Dear Editor,

Thank you for your continued well-balanced reporting of the contentious issue of the Dozier-Libbey charter conversion.

I know there are some issues where you and I do not, and probably will not ever, see eye-to-eye. However, the need for public school reform has never been one of them. I write today no longer a constituent of Antioch, but as a citizen of California and a school reform advocate. Mr. Crowder hit the nail on the head with his analysis earlier this week. This issue is far greater than Antioch and has the potential to stop the charter-movement, and the school-reform movement, dead in their tracks. Antioch politics have not given rise to an issue with greater state and national significance since I first moved there over ten years ago.

Charter school law is an example of the great power of political compromise. It accords parents and teachers the opportunity to take a direct role in the policies and procedures that govern their local schools while ensuring equal opportunities under the law to students regardless of class, race, or net worth. By vesting the power of school control in those who work with students on a day-to-day basis rather than a district office that needs to find some way of educating students with a disparate set of interests, needs, and motivations, charter schools can overcome the “Harrison Burgeron” effect of many district schools while remaining in the public sphere.

That said, charter school law is not a panacea. Plenty of charter schools fail – some from corruption and some from incompetence. Some commentators suggest that predicting charter school success requires some sort of precognition. This is why the conversion charter is such a strong model. A charter conversion typically requires a dedicated team of professionals with a proven track record of success. Districts (or counties when districts fail to do so) are encouraged to put their faith in a talented group of professional educators and release the reins on successful programs. By allowing self-governance by trusted leadership, school boards, and by proxy voters, are assured they will have successful, cutting edge opportunities for their students.

There could not be a better candidate for this type of success than Dozier-Libbey. Nancie Castro and her tireless, dedicated team have created a truly innovative and successful program—one that has shown excellence working within the confines of a district framework, but could truly soar if those regulations were lifted. There has been a great deal of press paid to specific policy decisions (for example the “no D” policy) that are rooted in research and best practices, but the real power of charter law is not in specific policies, but in the educators’ abilities to shape that policy quickly and efficiently as the need arises.

Even under an independent charter, there are checks and balances. The school must regularly return to sponsoring board to report on its progress and seek a continuation of its charter. A board of directors still has fiduciary duties and oversight responsibilities, and many meet Brown Act style public meeting requirements. Most charters are WASC accredited and require the continuous oversight that an accreditation board offers. Finally, charter schools are subject to state audits to ensure taxpayer money is being well spent and appropriately accounted for. Under this rigorous framework, there is certain to be accountability for public funds.

There has been much discussion in social and mainstream media regarding the equity and access issues to charter schools, specifically to the proposed Dozier-Libbey charter. One of the elements of a charter petition, and one of the most heavily scrutinized elements, is its plan to maintain balance and diversity. No doubt that oftentimes charters do not succeed in this regard. Maintaining true balance in a school of choice is a difficult undertaking and requires a great deal of planning and organization. Even then, it is not always possible.

With the conflicting data being thrown about, I am not comfortable saying whether or not Dozier-Libbey has entirely successful in maintaining a perfect racial/cultural balance in the few years since it has opened. What I can say is that there is no reason to suspect this data would be affected negatively by charter governance. A charter school can react quickly to demographic shifts and recruiting needs than a district school. I can remember many instances when Nancie was trying to get recruiting materials out more quickly, hold more parent meetings, and offer various times of day for parents to sign their kids up for Dozier-Libbey. Oftentimes the attempts were met with the lethargic complacency

of school district policy making. I firmly believe any perceived inequities have been exacerbated, rather than alleviated by district oversight.

It is important at this juncture to discuss the difference between elite and elitist. An elite school creates excellence; an elitist school requires it at admission. Dozier-Libbey is an elite school. Anyone can apply, and anyone lucky enough to be selected in the random lottery can attend. Once that student is on campus, it is up to him or her to succeed. A recent editorial in another publication mocked Dozier-Libbey’s “Cure” program. This program (that I believe no longer operates under this controversial acronym) is exactly what most parents and teachers want – additional one-on-one instruction and support for students who need it.

This is one of the many ways in which Dozier-Libbey is elite, rather than elitist – anyone that chooses to succeed is given every opportunity to do so.

