Heartwood Charter School officials made their best pitch this week to convince the Ross Valley School District to grant its petition and accept the K-12 Waldorf-inspired school as an independent, publicly funded charter.
“We don’t see ourselves as competitors (for district public school students and resources),” Heartwood Director Stephanie Felton-Priestner told the board of trustees at a packed public hearing Wednesday at the district office in San Anselmo. “We see ourselves as a choice for people who want to home-school their kids and who don’t have a public option.”
Ross Valley School District teachers and parents, who say they have suffered during the past two contentious and divisive years of having Ross Valley Charter school share space inside the district’s White Hill Middle School campus in Fairfax, weren’t buying it.
“I know that charter schools create … uncontrolled conditions, they contribute to the resegregation of our schools, they drain resources from our district and they contribute to overcrowding,” said Rebecca Hayhurst, president of the Ross Valley Teachers Association, one of more than a half-dozen district teachers who wore blue union T-shirts to the hearing. “I think Waldorf is a lovely program, but charters are not the answer for our Ross Valley School District.
“Choice is not a solution to the problems that face education today,” Hayhurst added. “It exacerbates the problems.”
RVTA President Rebecca Hayhurst speaks against charter. pic.twitter.com/aQmW4TSUA6
— Keri Brenner (@KeriWorks) April 18, 2019
Allison Waugh, one of several parents who spoke during public comment, agreed.
“The amount of time and resources that would be spent authorizing and managing another charter will impact our kids,” she said. “I feel for the families whose kids are thriving at Heartwood, but when you’re talking about a viable alternative choice, it has to be viable also for our children.”
Public Comment from Allison Waugh RVSD parent. pic.twitter.com/xDIBujWGam
— Keri Brenner (@KeriWorks) April 18, 2019
Trustees said they would continue to review Heartwood’s 197-page petition, submitted last month. A vote on whether to accept the petition will be held at either the next board meeting on May 7, or at a special meeting scheduled to comply with a 60-day deadline. The scheduled May 7 board meeting is one day past the deadline, said Superintendent Rick Bagley.
“We’ll be reviewing 16 elements that should be in a charter petition,” Bagley told the trustees. He said the district was obligated by law to approve the petition, “unless we find that, after reviewing the 16 elements, that they failed to meet one of five different criteria — those are the only five criteria we can use. Financial impact to the district is not one of them.”
Bagley, in a letter to a district resident that was included in Wednesday’s agenda packet, said the five criteria for rejecting a charter petition were the charter presents an unsound education program for its students; the petitioners are demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition; the petition does not contain the required number of signatures; the petition does not contain an affirmation of each of the conditions described in California Education Code Section 47605 (d); the petition does not contain reasonably comprehensive descriptions of each of the 16 required charter elements.
Several bills pending in the state Legislature would strengthen the ability of districts to reject charters — such as for fiscal impact to the district — but those, if approved by lawmakers, would not take effect until Jan. 1, 2020.
Students at the Heartwood charter, which has a home base in space leased from the Girl Scouts camp at the Bothin Youth Center in Fairfax, are mostly home-schooled. Because of that, Felton-Priestner said Heartwood, a “nature-based” version of the Waldorf curriculum, would not be asking the district for any space inside a district school under state Proposition 39. Prop. 39 requires public school districts to offer “reasonably equivalent” accommodations to charter schools.
Ross Valley Charter, which was initially rejected by the district but ultimately authorized on appeal by the state, was granted the space inside the district’s White Hill Middle School after RVC invoked Prop. 39. RVC and the district have so far not agreed on how to apply Prop. 39, which is based on the number of students enrolled in the charter who live within the district. RVC has so far twice sued the district on the matter, and is leaving the option open to sue a third time over the space for the 2019-20 school year.
Heartwood has also had its share of legal and financial issues, the most recent of which was last year, when its authorizing agency, CalSTEAM, self-revoked its own charter, leaving Heartwood, which was a program under the CalSTEAM charter, without a source of public financing.
Several people, including district parent Rob Sandusky and RVSD trustee Mark Reagan, questioned Heartwood officials Wednesday whether there were any loose ends or potential future liability left from the break with CalSTEAM, which was investigated by the Sonoma County Office of Education. No answer was provided.
Bagley said Thursday he would ask district counsel whether RVSD could become liable for any future debt or penalties that might be imposed on Heartwood, should the district opt to accept Heartwood’s petition.
Another legal question raised was whether RVSD, which serves kindergarten through eighth grade, was equipped to oversee and manage a charter school that covered kindergarten through 12th grade.
Myrel Jenks, a kindergarten teacher at the district’s Brookside Elementary School in San Anselmo, said Wednesday the main concern for her was the dilution of resources for district students.
“It’s all the kids together that allow the base to support those kids that need those extra things,” she said. “The more subgroups we get, the smaller the base becomes, and the more kids are going to fall out of the system. It’s just this ball that’s going the wrong way. We should all come together in one system, so that we can have those extra services be accessible for the kids who need it.”
Myrel Jenks, an RVSD teacher, speaks out. pic.twitter.com/kAeRDPwfM9
— Keri Brenner (@KeriWorks) April 18, 2019
Several Heartwood parents said their children had benefited greatly from Heartwood and from the Waldorf approach.
Erin Hallal said she “would love to figure out” a way to have the Heartwood program continue in the Ross Valley.
RVSD parent Lenore Alford said other Waldorf education options exist in Ross Valley and she didn’t see a need for a special school inside the district to offer Waldorf or to educate “the whole child.”
“We have a wonderful school already here,” she said. “Buzzwords were mentioned such as ‘educating the whole child’ — I think that’s already happening. I believe we need to keep our resources for our public schools.”
She said she objected to the lack of accountability of the charter school governing boards, which are self-appointed, as compared to public school boards, which are elected.
“One problem I have with charter schools is that my taxes go to pay for the charter schools, but I can’t be on the (charter) school board,” she said. “I find that fact alone to be important in recognizing that it’s not truly public education, and it doesn’t belong.”
