*UPDATE*
From the district:
"Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS SCHOOL MEETINGSacramento City Unified School District officials will conduct a meeting on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 6 p.m. to determine the level of interest in continuing a visual and performing arts program. Visual and Performing Arts Charter (VAPAC) students and their families are invited. The meeting will be held in Community Rooms at the Serna Center, 5735 47th Ave."
More info at the district website:
http://www.scusd.edu/com_office/FCPRO/PerformingArts.htm
"Wednesday, June 13, 2007 - VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS SCHOOL MEETINGSacramento City Unified School District officials will conduct a meeting on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 6 p.m. to determine the level of interest in continuing a visual and performing arts program. Visual and Performing Arts Charter (VAPAC) students and their families are invited. The meeting will be held in Community Rooms at the Serna Center, 5735 47th Ave."
More info at the district website:
http://www.scusd.edu/com_office/FCPRO/PerformingArts.htm
posted by All of Us at
1:09 PM
73 Comments:
SCUSD already voted in a dependent charter VAPAC. They did this at 10:30 at night last week at the board meeting. They have their plans already in place. They need the money. It will be very interesting to see what they say at this "meeting". How shameful this all is and how sad that the district did what it did to the current VAPAC. From the outside, no kids in this mess (thank goodness), you are all culpable.
And...the kids lost, damage already done no matter what comes next.
Does anyone know what was said at the meeting? How many people came?
At some of the end of the year soirees, it was mentioned that Mr. Hall had placed calls, on behalf of the SCUSD, to a few of the original faculty and staff from VAPAC asking them if they would be interested in working for a dependent, district sponsored arts school. Imagine that first year line-up together again minus the DLC.
At least that was the talk this morning @ RHS
100 people came to the VAPAC meeting. SCUSD said they are most likely going to Marian Anderson or some other small elementary.
The old Sac High campus is not available for Vapac or the new high school. Kelvin Johnson has the rights to the campus for his schools only.
Vapac will open on Sept. 4 and will have a new principal but same teachers.
Same teachers-Melchor and Seigert are at Rosemont-Aguilar and Stratton are at Mcclathy...who's left? Oh yeah Sosa.
Great-sign me up.
The campus of Sac High is not being used. Maybe 800 actual students in a campus that could fit 3 times that.
What a crock.
I don't think this Board will just roll over for Kevin Johnson as has happened in the past. They are facing the problem of where to place the consent dercree hs and now an Arts School. The options are limited and the Sac High campus makes the most sense.
"Vapac will open on Sept. 4 and will have a new principal but same teachers."
vapac as it's new private school, or vapac as a program within the district?
If the new private school, seriously, all the teachers are staying?? They give up a lot of benefits leaving the district. Plus, with the district taking back what is theirs, what is the new vapac left with?
i thought st hope had exclusive use of sac high campus through 2008. vapac will not be placed there within the next 90 days if that's the case.
vapac is not going to Sac High.
no one knows where VAPAC is going yet.
so what happened last night at the scusd board meeting?
Okay, so here are the facts: SCUSD, afraid that the the DLC's will realize that their arrogance, once again, backed them into a corner, will take take action to prevent them from changing course. They will revoke the charter (two years too late). St. Hope has so much political capital and Oprahesgue good-will, they are untouchable. Short of Kevin wearing nothing but a pink thong to board meetings can, or will, derail St. Hope (actually this Board is likely to think were a pink thong is an inventive way to institute HS refrom). Teachers at the DLC institute of Mismanagement will leave in droves. SCUSD will open a crapy small learning community to solve the legal dispute over the closure of SHS, while they devote unneeded resources to opening another HS in the pocket (were do most the board members live-- in the Pocket). Alan Young will continue to flounder as the new Met Principal or perhaps at the district's new performing arts charter (if there is enough grassroots support for the school). The SCUSD Board has invested too much to realize that their HS reform efforts are running in the red (encroaching on every other school program), and do not provide results (look at the results at CDE's data quest site). Maggie will remain at least through her contract because no other major Southern California District (San Diego Unified turned her down twice)wants her, despite her elbow rubbing with Deborah Ortiz. Barentson will continues to compensate for his lack of knowledge and extertise in financial managment by continuing to hid under Maggie's skirt. The board will continue to be union dominated, with no change. What will it take to change course, yield results, and have SCUSD functioning at its best? Nothing short of community involvment (fat chance).
