Santa Clara school board rejects charter school petition
Group deadlocked 3-3 after hours of deliberation on downtown proposal
SAN JOSE » A proposed downtown charter school serving poor children and partnering with The Tech Museum of Innovation ran into its second roadblock late Wednesday, when the Santa Clara County Board of Education refused to approve the petition.
The board deadlocked 3-3 after nearly four hours of testimony and deliberation and rejected the appeal of Promise Academy. Trustees Darcie Green, Joseph Di Salvo and Grace Mah supported the petition, while Claudia Rossi, Rosemary Kamei and Anna Song were opposed. Board President Michael Chang was absent.
Head of School Anthony H. Johnson said Promise would appeal to the state board of education.
“Of course our families were disappointed. We’re going to continue to fight for the needs of our kids,” he said.
“You’re making this promise to the kids, the families, that you’re going to help them succeed, but it’s got to be more than that,” said Kamei, who agreed with the county Office of Education staff
conclusion that the petition failed to outline how it would educate English learners and students with disabilities. The board heard the 1,110-page petition on appeal, after it was rejected in June by the San Jose Unified school board.
Promise charter organizers, backed by Innovate Public Schools, proposed creating a school from transitional kindergarten through high school serving low- income students. San Jose-based Innovate seeks to empower parents to advocate for better schools and options, including charter schools, especially for low-income children.
Parents yearning for more educational choices for their children begged the board to approve the charter.
“I have seen the data about our downtown schools and am living that reality everyday with my children,” Eldemira Cerna said. “I know they deserve a better option.”
San Jose Unified is failing downtown children, parent Yolanda Bernal said.
In the district’s downtown schools, only 20 to 30 percent of students score proficient in English on state tests. Math proficiency is lower, in the teens. Only 36 percent of Latino students graduate eligible for California’s four-year universities, slightly below the state average for Latino students.
However, district administrators, teachers and parents angrily defended their schools, denounced the charter proposal and urged its rejection. They assailed the school’s requirement that all high schoolers take advanced-placement courses, plans for kindergartners to have unstructured time, lack of specifics for special- education students and other failings that they perceived.
“My family and I don’t want this school in our neighborhood because it’s exclusionary,” said Melissa Urbain, a San Jose Unified teacher and downtown resident.
San Jose Unified Superintendent Nancy Al- barrán said about the petition: “We found it to be unsound.”
But former county board member Leon Beauchman, who sits on the Innovate board, disagreed. “This charter was done right. If there was an example of how it should be done, this is it,” he told the board.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, former San Jose Unified Superintendent Linda Murray and Tech Museum President and CEO Tim Ritchie urged approval of the charter.
“We live in world where talent is abundant but opportunity is not,” Ritchie said. “We know our handson approach works.”
Green, in an emotional appeal, reacted to critics who said that Promise Academy was setting its sights too high for the children of downtown’s low-income, immigrant families.
“Please stop alienating our families,” she said. “I don’t want to contribute to a system that limits the potential of our children.”