I could go on-and-on about the virtues of the Dozier-Libbey charter petition (perhaps you think I already have). But I wanted to write this to you, personally.

While we disagree on some ideas, we have always respected each other’s minds and hearts. This is a good move for students, a good move for the community, and a good move for the state. I hope you will come out in support of Dozier-Libbey’s charter conversion petition.

Jason Miller

Miller is the Founder and former Administrator of the Delta Academy of the Performing Arts, which is part of the Antioch Unified School District, and is now located at Deer Valley High School.

Guest Commentary

By Jeff Weber

The ongoing effort to convert Dozier-Libbey Medical High School, a high-performing pathway school in the Antioch Unified School District (AUSD), to a public charter school has swelled into a highly publicized, and at times ugly, battle in the court of public opinion.  Emotions are running high on both sides.  If there is a positive side to this political fight, it may be that the people of Antioch now have a much better understanding of their school district and of the wider charter schools movement in America.  Yet many are still asking, why is this all necessary?  Is this really in the best interest of our kids?  The answer is, it could be, if given the chance.  This article will attempt to explain in a rational way how Antioch could be better served by independent charter schools, and how we could get there with minimal disruption to our students.

Today more people in Antioch understand that an independent charter school is still a public school.  The general community will really see little change after a school converts from a district school to a charter.  The school will continue to serve the same students and meet the same state standards.  What will change is the governing board of the school.  A true charter school is independent and governed by a dedicated board of parents and community members that serve only that school.  A charter school’s board will not be distracted by the plethora of issues that the AUSD board of trustees must deal with in its 25-school district. 

It is also clear to most Antioch residents now that Dozier-Libbey teachers are not “stealing” their school.  In fact, the teachers are exercising their rights granted by the California legislature to convert a school to a charter if they feel doing so would better serve the students of that school. 

So why did the teachers of Dozier-Libbey take on this fight?  It was clearly going to be a David versus Goliath match-up from the start, with the district using its vast resources of public money and public employees, while Dozier-Libbey teachers worked extra nights and weekends and paid expenses out of pocket.  It was most certainly not so that teachers could stop giving ‘D’ grades to their students—a suggestion that has been highly publicized, but in fact does not exist in the charter petition objectives. 

The truth is, Dozier-Libbey teachers are risking a lot.  Most have decades of service behind them, and some are well within reach of a comfortable retirement.  They are giving up district tenure and seniority for an uncertain future and salaries that will stay on par with their previous district amounts, at best.  It would be impossible to argue that teachers are pushing the charter conversion for any reason other than the benefit of their students.

And their students do stand to gain a great deal from a charter conversion.  Here are some hard facts and numbers that show where Dozier-Libbey sits as a district school, and where it could be as an independent charter.  These are small examples among many that together represent a current system of educational management that is simply broken.

Early last year Dozier-Libbey teachers used grant money to purchase 15 new laptop computers to serve economically disadvantaged students.  Because of bureaucratic bumbling (an adequate cart could not be found), these brand new computers sat in a school district storeroom for over five months, despite repeated pleas from teachers, and have yet to reach the students who need them.  If Dozier-Libbey were a charter, this educational time would not have been lost.

This year, 20 students at Dozier-Libbey lost their job-shadowing opportunities with Sutter Delta Hospital because insurance forms were inexplicably held then mismanaged by the district bureaucracy, despite repeated calls from the Dozier-Libbey coordinator.  These valuable educational experiences would not have been lost if the necessary paperwork could have been handled in-house by a charter school.

Untold other educational opportunities have been lost to Dozier-Libbey, including real-time interactions with working doctors and nurses around the world, because district-wide policies could not be tailored to fit the needs of this unique school.  By their very nature, school districts like AUSD must operate on a “one size fits all” mentality in order to control such vast numbers of students and schools.  Dozier-Libbey was never designed to be a cookie-cutter high school.  It was created to be innovative.  Dozier-Libbey has numerous new programs ready to be implemented that address mastery learning of core subjects and credit recovery for struggling students, however these programs are not possible under AUSD, either because the other two high schools are not willing to embrace them (one size must fit all), or there is simply no funding to do so at Dozier-Libbey.