If you're going to talk smack about the new Met principal you could at least spell his name correctly. That's ALLEN YOUNG
Kick ass teacher and administrator.
Sac High/Vapac grad 1988. Humboldt grad Sac State Masters DQ University/UC Davis Teacher California Conservation Corp principal Sac High teacher Sac High Charter principal VAPAC principal for a day (really)CKM Admin guy who helped keep our kids safe (as well as happy).
Young is now at the Met. Check out bigpicture.org for more info about the school. He has three daughters and enjoys long walks on the beach.
OBEY Young. He never flounders you WANG!
so sad to see former st hope leaders (adults and students) on this blog...
Why? We have all summer off. Adults and students? Wasn't this started by students?
that would be no. "concerned parents" started this blog...
The profile says "concerned parents, students and teachers". I guess the people who started it don't know who they are.
Just heard that SCUSD and St.Hope had a community engagement meeting last night. It was supposed to be open to the public.
Sounds like St. hope is starting a middle school on the Sac Charter High campus. The PS7 elementary school 7th and 8th graders will now be at Sac Charter.
I guess the fact that St. Hope has low enrollment at Sac Charter is now being proved. And it sounds like they are trying to fill the campus with more St. Hope kids.
Looks like they are making sure that there is no space left for consent decree or anything else and SCUSD is supporting this.
St Hype let Vincent Flores the techie of Sacramento High go this past week due to "Budget Issues" He was a SCUSD employee.
have you seen the PS7 campus? total junk and there's no room for 8th graders. yet those students continue to out perform area elementary schools. i hope the 7th and 8th graders move to sac high - they deserve better. consent decree was a waste of taxpayer money in 2003; now it will waste a ton of money in 2008. thanks to kate lenox and all the other folks for the lawsuit....really helped the kids of oak park out....not. just cause problems and never provide a solution.
The funniest thing I ever read is Vincent Flores made this blog.
Vincent is just one of many that st hope let go to go along with the many that have choosen to leave. The agreement with seiu and scusd is meaningless to them.
The # of students at sac charter and ps7 is so small there is still plenty of room for the consent decree hs. When is the scusd board going to get a backbone?
They'll never put three schools on a campus.
St. hope will have Sac High for a long time to come.
Once the two or three or four people that hate St. hope come to accept that, they can then start to focus their energies on things that will actually help the other 55,000 students in Sac City.
I think you are dreaming.
An interesting article from the NY Times this morning.
The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By
June 28, 2007
Patrons’ Sway Leads to Friction in Charter School
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
The Beginning With Children Charter School, housed in a former factory in Brooklyn, landed on the state’s list of high-performing schools this year, thanks to rising English and math test scores among black and Hispanic students.
But its founders and wealthy patrons, Joseph H. and Carol F. Reich, who have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the school, think it could be better. “It’s above average,” said Mr. Reich, 72, “but considering the effort and the capability and the resources, we don’t feel we’re getting the best we can.”
So last month, the couple — threatening to cut ties, including financial support — forced most of the school’s trustees to resign in a push for wide management changes, and better student achievement.
The move caused an uproar among parents and teachers who said they would be left with no formal say at the school. “My voice is going to be lost,” said Shakema Daise, the mother of a first grader.
The clash has exposed fault lines of wealth and class that are perhaps inevitable as philanthropists, in New York and nationwide, increasingly invest in public education, providing new schools to children in poor neighborhoods while making communities dependent on their generosity.
And for those lucky to have such benefactors, the situation raises core questions: Who ultimately controls charter schools, which are financed by taxpayers but often rely heavily on charitable donations? Do the schools, which operate outside the control of the local school district, answer to parents, or to their wealthy founders?
At Beginning With Children, many parents and teachers say that the Reichs’ main interest is to burnish their reputation as advocates for charter schools, and that the school’s original purpose, of catering to each child’s individual needs, is now secondary to drilling for exams in an effort to elevate scores and the Reichs’ credibility.
