, a teacher at Horace Mann who’s been a part of the faculty for more than 18 years. She and her collegues say that they were not informed of the move until a meeting on June 16. “The way they went about this was wrong. It’s summer it’s not enough time. We have to prepare for out students (…) how are we supposed prepare for this move?”
“You place a high school in a middle school and not expect the younger kids to be bullied,” said Jose Ramos, who will be among the parents attending tonight’s SFUSD meeting tonight to express their concerns during the public comment portion of the meeting. Neither Horace Mann nor Metro is on tonight’s agenda.
Bullying was the primary concern regarding the move. According to a conversation forwarded to El Tecolote between a Horace Mann faculity member and Bob Lentz, CEO of Envision Schools, the nonprofit organization that runs Metro, said that tensions between Burton and Metro students were one of the reasons for wanting to move.
According to the Lentz, Burton students have thrown food in Metro classrooms on more than one occasion. He added that not a day goes by without a Burton student confronting either a Metro teacher or student or both, which is one the reasons Lentz, his staff and students couldn’t imagine spending another year on that site.
Lentz could not be reached for comment before this article was published.
“Why didn’t they try to work thorough this tension with the staff at Burton? Do they expect these high school students not to bully our kids,” Salazar said.
Metro also cited lack of natural light in classrooms that are leaky and unpainted. Propostion 39, approved by voters in 2000, requires that the SFUSD provide facilities to charter schools.
Their website has already announced their upcoming move, “Metro is Moving to the Mission Neighborhood!,” which includes a staffed office as early as next week.
The school has 91 Latino students enrolled, many of them from the Mission, according to data from the California Department of Education. Seventy-five percent of students graduated from Metro in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available.
“We’re not against Metro, a lot of our kids graduate from here and attend Metro. We’re against the way this entire arrangment was done–keeping us in the dark,’ said Salazar.
“Those kids are going to be surprised when they end up in this building again for high school,” she added.
The school year is scheduled to begin on August 18.
Charter school operater 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.
Parents and staff from Horace Mann will be present at tonight’s school board meeting at 555 Franklin Street in the Irving G. Breyer Board Meeting Room on the first floor. They are asking any concerned parent, teacher or resident attend to voice their opinions. Sign up for public comment begins at 6 p.m.