The state funding of public schools is based on the daily attendance at that school (known as “ADA”).  Schools like Dozier-Libbey with large percentages of economically disadvantaged students also receive additional federal funding, commonly referred to as “Title 1.”  All of this is taxpayer money that has been earmarked for educating our children.  However, school districts as large as AUSD have many layers of expensive bureaucracy that siphon off much of that student funding.  The combined salaries of the AUSD administrators (Don Gill, Tim Forrester, Stephanie Anello, Mike Santos, Louis Rocha, and Kenneth Gardner), who have spent so much of the past few months fighting the conversion charter, total over a million dollars.  That’s enough money to hire more than 20 librarians (DLMHS currently has one part-time librarian).  And there are literally scores of other administrators in Antioch being paid six-figure salaries who rarely venture near a classroom.  The more that schools operate independently, the less these central administration positions can be justified to the public—and that’s a very scary prospect for those individuals who enjoy them.

Dozier-Libbey receives from the district only a fraction of its ADA entitlements and none of its Title 1 monies.  The school site principal was given control of only $29,000 last school year, and of that funding amount $5,000 went toward paying a district-negotiated lease for the school’s copy machine.  Another $8,000 went toward paying the school’s librarian to stay an extra hour each day beyond the four hours for which she is contracted by the district.  Fortunately, many Dozier-Libbey teachers have been prolific in writing grant requests for their special projects.  Yet, even such grant money directed to Dozier-Libbey is occasionally siphoned off by the district for other uses.  And Dozier-Libbey suffers because of its own highly efficient fiscal management.  Antioch High School, a school only three times the size of Dozier-Libbey, receives eight times the operating budget from the district!  As a charter school, far more funding allocated by the state and federal government for Dozier-Libbey students would benefit Dozier-Libbey students.

So how does the charter conversion all turn out, and more importantly, what does it do for the kids?  At this point, there are two possible paths that the school district could take.

The first is for AUSD to continue with their current strategy.  The counter petition the district filed to make Dozier-Libbey a “dependent charter” stands on only the shakiest of legal ground, but it will serve to drag the conversion into the courts for possibly months or years—a stated objective made by the district at the school board hearing on their proposal.  They will spend untold thousands from public funds on litigation—money desperately needed by their own students.  (Dozier-Libbey charter petitioners are now receiving legal support from numerous pro-education organizations throughout the state.)  The district will undoubtedly also use this time to make staffing changes at the school, hamstringing a dedicated and highly professional team that has been years in development. 

However, another course of action could be for the leaders of AUSD to put the needs of the students of Antioch ahead of their own egos.  Allow the teachers of Dozier-Libbey, whom they’ve recognized as highly competent professionals, to run with their grand experiment unfettered and unchallenged.  If the charter succeeds, it will benefit not only the students at Dozier-Libbey, but will bring forth innovations and new ideas that can be shared with the entire district (as has been seen in numerous other charter-to-school district relationships).  But if Dozier-Libbey fails to meet its ambitious objectives as a charter, then the charter is simply revoked and the school returns to AUSD management.  These conversions, in either direction, do not need to be messy or expensive.  It is the district that is choosing to make it so. 

And so one can only wonder, what is the district really afraid of?

Jeff Weber is an 18-year veteran of AUSD, and currently teaches world history at Dozier-Libbey Medical High School and one of the organizers of the charter petition.

By Barbara Zivica

According to the California Department of Education, students in the public school system are to have a basic knowledge of and are tested on: English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, science, visual and performing arts.

So why is the AUSD now having students participate in diversity training conducted by the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI – learn more about them, by clicking here) and why is there a new Antioch High School Civil Rights Non-Violence Tolerance Education Social Justice Center on the campus of Antioch High, which incidentally features a mural of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Governor Jerry Brown, Superintendent Donald Gill, Councilwoman Mary Rocha, whose son is the Principal of AHS, and former school board member and Mayor Wade Harper?