The Reichs support not just Beginning With Children, and a second school they founded in Brooklyn, but charter schools generally. They gave $10 million to help create the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, a nonprofit group dedicated to opening 50 more of the schools.
“Joe and Carol Reich started the school for whatever reasons initially,” said Gail Sims Bliss, a teacher and former trustee who resigned reluctantly. “But it has grown into their participation in the charter movement with a capital M.” She added, “They cannot allow the school to compromise their status and their progress in this particular movement.”
In an interview, Mr. and Mrs. Reich said they were committed to their original promise of providing children with an education that would lead to success in college and in life. “We promised to build them a model education program that would lay the groundwork for their future,” said Mr. Reich, a retired investment banker. “This didn’t come from nowhere. We were really worried that the school wasn’t delivering.”
The Reichs are not alone in directing their charity to schools. The Walton, Broad and Gates foundations, all founded by billionaires, support charter schools nationwide.
Andre Agassi, the retired tennis great, opened a charter school named after him in Las Vegas. The former N.B.A. star, Kevin Johnson, started two charter schools in Sacramento. The billionaire corporate raider, Carl C. Icahn, has a charter school named for him in the Bronx. And Courtney Sales Ross, the multimillionaire widow of a Time Warner executive, has the Ross Global Academy Charter School, housed in the basement of the city’s Education Department headquarters.
Nor are the Reichs the only ones facing difficulties. The Ross Global Academy is on its fourth principal in less than a year.
Frederick M. Hess, an expert on philanthropy in education, said there would be more disputes like the one in Brooklyn as high-profile donors invest their reputations in schools and face “the enormous kind of name-brand question.”
“When those schools disappoint them, when there are disputes or divergence regarding institutional mission,” asked Mr. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, “how are they going to negotiate this relationship?” He added, “What we are seeing is really just the front end of what is going to be a fascinating dynamic.”
In educational philanthropy, the Reichs were pioneers. They fought for years to get the city’s Board of Education to let them open the Beginning With Children school in 1992 in an impoverished section of Williamsburg, before charter schools became a national trend and at a time when private donors were generally reluctant to write checks to public school systems. The school converted to charter status in 2001.
They fought through bureaucratic tangles to get the system to accept a virtually free building, a former Pfizer pharmaceutical factory, which the school now occupies for $1 a year.
The school has done well, though far from stellar. This year, 69 percent of students in Grades 3 to 8 scored at or above grade level on the state English exam, compared with the 56 percent citywide average. And 77 percent of students scored at or above grade level on the math exam, compared with 65 percent citywide. The state reauthorized the school’s charter last year, giving it a full five-year renewal.
But the Reichs are not satisfied and said the school’s trustees were an obstacle. Charter schools get taxpayer funding, but are run independently from local school districts under terms set out in their state-approved charters.
The 14-member Beginning With Children board included appointees from the Reichs’ foundation, which helps finance the school; parents; teachers; the principal; and community representatives. The board chairman, John Day, is a former Pfizer executive.
The Reichs said the problem was that the board was “constituency-based” and that they wanted members with practical skills like fund-raising or public relations instead. To get the changes, they threatened in a strongly worded letter to cut off their support unless all but three of the board members resigned. Among those told to quit were five parent and faculty representatives.
At a board meeting last month, parents lashed out at the Reichs, angrily describing their relationship as that of master and servant or landlord and tenant.
One parent said the threat to cut ties was “a gun pointed at the head of every child in this facility.” In recent years, the school has faced annual budget gaps of up to $635,000 that were filled by the Reichs’ foundation, and parents said they feared that the school would close without the Reichs’ help.
Mrs. Reich, 71, said of the letter: “It was not a blunt threat. It was a choice. You can go the way you are going or you can restructure yourselves.”
Many parents and teachers said they agreed that the board did not function well. But they also said there were disagreements with the Reichs over issues like how much to focus on standardized testing. And they accused the Reichs of meddling in areas like teacher hiring and the choice of a reading program.
“The emphasis on testing means the school is moving away from its original mission,” said Karl Klingbeil, a parent. “They just got tired of listening to us talk about curriculum and pedagogy.”
