Charter looks to state for renewal

Program files appeal after district rejection

After being rejected last month by the Ross Valley School District, Ross Valley Charter in Fairfax has appealed to the state Board of Education to approve a five-year renewal petition.

“We are proud of our school and confident that we will be serving children with our innovative program and inclusive community for years to come,” Luke Duchene, school director, said Thursday in an email. “We look forward to a fair renewal process with the State Board of Education.”

Marci Trahan, superintendent

of Ross Valley School District, said Wednesday she had no word on the status of the charter school's appeal, which was filed Dec. 1.

Under newly revised state law, even if the state Board of Education votes to renew the school's charter for five years and continues to be its authorizer as it is now, the state will still need to assign a local education entity — in this case, the Ross Valley School District or the Marin County Office of Education — to oversee the charter school operations.

“The law is very clear that, upon approval, the state will consult with RVC about whether it will be overseen by RVSD or MCOE,” Duchene said.

Jonathan Mendick, a spokesman for the California Department of Education, said in an email Thursday that the “appeal will be heard at the February advisory commission on charter schools and March State Board of Education meetings.”

“If approved, the charter will move to a local entity for oversight/authorization,” Mendick said. The charter school's current petition expires in June.

The issue of local oversight is a sticking point because the district board's 5- 0 vote on Nov. 10 to deny the charter's renewal petition hinged on the fact that trustees did not want to be held liable for any debt incurred by the charter. An accounting consultant for the district said at the hearing that the charter was already $930,000 in debt. Charter officials have denied that they are financially challenged.

Duchene said Thursday that he received an excerpt of state law in a Dec. 16 email sent by Terena Mares, Marin deputy superintendent of schools, that appears to call into question the issue of financial liability.

According to Duchene, the relevant part of the state law says: “A chartering authority that grants a charter to a charter school to be operated as or by a nonprofit public benefit corporation is not liable for the debts or obligations of the charter school or for claims arising from the performance of acts, errors or omissions by the charter school if the chartering authority has complied with all oversight responsibilities required by law.”

It was not immediately clear if that part of the law refers to the local entity doing oversight, or to the state as the authorizing agency.

Another main reason for the district's denial was concerns over the application process for a $270,000 coronavirus relief loan the charter school received in May from the federal Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program.

The district had asked Mary Jane Burke, the Marin County superintendent of schools, to conduct an extraordinary audit of the charter school finances to determine whether it violated local, state or federal laws in applying for the loan. Burke referred the request to the state's fiscal crisis and management assistance team, known as FCMAT, for review.

The district has alleged that charter officials violated the state Brown Act regarding open public meetings in failing to disclose certain details of the loan application process in its published board agendas. The district also alleged that charter officials misrepresented details to the SBA regarding who was authorized at the school to obtain the loan and receive the money.

FCMAT staff declined to recommend that Burke's office do the extraordinary audit, saying that the Marin County Office of Education was not the appropriate venue to probe complaints about the Brown Act or the SBA. FCMAT staff referred the Ross Valley School District to the Marin County District Attorney's Office regarding the alleged Brown Act violations, and to the Small Business Administration regarding the issues with the PPP loan application.

Trahan told the district's board of trustees on Dec. 15 that she has filed papers with both the Marin County District Attorney's Office and the SBA indicating the district's concerns with the $270,000 PPP loan.

Charter officials have denied any improprieties. The school applied to the federal government for PPP loan forgiveness on Dec. 8.

Sharon Sagar, chair of the charter board, said Thursday that the school expects the state Department of Education's charter division to provide a recommendation in January to the state Board of Education.

“We are quite confident that these allegations, like every other allegation that the district has made against RVC over these six years, will be dismissed by the public agencies reviewing them,” Sagar said in an email.

Mares, in her Dec. 16 email, said the county office would not be lobbying the state Board of Education to deny Ross Valley Charter's renewal petition. That's even though the MCOE — along with the Ross Valley School District — had denied the charter's original petition in 2015.

In 2015, the county office denied the RVC charter “based on the facts presented at the time based on our assessment that the petitioners were ‘demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition,'” Mares said.

The school “has now been operating since 2016 and has grown in attendance,” Mares added. For that reason, Mares said the school was potentially capable of meeting a state law requirement that calls for “demonstrating opportunities for teachers, parents, pupils and community members to establish and maintain schools that operate independently from the existing school district structure.”

The K- 5 charter school has just over 200 students, according to a recent board agenda document.