Social Justice is a concept dating back to when Plato in the New Republic formalized the argument that an ideal state would rest on four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. Over time the concept has been largely associated with the political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) who restated in Political Liberalism (1993) “All societies have a basic structure of social, economic, and political institutions, both formal and informal.” Social Justice as conceived by Rawls is an apolitical philosophical concept and may hold some or all of the following beliefs:

1) It is government’s (or those who hold significant power) responsibility to ensure a basic quality of life for all its citizens. 2) Historical inequities insofar as they affect current injustices should be corrected until the actual inequities no longer exist or have been perceptively “negated”. 3) The redistribution of wealth, power and status for the individual and societal good.

Does the last belief sound to you like socialism? It does to me.

Analysis

By John Crowder

The Antioch Unified School District (AUSD) Board of Trustees voted, on March 19th, to reject a petition by teachers from Dozier-Libbey Medical High School (DLMHS) to convert their campus to a charter school. At the same time they voted to approve a novel idea presented by three district employees, Antioch High School Principal Louie Rocha, Deer Valley High School Principal Kenneth Gardner, and Assistant Superintendent Stephanie Anello to make the school a “dependent” charter.

Had the Board simply rejected the petition submitted by the teachers, the issue would have moved through the appeals process to the County and then the State Boards of Education for resolution. But by proposing to create a district-dependent charter school, they have set the stage for a much larger battle. If a school district can stop a school from converting to a charter school simply by writing a counter-petition, the law concerning the conversion of schools to charters could be effectively gutted. The California state charter school movement cannot allow such an outcome, and are certain to take legal action to prevent it.

This may well prove to be a costly battle. One important consideration will be the interpretation of the meaning and intent of the Charter School Act. Which part of the law governs this case will also be considered. The teachers at DLMHS are seeking the conversion of an existing school to a charter school. The court may ultimately be asked to determine whether or not the district can prevent the teachers from exercising this right by means of their counter petition.

The teachers of Dozier Libbey have filed their petition in line with the law concerning the conversion of schools to charter schools in California. This portion of the law is very clear. Section 47601 of the California Education Code (also referred to as the “Charter Schools Act of 1992”) provides: “It is the intent of the Legislature, in enacting this part, to provide opportunities for teachers, parents, pupils, and community members to establish and maintain schools that operate independently from the existing school district structure…” (For the complete language of the Act, click here).

The charter proposal put forward by the 23 teachers who signed the petition to convert DLMHS meets this intent. The “dependent charter” petition proposed by AUSD staff clearly does not. On page “ii” of the AUSD petition, it states, “The District shall be deemed the exclusive public school employer of the employees of Dozier-Libbey Medical High School, Dependent Charter School…” On page 8, no less than three times, the petition states, “The Charter School will comply with all District requirements and/or policies…” when referring to certain categories of learners. Continuing with their petition, phrases such as, “The District shall be responsible,” “The District shall address,” and “The District may initiate” repeatedly appear. Even more telling is the statement on page 18 of the petition, which reads, “The Charter School’s Executive Committee is comprised of five members appointed by the Board of Trustees…” There can certainly be no independence from the existing school district structure there.

Another problem involving the AUSD petition, should the courts determine that it is the law relating to the conversion of a school to a charter that must be applied, has to do with the collection of signatures. Section 47605, subdivision (a)(2), which is the applicable section when converting an existing public school to a charter school, requires signatures of “not less than 50% of the permanent status teachers currently employed” at the campus to be converted in order for a conversion charter petition to be valid. Once again, the teacher charter petition, with signatures from 23 of the 26 teachers currently teaching at DLMHS, easily meets this criteria. The District proposal, on the other hand, provides many more signatures of teachers, but it appears that not one of those who signed works at the DLMHS campus.

AUSD staff is working hard to defeat the teacher charter proposal. But, with the proposal they have submitted to maintain district control of the school, and refer to it as a charter, they have raised an issue that goes far beyond local politics, and could impact education policy for the entire state. It seems apparent from a plain reading of the law, that what District staff propose would not qualify as a conversion charter school, no matter what it is called.