The Reichs said they did not want to squabble over such points, noting that the principal runs the school and that they themselves are not voting trustees. They said they had proposed creating a faculty senate and parent council to give input to the new trustees.
The city school system has stood at the sidelines. Garth Harries, who oversees charter schools for the Education Department, said they were intended to operate with wide autonomy. “We’re confident in this case, with Joe and Carol,” he said, “You are dealing with folks who have the interests of the school and the kids in mind.”
The three remaining board members at Beginning With Children have enlisted a consultant to help identify new trustees, and the Reichs said they were moving aggressively to set things right. “This was our school, it’s our dream, it’s our vision,” Mr. Reich said. “We are going to fight to make this school the best school it can be for this community.”
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OBEY YOUNG!
What is this obey young stuff? Alan is such a nice boy, I'd hate to see him getting involved in this kind of mess.
Who cares?
Sacramento City Unified School District
BOARD OF EDUCATION
SPECIAL BOARD MEETING
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
4:30 p.m. – Closed Session
5:30 p.m. – Open Session
Serna Center
Community Rooms
5735 47th Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95824
AGENDA
2007-19
The Board of Education welcomes the public’s participation at Board meetings. The Board requests that you fill out a yellow speaker card and your name will be called under the appropriate agenda item.
1.0 CALL TO ORDER / ROLL CALL – 4:30 p.m.
2.0 ANNOUNCEMENT AND PUBLIC COMMENT REGARDING ITEMS TO BE DISCUSSED IN CLOSED SESSION
3.0 CLOSED SESSION
3.1 Government Code 54956.9 (a) – Conference with Legal Counsel – Existing Litigation
Rogers, et al., v. Governing Board, et al., Sacramento Superior Court No. 03CS0052
3.2 Government Code 54956.9 – Conference with Legal Counsel – Anticipated Litigation
Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to subdivision (b) of Government Code section 54956.9 (1 case)
Initiation of litigation pursuant to subdivision (c) of Government Code section 54956.9
(1 case)
4.0 CALL BACK TO ORDER / PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE – 5:30 p.m.
5.0 STRATEGIC PLAN AND OTHER INITIATIVES
5.1 Action to Order a Comprehensive Environmental Review of One or More Sites Action
for Consent Decree High School (Priority #8) (Bill West/Jerry Behrens) 5 minute presentation
10 minute discussion
(over)
6.0 CONSENT AGENDA Action
6.1 Approve Revised/Updated/New Position Descriptions: Senior Mental Health Clinician, Mental Health Clinician, Youth and Family Mental Health Advocate (Priority #5) (Carol Mignone Stephen/Philip Moore)
7.0 ADJOURNMENT
STHYPE EMPLOYEES AND PARENTS ARE ABOUT 10 MIN FROM THE SERNA CENTER
consent decrea will never happen. it is a waste of money and in not necessary.
declining enrollment district wide.
high quality education, paid for by our taxes, already offered to Oak Park kids.
this is just petty jealousy of four women who hate Kevin Johnson and can't stand he has SaC High.
Soon enough his middle school will be there.
Soon enough, hundreds of new kids will want to go to middle school at Sac high and not be bused out to Carson or Cal.
Sac High is for St. Hope.
move on.
consent decrea will happen the sac high test scores this year have lowered due to students not taking the test seriously the state will release the scores in the coming months to prove it
sac high's scores will be the highest in years.
and the overall rating will go up more than any other school.
then everyone will want to go to sac high and they'll need more space and the district will have to build them a new school.
The district says what they will do about VAPAC below. Do any of you think that the district should have the Depot school site when,
1. It is non-field act compliant
2. The district did nothing to help create that facility and 3/4 of all property belonged to the VAPAC corporation.
The site mentioned below has been completely cleared of everthing
non-district and all the VAPAC corporation property that it took 4 years to accumulate is gone.
"The most time and cost-efficient option, would be to have the school remain at the present site, and co-locate the VAPA program at the current Depot Park site. This can be done with an already existing, successful charter school in a combined charter program. Or, to co-locate several schools at the current site. A decision will be made by July 15th as to whether the Depot Park will be the site of the visual and performing arts school."
