Hollister School District parents deserved another choice – an alternative to a lagging educational institution – and now they have it.
With the Hollister School District Board of Trustees voting 3-2 this week to approve the petition from Gilroy-based Navigator Schools, the city’s first charter school is set to open for the 2013-14 school year.
A majority of Hollister district trustees and the administration – which recommended approval of the petition after previously urging a denial – deserve credit for making the right decision and allowing the innovative team from Navigator to open a campus here.
It is unfortunate that two of the outgoing trustees – Dee Brown and Judi Johnson – put their personal agendas ahead of students, and the law. At the same time, it is symbolic, emblematic of justice served, that these particular trustees lost in the Nov. 6 race.
This narrow board decision, meanwhile, goes far beyond the requirements as laid out in the state education code – which encourages development of charter schools offers district officials little discretion when deciding on such petitions. It stretches beyond political perceptions on both sides of the debate – over funding, teachers’ merit pay, longer school days, the relevance of unions and many other considerations.
First and foremost, the decision was about freeing up local parents and students to think and act outside of the box, to choose an alternative approach to a public school model that has failed far too many families, to make a decision that they want more for their children, that they won’t accept failure.
Above all, this was about choice.
While the district has made efforts in recent years to offer non-traditional experiences in the classroom – the dual language and accelerated achievement academies are both examples of success – restricting the level of choice would only reinforce a negative stigma attached to public school systems that traditionally stick to their rigid ways despite impacts on student performance. This is the same district, after all, which nixed its popular interdistrict transfer program because too many families were choosing neighboring schools when given the chance.
Navigator Schools – previously known as Gilroy Prep – has a proven track record and deserves its chance to re-create the same successful model in Hollister.
Gilroy Prep Principal James Dent and his team are creative, dedicated, hard-working educators, and it showed when the school received over a 960 on its first statewide testing – a record result for a first-year charter.
The eye-popping performance didn’t stop the district from putting up a huge roadblock – the 31-page report issued by a district-hired law firm claimed a host of “deficiencies” in the charter petition. That initial document, though, didn’t stop district officials from making the logical decision. Most important, it didn’t stop Navigator Schools from pushing forward and resubmitting a revised petition.
If they can replicate some of that prior success here, even the most reluctant of supporters will have nothing to regret.