Nothing seems certain in this situation, however. Ricardo Soto, a Senior Vice President and Legal Counsel for the California Charter Schools Association, told me, last week, that the move by AUSD to create a dependent charter school was unique, something he had never seen in his many years of being involved with education law. For those of us interested in education, the Dozier-Libbey charter battle, far from over, promises to be one of the most important debates we have seen in a long time.

By Allen Payton, Publisher

After years of having the reputation of being unfriendly to business, it appears that Antioch, under the leadership of Mayor Harper and the rest of the Antioch City Council, as well as new City Manager Steve Duran, started in a new direction, this past Tuesday night, when they unanimously approved a third location for AutoZone, in town. And they did so in the face of a 4-1 vote by the Planning Commission and staff’s recommendation to deny approval.

The mayor was clear in giving his direction to city staff and the commission, that they need to work with businesses wanting to locate in Antioch.

AutoZone’s representatives pointed out that even after working with city staff for a year to address their concerns, including spending $70,000 on consultants and a traffic study, staff still recommended the Commission and Council deny their application.

Sure, it’s a unique piece of property, with limited space for both a building and parking. But staff had no alternative plans for what they wanted to see go there, and it’s been sitting vacant and fenced off, for years. Plus, the project was for a similar size store on a similar size lot that AutoZone was able to get approved in both San Jose and Concord, in the past few years. So, it shouldn’t have been a big deal to approve it in Antioch.

In America, there are laws and always exceptions to those laws. The same goes for city ordinances. That’s why the City’s General Plan, codes and ordinances allow for what are called variances, and such things as planned developments, and the Council to make changes to zoning on parcels of land. Some of those were required for this project.

Staff was doing their job to make sure the rules were followed, they just needed to be more flexible and positive. Once AutoZone had addressed all their concerns, staff should have recommended an approval, of course, with conditions. Fortunately, now they’ve been given direction to be more flexible in allowing for the exceptions to the city’s rules, when dealing with business.

As I wrote in my previous editorial on this issue (to read, click here), “It’s time our City Council and new City Manager sent a message to the staff on the second floor that it’s good to be flexible and to say ‘Yes’ to businesses that want to locate in Antioch, and to find ways to make things happen instead of finding reasons to oppose them.”

At a time Antioch needs more tax revenue, as well as local jobs, the city needs to do whatever it can to bring new businesses to or help an existing business expand in town.

That’s exactly what the Council did on Tuesday night and I applaud their action and the clear direction and message they gave.

The City could adopt the acronym BREAD, which I introduced back when I ran for and was elected to the council in 1994, to put bread on our tables, “bread” (using the 1970’s term for money) in our pockets and “bread” in our city’s coffers. It stands for Business Retention Expansion Attraction and Development, covering all aspects of economic development. It’s an upwards spiral if the city works to retain and help expand existing businesses, attract new ones to town and makes it easier for the development of other new businesses, by our own residents, through home-based businesses, etc.

One thing that needs to be included in the City’s efforts is marketing Antioch, including having at least one council member, the city manager and maybe a member of the Economic Development Commission attend the International Council of Shopping Centers’ annual convention in Las Vegas, each year, if they’re not doing so, already. That’s where contacts are made and deals can be cut to bring retailers and others, to town. The next one is in May. (Here’s the link to their website – www.icsc.org)

So, kudos to Mayor Harper and the City Council for their vote and the clear direction to staff. Let’s hope this sets a new tone for those on the second floor at City Hall and is the beginning of a new, positive, business-friendly attitude that will send a message to the marketplace, that Antioch is open for business!

By Barbara Zivica

I have a bone to pick with Antioch Unified School District Board Members (Joy Motts, Board President who recently put discussion of approving an anti-Prop. 13 Resolution before the Board, Gary Hack, Barbara Cowan, Diane Gibson-Gray and Claire Smith), as well as Mayor Wade Harper who audaciously stated at the March 19th School Board meeting that he represents ALL the citizens of citizens of Antioch and can’t support the Dozier-Libbey Medical High School independent conversion charter petition because he feels it’s divisive. How dare he make a statement like that. He doesn’t represent me and I’ve been a taxpaying resident since 1986.