I do not understand SCUSD behavior at all and I wish I could make sense of this.
Send st hope to the Depot site.
Agree
consent decree is on its way to marian anderson...
Anonymous use your real name we know you work on the inside
What was the outcome of the July 3rd SCUSD Board meeting?
“Those (the rescued) children were readily accessible, but the boy that died was further in the room.” - Ron Lipps
The outcome of the July 3rd SCUSD Board of Education meeting was that Board Members Karen Young, Rick Jennings, Manny Hernandez, and Jerry Houseman voted to do an extensive environmental review of the Marian Anderson site. Once again these Board Members show that they don't care about students. They voted to close Marian Anderson Elementary at the end of the 2005-06 school year to put the "much needed" therapeutic center at that location. Their vote shows that they are willing to sacrifice the therapeutic center which serves emotionally disturbed students. They have already decided to move the Success Academy to Marian Anderson for the upcoming school year in order to give the 8th and V site to the MET small high school. So much for "Equity and Access for every student". Those Board Members will do whatever they can to maintain the appearance that Kevin Johnson's Sacramento Charter High School is a success. Never mind that the best place to put a high school is at a high school facility and that it is absurd to let Kevin Johnson continue to underutilize the old Sacramento High School facility.
They are wasting taxpayer dollars by doing the EIR. Marian Anderson is not big enough to house 800 high school students. Two story portable classrooms do not a high school make. However, nothing must interfere with the illusion that their "high school reform" has worked a miracle in SCUSD.
Their action doesn't necessarily mean that Marian Anderson will be the location of the Consent Decree High School or does it?
####
Consent Decree will be placed at Sacramento High School guaranteed.
####
No room left at Sac Charter. St.hope is putting new middle school there. They will run the whole campus.
One Sac Charter Teacher out, one of many in the next week
Blah Blah Blah
again, tax payers spent money on the most ridiculous lawsuit against the district for the consent decree high school. declining enrollment for district = no need for another high school. st hope has exclusive use - get over it already.
What is ridiculous it St. HOPE's declining enrollment and its continued exclusive use of the Sacramento High School facility. The lawsuit against SCUSD was because SCUSD broke the law when it converted Sacramento High School into a charter. Does "anonymous" condone illegal acts? The Consent Decree was the legal remedy for the illegal conversion. SCUSD has to obey the law. What is dumb is for SCUSD to put the Consent Decree High School anywhere other than at the Sacramento High School Facility.
If "anonymous" doesn't like SCUSD wasting taxpayers money then "anonymous" should be going to school board meetings and objecting to the construction of the Science and Engineering Small High School. "Anonymous" should also object to St. HOPE's exclusive use of the Sacramento High School facility at less than 50% of the facility's capacity.
What is ridiculous is that st hope is even allowed to stay open at at any facility given their track record. When is the scusd board going to wake up?
I was told today that the administrative staff at STHYPE and sacramento charter are making 70k-145k a year while the teachers are making the low end of 40k a year I was thinking of sending my daughter to sacramento charter but this is giving me doubts
st hope is a public school which makes all that information available upon request. ask them for it or attend their board meetings. just like scusd board meetings they are open to the public and there is time for public comment. they do not make it easy to attend because they are held in the middle of the work day and not very often but they are open and fall under the brown act.
st hope is not an organization that values it's teacher. teachers are just a piece of hardware that you use up and replace. that's why there is such a high rate of turnover. pay low salaries to rookies with high hopes, burn them out and throw them away. in a couple of weeks this years test scores will be released and then we can see if the st hope methods are working.
I had a student at Sacramento High School for 4 years, 3 with St Hope. I have to say that the first 2 were pretty good and an improvement over what was there before. The 3rd year, last year, was a disaster. I would not send my next child there
Can you share what changed and mad last year a disaster?
two words Mr. D
who is Mr. D?
Principal of one of the remaining 2 schools at Sac. Arrogant, obnoxious, jerk.
What is his full name?
