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Tuesday, May 22, 2012
STORYLINE Relocation of the California Montessori Project - Capitol Campus
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Sacramento: A City That Works For Everyone: How Does Central Sacramento Work For Families?
by cecile downs, published on October 29, 2009 at 12:22 PM
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On Monday, October 19th, parents of the charter school California Montessori Project (CMP)-Capitol Campus where surprised to learn through a letter from CMP Director, Gary Bowman, that Mr. Raymond, the new Superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD), was requesting that the Capitol Campus be relocated from the Old Marshall School (2718 G Street), a facility the school had moved into only 3 months prior, because the building was now deemed unsafe. The Capitol Campus is to be relocated in the Thomas Jefferson Elementary School (in the College Glen area) far from the current location forcing hundreds of families on the roads. Moreover the campus has to leave the premises in a hurry, in the middle of the school year -the move has already been planned for November 11th- even though parents learned through a subsequent letter from Gary Bowman (dated Thursday October 22nd) that there is "no imminent danger" and even though no one has yet seen the full report on which the SCUSD based its decision. Parents were not consulted, either about the time frame or by the choice of the new location. There is a perception among the parents community that the SCUSD is forcing a hasty decision in order to facilitate some ulterior plan. Read more here
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's slogan for Sacramento is "A City That Works For Everyone". How can the central city work for families if school are disappearing? CMP- Capitol Campus is the only Charter School offering a free-tuition Montessori education in the downtown/midtown area, attracting an extremely diverse community of families. The rightly named “Capitol Campus” has been in existence for eight years (first in the Pioneer Church on L Street, then since August 2009, in the Old Marshall School, where it was able to receive more students and extend its offering to 7th and 8th graders). Many families have made the choice to live in the downtown area because they believe in minimizing their environmental impact and improving the quality of life by living close to work and school. Last August, the Old Marshall School neighborhood community welcomed the school with open arms and big smiles, it was viewed as an important moment in the life of our city. Read more here. Parents are worried that their vision to make midtown more friendly and welcoming to families will never materialize if there are no schools to support families.
Open letter to Susan Miller, Associate Superintendent Sacramento City Unified
Dear Susan Miller,
Thank you for your message, even though it is a form letter that all parents received as a reply; and even though it came when everything had already been decided without any real input from us, the parents. This doesn't reflect a real concern for our situation! Only SCUSD Board member Jerry Houseman has shown a real interest in our problem by engaging into individual and thoughtful conversations, not only with me but with all the parents from whom he had received a letter.
We are forced to move but we still haven't seen the famous report from the architects and engineers hired by the District that claim that the Old Marshall School is not in compliance with the California Building Codes. We, as parents, are very curious to learn what the real problem with the school is: how exactly is the Old Marshall Building not in compliance? When are we going to be able to see and review the full report?
I was looking forward to meeting Superintendent Jonathan Raymond on November 3rd but now I am worried that he will give us the same kind of general, non-specific answers.
It is indeed "most unfortunate" -to quote your words- that our whole school Community has to be uprooted to the College Glen area, nice in itself but not what I signed up for when I enrolled my kids into the "CAPITOL" Campus of CMP. I will now have to spend 20 to 30 minutes on the freeway to take my kids to school every day (which is almost 2 hours in the car each day) when our commute to school is right now only 7 minutes (less than 30 minutes per day in the car).
If I had wanted to drive so far just so that my children would have a soccer field near their school or a real multi-purpose room, I could have signed up for another CMP Campus. What is now the choice of the parents who have chosen the environmentally conscious lifestyle of living, working, shopping, entertaining, and taking their kids to school in downtown Sacramento?
How is it more safe for our family to drive so long to go to school? There is more chance that my children would get injured in a car accident than there is that the Old Marshall School would ever fall on their heads!
We had a nice location at the Pioneer Church that we were outgrowing, so yes we were looking for another location in the downtown area, but we could have stayed there another year or two, till we find the perfect place... Now we have no choice but to take our kids to a distant school or leave CMP in the middle of the school year, which as you know very well is an almost impossible task, not only because the schools are full but because of the hardship it would impose on our children.
The only real support from the District that I would have been grateful for would have been if you had helped us find a location in the downtown area (even if it was only a temporary solution), by working in collaboration with the state or even commercial building owners, so that our families could have remained where we have chosen to be by enrolling our kids into the CMP Capitol Campus.
Sincerely,
Cecile Downs, a distressed and frustrated parent of two CMP students.
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Dear Mrs Miller,
Following up on my letter this morning I would like you to clarify something. I was made aware of a Sacramento Press article dated October 27th and that you can find here: http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/16541/Parents_split_over_possible_Montessori_school_move
In this article (last two paragraphs), when asked if the Old Marshall School building violates any code, Maria Lopez, SCUSD Public relation manager of SCUSD is quoted as saying that "The code is not the issue (...) Our superintendent said that no students should be in any structures not compliant with the Field Act," Lopez said. "There's a little bit of a grey area on whether independent charters (should) go into non-Field Act-compliant structures. Some think that they can, some think that they cannot."