I admit, however, that the issue is divisive because as soon as the teachers of Dozier-Libbey Medical High, frustrated by diverging philosophies between the AUSD board and site staff, filed a petition to convert to an independent charter school like Clayton Valley AUSD filed a counter petition to make Dozier-Libbey a dependent charter governed by the school district and has now posted information in regard to both charter petitions on it’s web site. At least one of the statements is incorrect e.g. it was not a small group of staff at DLMHS who submitted the petition, it was 23 of the schools 26 teachers.

According to California’s Charter Schools ACT, enacted in 1992 and amended in 1996, charter schools provide opportunities for teachers, parents, pupils and community members to establish schools that operate independently from the existing school district structure, as a method of accomplishing the following: Improved pupil learning (AUSD not only failed to meet the state API score of 800 in 2013, it dropped 6 points), increased learning opportunities for all pupils with special emphasis on expanding learning for academically low achieving pupils, encourage the use of different and innovative teaching methods, create new professional opportunities for teachers, including the opportunity to be responsible for the learning program at the school site, provide parents and pupils with expanded choices in types of educational opportunities that are available within the public school system, hold charter schools responsible for meeting measurable pupil outcomes, and provide schools with a method to change from rule-based to performance-based accountability systems.

In addition to misinformation, the school district is also trying hard to scare parents by stating that, if the independent charter petition is approved, students would not be eligible to participate in the District’s athletic teams or other extracurricular activities. Why? Even as an independent charter Dozier-Libbey will remain an Antioch public school, just under a different operating board. It’s true that AUSD would retain control of all its athletic facilities outside the Dozier-Libbey campus and will be able to decide whether to continue the existing multi-school agreement with DLMHS. However, DLMHS has already offered to pick up its share of the costs of athletic programs its students participate in, as well as continue to handle liability and transcript issues. (DLMHS has researched CIF and NCS regulations and there’s no good reason to exclude their students from AUSD sports programs they currently participate in). Why penalize students whose parents, like I, who never had a child in an Antioch school, are paying AUSD property taxes and assessments. Could the answer be spite?

By Barbara Zivica

Here we go again. A Notice of Intent to Circulate a Petition for a Business License Tax on Residential Landlords has been filed by former Antioch Mayor Don Freitas on behalf of members of the “Friday Morning Breakfast Club,” an invite-only civic group. Freitas, as Contra Costa’s Clean Water Program Manager headed up the 2012 $526,550 failed Clean Water Fee ballot initiative.

Revenues from the proposed November ballot measure, if passed, would be dedicated to public safety. Problem is dedicated tax measures require 2/3 voter approval to pass which is why Antioch’s recent Measure C, the half cent sales tax increase, also touted to fund public safety, stated clearly that revenues would be deposited in the City’s General Fund and could be used for ANY legal municipal purpose, thus requiring only 50% plus one “yes” vote approval to pass.

Last year, Councilman Agopian suggested an increase in license fees for businesses such as smoke shops, bars, liquor stores or others that generate more police time, a five year fee freeze on other businesses and a tax on local landlords of $240 a year or $20 a month for each rental unit from 1 to 25, a fee of $120 per unit for units 25 to 50, $75 for 51 to 150 and $50 per unit for any over 150. Note, however, that the Antioch Police Department does not track the number of calls to rental properties (of any type) versus homeowner occupied buildings.

Ironically, the city has been lax in collecting delinquent business license fees, transit occupancy fees collected by hotels/motels, rental inspection fees, RV/Boat/Trailer permits, Tidelands rent, dog licensing fees etc. ever since the City’s Business License Technician retired.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: If council is supposedly watching pennies, you might want to inquire about the following expenditures: $346 to Bagel Street Café for food and refreshments for the Community Café meetings, $55 to Celia’s for lunch provided to the interview panel for oral boards requested by the Water Treatment Plant/Public Works and recent charges of $60.95 to Nature’s Bounty and $58.28 to Mr.. Pickles which are City Council expenditures. We shouldn’t be paying to feed council when they meet. Surely they can afford to bring their own brown bag out of their generous stipend.