Dif.............something. Don't remember the spelling
with st hope adding a middle school to the sac high campus they might reach an enrollment of a 1000 kids. That still leaves enough room to place the "consent decree" hs on the sac high campus. Sure seems to make the most sense. if sac continues to be managed as it was last year more kids will be leaving and there will be plenty of space.
St Hope will never give up the exclusive use of Sacramento High School. This next week Sac High will open with a packed campus with excited students and teachers. This 5th year will be the best with the Sacramento High School charter being renewed for another 5 years after the outstanding progress made in in 2006 - 07.
It will be another year. I don't know about the best. I can't say that there will be progress. But it will be another year. Lord get me out of here.
are you speaking as a student or staff? if it is as a student you have many options with all of the educational opportunities that have been created in sac city. if as a staff member, options exist also, but I know there are many reasons that make it difficult to leave but you still have options.
Has anyone noticed that the page referring to what is happening with one of your very favorite subjects VAPAC is gone. Did anyone go to the meeting on the 25th of July? What has happened. So may of you on this blog wanted the DCL's to be eliminated, you all got your wish and now the programming that was always so important is literally gone, and we have the district to thank for it. I have gone back on this blog and read some of the horrible things that were said in the last two years. The district needs to be watched. WHAT IS GOING ON?
I was at the July 25 meeting. Parents are very upset because the grades and transcripts for the students at VAPAC were totally messed up. One parent said that his daughter had been told that STAR testing was optional. There are problems with schools not wanting to accept VAPAC students because their transcripts are wrong i.e. wrong GPA, weird grade fluctuations like first semester an A, second semester F. Stories about teachers resorting to flunking students because the VAPAC administration would not take disciplinary action. Parents have been told that their student, even if they received A's, may need remediation because of the problems. Parents wanted to know how far behind their students really are, etc. etc. etc. VAPAC high school students will be accepted at Kennedy High School regardless of their Area of Attendance High School. Middle School Students will be accepted at Sam Brannan. The District cannot have a school at the Army Depot because it doesn't meet Field Act requirements. Staff said that they want to locate the Visual and Performing Arts Program with the Consent Decree High School when it opens in 2008. If there are parents who need help getting their VAPAC student into a school they should call the Serna Center and talk to Mike Hall. There is a green form that you can fill out to get help tracking down student grades and transcripts. It is a mess.
Ah, full circle. Place VAPAC with the "Consent Decree High School" which will mean placing it back at Sac High where it started before this whole fiasco took place. Makes sense if the district is willing to support developing a quality art school.
Co-locating the Consent Decree High School (with VAPAC as a part of it) at the former Sacramento High School facility would make sense and save bond money for better uses rather than building another Small High School. Sadly, SCUSD staff at the VAPAC meeting said that they would put the high school on the Marian Anderson site. They mentioned Marian Anderson over and over again. There was a lot of lip service given to the arts at the VAPAC meeting.
I am a teacher leaving St. Hope I am in MEHS the leadership of our principal straight up SUCKS. I am one of many teachers leaving we hate to do it due to the students but our principal leaves us no choice.
"There was a lot of lip service given to the arts at the VAPAC meeting."
I watched VAPAC be destroyed and I have personally seen how underhanded, viscious and deceiptful the district can be. Mob squad with Mr. Barensten in the lead. Shame on them. They do not care about the arts nor the kids that now have no program. They never wanted VAPAC to exist, DLC's or no DLC's. When you look at what happened over the last 4 years and how a magnet program like this, cherished by the community, was destroyed and how so many on this blog spit at the DLC's , blaming them for everything. Well...it takes more than two people to destroy a whole school. Now the Depot will sit empty, with so many dreams smashed and no one really giving a damm about the destruction of the kids. It's all about money and as they say, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark!" I just got an email from a kid that is attending Mustardseed school and was praying to go to arts school this fall. Think about that one for a minute. What has happened should make everyone sit up and scream at the next Board meeting - union, no union whatever. BTW - the district destroyed any hope for a Sacramento Arts Conservatory, and it was not just the DLC's but many, many other professional artists gathering to create an arts program. No, it was not public, but is public really serving us in Sacramento or serving the arts????
