Charter school makes case for petition renewal

Ross Valley Charter leaders said this week they have built a strong and supportive school for kids who need a different kind of education than that offered at Marin’s traditional public schools.

“We’re really proud of who we are,” said Luke Duchene, director of the Fairfax TK- 5, 204- student school, at Tuesday’s public hearing before the Ross Valley School District board of trustees. “We’re giving a choice to families — and they are taking us up on that choice.”

Emily Belo, who teaches a combined second and third grade class under the charter’s signature multi-age program, said the arrangement allows students to build stronger connections because they stay with the same teacher for two years.

“Students get the benefit of being a mentee of the older children their first year, and then a mentor to the younger children their second year,” she said. “They learn how to collaborate.”

Duchene and Belo were two of three speakers Tuesday — alongwith charter-board chair Sharon Sagar — in the charter school’s bid to the district for a five-year renewal of its charter petition. The current charter petition, which is authorized by the state Board of Education, expires at the end of June. Revised state lawis requiring the charter to appeal for renewal to the local district, which had rejected the charter’s first petition in 2016.

Ross Valley School District officials said theywill consider the 556-page renewal petition, plus 60 pages of support letters from charter school families, plus additional documents submitted in recent weeks, and issue findings on Oct. 26. The district’s board of trustees will vote Nov. 10 on whether to approve the renewal petition and so become the charter’s authorizer.

The full petition, support letters and a power point of the presentation are attached to the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting at boarddocs.com.

If the district denies the petition, charter officials have said they will again appeal to the state for authorization. According to SueAnn Salmon Evans, the district’s attorney, revised state charter law does not allow the state Board of Education to continue to authorize charter schools. Instead, the law requires the state BOE to reassign authorization to either the Marin County Office of Education or the Ross Valley School District.

Trustees declined comment Tuesday and said they had no questions of the charter officials who spoke at the presentation. Trustees, in their decision, are required by law to consider whether the school has met 15 criteria the state considers to be critical to a functioning school program.

Those are: educational program, pupil outcomes, measure methods, governance structure, employee qualifications, health and safety procedures, means to achieve racial and ethnic balance, admissions requirements, audit process, suspension/expulsion process, employee benefits, attendance alternatives, rights of employees, dispute resolution and closing procedures.

Trustees have said one of their concerns is the issue of liability. Evans said Wednesday if the district assumes authorization of the charter, it “would be liable for the debts, obligations, errors or omissions of the charter school if the authorizer does not meet its oversight obligations.”

“However,” she added, “in accordance with the intent of the Charter Schools Act, the focus is on accountability. Accountability and potential liability as well as performance review all require due diligence on the part of the entity charged with review.”

Sagar, who was a trustee in the district for 15 years before assuming leadership in the charter five years ago, said her 20 years of managing budgets gave her a strong track record in being fiscally responsible. In addition, the charter has built a 12% budget reserve, Sagar said Tuesday, and has outlined a plan to expand that reserve fund over the next few years.

Left unsaid Tuesday, however, was any word over how the recent controversy over the charter’s school’s receipt of a $270,000 loan in federal coronavirus relief aid in May could impact the renewal process.

The district issued a notice of violation to the charter over the summer in regard to the loan, alleging the application process included some false statements to the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program and a lack of transparency to the public.

The matter was referred to a state fiscal review agency, which determined last month that any alleged improprieties did not rise to the level of requiring a formal audit by the Marin County Office of Education. The state agency, however, said it appeared there could be other issues, such as alleged violations of the state Brown Act that governs public meetings, or allegations over how the charter completed the loan application in April.

Charter officials have maintained, in documents to the school district and the state, that they did their best to apply for the loan under uncertain funding conditions, both at the state and federal levels. They say they were under pressure during the early stages of the pandemic because the state had warned it would defer payments to schools for several months and they did not have the ability to security alternative funding tomaintain cash flow.

According to Evans, the controversy could be considered in the trustees’renewal decision because “any issues regarding the charter school’s fiscal, governance, operations, and/or academic practices are subject to the renewal review,” she said in an email.

Charter officials have said that the state fiscal agency’s decision to not recommend an audit was proof that they had done nothing wrong that would require any further focus on the issue.