Analysis

By John Crowder

It was quickly apparent to those attending the Antioch School board meeting on Wednesday that it was going to be a hot night…and not just because of the broken air conditioning. At issue was the petition filed by the teaching staff of Dozier-Libbey Medical High School (DLMHS) to convert to a public charter school, and, once the meeting started, it didn’t take long before Superintendent Dr. Don Gill began to attack the teachers responsible for the petition.

Gill read from a FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) sheet, published by the school district, written in the form of questions and answers. The document, along with another similar paper, both now posted on the district’s website www.antioch.k12.ca.us, seems to be an attempt to paint the teachers supporting the petition as a small group of elitist teachers seeking to enrich themselves while excluding African American and Special Education students from their campus. These contentions, however, are not supported, even by the research studies referenced by the Antioch Unified School District (AUSD).

An answer to one of the questions posted by AUSD states, “A small group of staff at DLMHS…submitted a petition to the District to convert DLMHS to a charter school to be operated by a non-profit corporation.”

In fact, as has been widely reported in the media, 88% of the teaching staff at the school signed the petition requesting conversion to a charter school. On another website (www.facebook.com/dozierlibbey), created by those in support of the charter petition, it states that, “all of Dozier-Libbey’s teachers are very much united in this decision.” With respect to DLMHS being operated by “a non-profit corporation,” teachers explained at a subsequent meeting with the public held on Thursday evening that “the ‘corporation’ will be the community members who make up the charter board of directors…including parents [of students].”

The AUSD document makes more than one reference to the idea that, if the charter goes forward, actions they take “may further exclude students interested in the medical curriculum offered at the school.” With reference to a study done by Stanford University, a statement from AUSD reads, “However, that study failed to consider that by implementing a No-D policy and the requirement that all students take advanced courses not required for graduation, the school discouraged the attendance of its highest need students, including African American, English learner, and Special Education students, and effectively self-selected a high achieving population to remain at the school through graduation.”

That contention, however, is both directly refuted in the referenced study, and statistics published in the study support the idea that the programs at DLMHS are particularly beneficial for these very groups they are purported to exclude. In a table from the study that was shown on a slide during the Thursday night meeting (Click here) on page 8, table 2, it indicates that graduation rates for African Americans attending DLMHS in 2012 were 95%, while for AUSD as a whole they were only 67%. For the economically disadvantaged, the rate was 97% at DLMHS, but only 60% for AUSD.

Even more telling was the statistic regarding the percent of graduates completing all courses required for UC/CSU admission. For the class of 2012, African Americans attending DLMHS were successful by this benchmark 94% of the time, while at AUSD the success rate was an abysmal 15%, even below the state norm of 29% for this demographic. The Stanford study further states, “The author believes that DLMHS would benefit from opportunities to have some autonomy in defining its own enrollment, grading, graduation, and staffing policies. Because of its students’ success, DLMHS also has to combat the constant misperception that they enroll higher achieving students.”

The battle was joined, on both sides, when it came time for public comments at the AUSD board meeting. Parents, teachers, students, and former students all spoke on the matter. One parent, Jason Todd, was particularly incensed at the charter proposal. Referencing a discussion that had been held on Tuesday as part of the DLMHS Parent-Teacher-Student Association.

“I saw a staff that was disrespectful of parents, disrespectful of this board…They say they’re successful in spite of this board,” Todd said. “The charter sets up to make it an elitist school. This is a bad way to go.”

Todd was contradicted in his assessment by both current and former students of DLMHS, all of whom spoke in favor of the charter petition.

“This school does not discriminate against students, it simply pushes them…particularly students of low income and color,” said Antonio Hernandez, a graduate of DLMHS and currently a sophomore at Stanford University. “Students don’t go there who are higher achieving, they go there to become higher achieving.”

One thing that is clear, is that the teacher petition to convert DLMHS to a charter school has generated a tremendous amount of emotion, with the fight perhaps only just beginning. Those interested in the issue can continue to follow the positions taken by those on both sides at the above-referenced websites.

The Antioch school board has scheduled a special board meeting on Wednesday, March 19, to be held in the multi-purpose room of John Muir Elementary School at 615 Greystone Drive in Antioch. In addition to a public hearing on the issue, the board is expected to reach a final decision on the charter petition.