Sadly signed,
A professional theatre artist
from this community
"There was a lot of lip service given to the arts at the VAPAC meeting."
I watched VAPAC be destroyed and I have personally seen how underhanded, viscious and deceiptful the district can be. Mob squad with Mr. Barensten in the lead. Shame on them. They do not care about the arts nor the kids that now have no program. They never wanted VAPAC to exist, DLC's or no DLC's. When you look at what happened over the last 4 years and how a magnet program like this, cherished by the community, was destroyed and how so many on this blog spit at the DLC's , blaming them for everything. Well...it takes more than two people to destroy a whole school. Now the Depot will sit empty, with so many dreams smashed and no one really giving a damm about the destruction of the kids. It's all about money and as they say, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark!" I just got an email from a kid that is attending Mustardseed school and was praying to go to arts school this fall. Think about that one for a minute. What has happened should make everyone sit up and scream at the next Board meeting - union, no union whatever. BTW - the district destroyed any hope for a Sacramento Arts Conservatory, and it was not just the DLC's but many, many other professional artists gathering to create an arts program. No, it was not public, but is public really serving us in Sacramento or serving the arts????
Sadly signed,
A professional theatre artist
from this community
What is MEHS?
For those who might have missed it ...
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/292631.html
Michelle Rhee had been serving as both the president and vice-chair of St. Hope for the last year (oddly enough, while her organization was also doing business with St. Hope).
During that time, Rhee has served as Kevin Johnson's go-to on the difficult stuff he didn't always want to deal with. While he has been teaching his leadership class for 15 kids on the Sac Charter campus, she has been handling the staff performance reviews and dismissals on his behalf. Staff suddenly were informed that they now "reported to Michelle" (including human resources, finances, and the principals), which often seemed to consist of phoning her in Denver.
There's no doubt she is very smart, but anybody who works or has worked in St. Hope has probably wondered how somebody who didn't even live in the same time zone was seemingly placed in charge of nearly every facet of the organization. There are a lot of theories that aren't worth getting into in this post.
Ms. Rhee has deservedly received a lot of good press for her intelligence and accomplishments. But interestingly (apart from the press release put out by St. Hope itself), none of the articles in the Washington Post nor any of her statements mention anything about her role in "transforming" St. Hope. With the amount of time she spent in working at Sac Charter with KJ (She even had a designated desk in the Sac Charter "west wing."), you'd think she would be pointing to that as an example of how she affected big change within a school environment. But no such mention. I'm not sure if KJ made an appearance in DC to cheer her on, or if he stayed out of the picture by design.
Rhee rubbed a lot of people the wrong way during her time at St. Hope. Some will say so publicly, while others won't. But a lot of the evidence can be found in the mass migration of staff members who decided enough was enough and have left over the last few months. This goes beyond teachers to people in all parts of the organization. It's not entirely Michelle's fault, but she frequently became the face of KJ's dysfunctional management style and many just became fed up.
For the benefit of DC's kids, I sincerely hope that Ms. Rhee is successful. DC kids deserve better schools, and if Rhee can deliver those, she would deserve huge credit.
For Sacramento's kids, it will be interesting to watch how Rhee's departure from day-to-day operations will change the way that St. Hope works. KJ will no longer have Rhee there to deal with the "difficult stuff" or justify impulsive decisions made behind closed doors. Rather than doing blanket firings of over half of his campus' teachers, it's now time for KJ to acknowledge his own shortcomings as a manager and find someone with a clear coherent vision for the school system that goes beyond the short-term. Sac Charter can be a tremendous source of pride within this community (For many, it already is.), but only if the vision for what it will accomplish goes beyond it being just "KJ's school." St. Hope is not beyond repair, but needs to use Rhee's departure as a wake-up call and dramatically adjust the way it does business.
S
Way to late for a wake up call. Chris Minero, Margret Fortune, Al Rogers, and Dana Gonzales have all done the same things that you describe Rhea doing but nothing changes because of KJ. There is no HOPE. As long as he has a management role St Hope Public Schools is doomed. Once again St Hope is in a leadership void. Neither of it's existing principals can step up to fill the void, KJ has tried in the past and run off all the competent instructional leaders.
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