There is no "grey area": by law, charter schools don't have to comply to the field act.
-A legal opinion by Attorney General Daniel Lungren in March 19, 1997 states that charter schools are subject to the building safety requirements of the Field Act only if the requirements are set forth in their charter petitions. Capitol -Campus Charter Petition Section VII-Health and Safety Procedures and states that the school will have a policy that states that CMP will be housed in facilities that have received Fire Marshall approval.
So if the Field Act is not the issue and if the "code is not the issue" to quote Maria Lopez, then I must ask you: what is the issue?
To my knowledge, CMP only received a summary of the report and not the report itself and the parents have not yet received anything at all.
Where is the report?
When are we going to get it?
What is the rush in moving us out ot the Old Marshall School?
Sincerely,
Cecile Downs
Also, please remember that charter schools are considered choice schools, not neighborhood assigned schools. They do not have attendance boundaries. Because people choose the school for it's particular program, the district is not required to keep it in a particular area. It's unfortunate for those who chose this school for its location but it isn't a regular public assigned school and the district can move it anywhere it likes as long as the facilities are equal .The district cannot move a school unnecessarily, however, so the equality thing must come into play. That's what I think, anyway.
In the current situation SCUSD claims that Old Marshall School does not meet California Building Code, yet no one has seen the proof of that. They also say it is prohibitively expensive ($3-12M) to meet code. Further, the new superintendent has stated that no charter school under SCUSD will be housed in a school that is not Field act compliant. (no matter how safe)
Now this all may be just circumstances but if SCUSD had sat down and conspired to do maximum damage to their competition (in the name of doing what is best for the children) they could not have come up with a better scenario. Convince your competition that you have a great location for them. Put them through the work and expense of moving. A few months later inform them that actually they can not be at this location, possibly due to policy. Anger their customer base (the students and parents) with a very disruptive move in the middle of the school year. Move them far away from the customer base that they have been serving so well. So well that they have a waiting list that is over 2/3 of their enrollment.
Now as I said this all may be circumstances, but what is SCUSD going to do to show all of us that this is not what is going on?
I don't blame you for your anger. I have been furious with this crazy district for years. I just think you should research prop 39 because that proposition is just saying that if regular public school students aren't allowed to use a facility, than charter school students must be treated the same regarding facilities. I don't know if charter school exemption from the Field act pre-dates prop 39
and now prop 39 sets the precident. Perhaps if you research it further you'll be able to find that out.
Prop 39 was supported by charter schools. Prop 39 is supposed to provide charters with the best and most appropriate facilities for their schools. It sounds like the district is using prop 39 guidelines for facilities. This is just my guess from what I have learned about prop 39. I could certainly be off the mark so I encourage you to research it and let us know what you find. Thanks.
http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/schoolid/642/articleid/268581/newspaperid/618/Default.aspx
an excerpt reads:
"...Newton Booth started as a public elementary school in 1921 but was forced to close in 1976 because of restrictions imposed by the Field Act, which required schools to reinforce their buildings for earthquake protection.
The school could not afford the renovations.
In 1984 the building was acquired by Foundation Health, which invested $2.3 million to retrofit the building with steel beams.
.... the Newton Booth interior, currently configured like an office building, will cost approximately $900,000 to remodel. In comparison, Repsher noted that it would cost $20-25 million dollars to develop the 80-acre White Rock campus, which, until the discovery of Newton Booth, was the school’s “future campus site.”
sigh!
I am friends with a family that has a child at CMP, and this next campus will be the 3rd for their child. And she’s only in the 3rd grade. They moved to the Mid-town area because they work there and wanted to be able to bike/take public transport to work/school/home. They will no longer be able to do this because of the proposed new location. This will also limit the number of hours they can volunteer at the school (and CMP is largely based on parent volunteers), because the further distance means it will be harder to volunteer before work, or on their lunch hours. So far, the downtown CMP campus has offered little continuity in their child’s education.
My kids in a public school lose too. Someone at SCUSD should have known that Marshall was unsafe BEFORE they allowed the move. Now, the very limited resources SCUSD has will be spent to make amends to CMP parents. My son’s school can’t afford buses for field trips and each year fewer students from other areas are allowed back because there are few buses available to get them to school and home every day. But SCUSD will be paying to transport CMP kids to school and back for the rest of the school year. They will reimburse CMP for money spent on remodeling Marshall. They will be paying to move all CMP belongings to make the transition as smooth as possible.
It’s truly great they are stepping up and helping CMP because it appears this was all caused by a poor job done by SCUSD in the first place. But all the same, the school district is falling apart and needs every penny it has for the children it is already supposed to be serving. After this big snafu, it’s not hard to see why the district is in this state.