Marin charter merging with SFUSD charter?

The Marin Independent Journal is reporting that San Francisco-based charter operator Envision Schools is closing its flagship school, Marin School of Arts & Technology in Novato, and inviting MSAT students to enroll at Envision's Metro Arts & Tech in SFUSD, newly moving to the Newcomer High School campus in Pacific Heights.

Envision Schools' own materials are calling this a merger between the two schools.

That raises questions. Can a charter just declare that it's merging an out-of-district school into another without consulting the district the oversees the receiving school?

And SFUSD just agreed to let Metro move temporarily to the Newcomer High campus in Pacific Heights (which is a long way from Metro's current North Bernal-Mission digs). I've heard that the Newcomer facility needs major accessibility upgrades before it can legally be permanently occupied by an SFUSD school. Envision seems to be billing this as a long-term move, though. Does that commit SFUSD to doing the upgrades?

Novato's charter high school calls it quits
Don Speich
Marin Independent Journal 06/05/2007

Accusing the Novato Unified School District of lies and empty promises, leaders of the district's charter high school say they're calling it quits, ending an uneasy four-year partnership.

The Marin School of Arts and Technology will close at the end of this school year, officials said.

"We have determined that in light of NUSD's continuing intransigence, there is no future for MSAT, so we are going into exile," said Patrick Macias, a parent leader of the charter school.
I had to ask, 'Are we doing the best things for the kids if we keep going on like this until the middle of the summer?' "

School officials have been seeking a new site because their lease with the College of Marin expired and was not renewed. The college needs the space as part of its $249.5 million construction program.

Envision and MSAT parents have been meeting with Novato officials since February in an attempt to find a new site. Various options have been suggested but all ultimately ejected because, among other things, nothing could be found to house all of the school's students.

Novato School Board President Jennifer Treppa expressed surprise at the decision, saying she had not known about it until informed by a reporter Tuesday.

"Our assumption is that the process would continue and conversations would continue," she said. "We thought we were going down a road where both would explore alternatives, (though) there were no guarantees of what that would be. I was committed to the process as I understood it."

Bob Lenz, educational program director for Envision, which operates charter schools in San Francisco, Alameda and Hayward, dismissed that.

He said the district had been involved, in a "slow painful way ... to get rid of the school.

"If they act surprised they are acting. This has been a concerted effort to get (Envision) out of the county."

Novato Superintendent Jan La Torre-Derby said Tuesday, "I am so sad because I have not been informed of that (MSAT's closure). I think we were making progress and I am sad. Bob Lenz is a fabulous, fabulous administrator and Stewart (Fox) has done admirable work to continue the program.

"The whole thing is sad all the way around. There has been a lot of hard work on everybody's part."

But, said Lenz: "We've had a long and rocky history with the district. We anticipate they will continue with their lies and misrepresentations of the facts."

When MSAT was under development its curriculum specializing in the arts and high technology was sought by many parents and students, and attracting students has not been a problem.

However, like many new charter schools, its early years were plagued with financial and other problems, most of which were resolved. There remained tension between the school and Novato's central administration, a product, as it has been elsewhere, of two essentially autonomous entities.

Publicly funded charter schools, while part of a district, are governed separately by parents, who are involved in hiring teachers, setting curriculum and making a variety of decisions that have traditionally been made by central school administrations.

Last November, the Novato school board renewed the school's charter for five years with a list of conditions, including compliance with corrective plans such as timely and accurate reports and budgets.

The school is known for its creative programs, successful project-based learning and high academic achievement. Supporters say that more than 70 percent of the school's graduating seniors this year have been accepted to at least one four-year college and have been
awarded more than $830,000 in financial aid.

Along with this, said Lenz, has come praise about the quality of school programs from numerous nonprofit foundations that help fund the school. It is "very sad that we have had to resort to this for a school that has been so incredibly successful," he said.

Macias said MSAT parents had been told almost from the start by district officials that they supported the charter school, but were worried that Envision would "steal" the district's money.

The implication, he said, was that if the parents would drop Envision things would improve.

Last month, parents and students at MSAT said they wanted to sever their ties with Envision and create a new nonprofit themselves to take over financial responsibility for the school.

Macias said he and others met with district officials in private meetings, believing they were hammering out a process by which they could make the new proposal work.

He said he and others believed things were progressing nicely, until the district's attorney informed them at a recent board meeting that parents would have to begin again the lengthy process of applying to the board as a new charter school.

That, Macias said, was the final straw, because students, teachers and parents needed some immediate assurance about the future of the school.

MSAT parents and officials concluded the district's problem is with MSAT, not Envision.

"We came to the conclusion there is no possible, rational, feasible means to continue to operate under the auspices of Novato schools," Macias said.

This article leaves some open questions, such as: Why would the Novato district hate Envision so much? (MSAT posted far lower test scores than Novato's other two high schools, until a couple of years ago when it made a big jump, and now posts just slightly lower scores.)

I also asked the reporter how MSAT's claimed rate of college admissions compares with Novato's other two schools', since that information is meaningless without that context. He didn't know.

It remains to be seen whether MSAT's students will quietly disperse to other Marin high schools or whether a big group of them will be heading our way over the bridge. So this may be an ongoing story.

— Caroline