Guajome Park Academy passes VUSD review

The VUSD trustees as part of their oversight responsibilities ordered a review of procedures at Guajome Park Academy. No significant problems were found. Read the article here:

http://nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_33130f91-a8df-5c3a-a640-cc76ae6f39ba.html?mode=story

Below in blue is part of the article from the above URL. Notice toward the end of the article that Guajome Park, as a charter school, does not necessarily have to abide by the same rules as a regular school district public school.

Lack of same standards of accountability is one of the reasons that all major school organization oppose the US Education Secretary, Arne Duncan's directive to all states to allow unlimited number of charters to open.

In the case of Guajome Park, staff members are allowed to sit on its board of directors which is the equivalent of its school board. Regular school district teachers or anyone else employed by a school district like VUSD are NOT allowed to sit on their own school boards by state law. Charters are treated and tested differently than the schools you and I teach/taught at. They have an unfair advantage when it comes to competition and comparisons between them and our regular schools.

Also strangely they do not seem to have the same requirement for large playground areas for their students as regular district schools have. During my visit by car to Guajome Park, I found no track, football or soccer fields.

The first few paragraphs of the above article:

VISTA: Report says charter school is correcting problems

STACY BRANDT - sbrandt@nctimes.com Posted: Thursday, October 1, 2009 10:15 pm 1 Comment

Font Size:Default font sizeLarger font sizeA district-ordered review of the Guajome Park Academy charter school found some issues with the school's leadership and curriculum, but nothing that can't be corrected, according to a report presented to Vista school trustees.

Many of the issues at the charter campus have already been addressed now that the school has a new superintendent, Bob Hampton, the report said.

Hampton said Thursday he is confident that the school and the district can work through any issues collectively and collaboratively. Still, he said he doesn't agree with all of the conclusions in the report.

"I think a lot of their issues and concerns are probably philosophical in nature," Hampton said.

The Vista Unified school board decided earlier this year to ask a lawyer to look into practices at the charter program after receiving complaints about leadership, conflicts of interest and the school's independent study program.

As part of the review, attorney Dina Harris, with the firm Best, Best and Krieger, examined documents and conducted interviews related to the complaints.

Guajome Park serves 1,500 students in grades six through 12 with a project-centered curriculum. It's a charter school, meaning it is publicly funded but operates independently and is not subject to many of the rules typical public schools face.

Districts such as Vista Unified that sponsor charter programs are responsible for monitoring the schools to make sure they're financially and academically successful.

The district's report on Guajome Park came back last month, focusing on potential conflicts of interest on the school's governing board and concerns about leadership at the school.

Among the issues were having school employees on the governing board and an ineffective complaint procedure related to the school's lack of a superintendent for nearly a year. The school hired Hampton in July.

He said he plans to lead the school through strategic planning to look at how it operates and what goals its educators, students and parents have for the future.

Employees, including the school's superintendent, have been on Guajome Park Academy's board for years. State law is unclear on whether rules that prohibit public employees from serving on their employer's governing board apply to charter schools, Harris states in the report.