A DETERMINED GROUP OF PARENTS FIGHT FOR A TRADITIONAL SCHOOL
PHOENIX, Arizona— Scott Jackson paid a visit to Valley Academy last summer, just after a rain squall had drenched the surrounding desert. The consultant treaded carefully between the puddles toward the compound of military-gray, double-wide modulars. The one-year-old, back-to-basics charter school had no pavement, no playground, and no principal.
"It was muddy, it was sloshy, and it was a horrendous mess," Jackson recalls.
The mud hole that served as Valley Academy's parking lot that first year was a visual symbol of the quagmire of financial troubles, regulatory nightmares, and personnel flare-ups that threatened to shut down the school even before the first students arrived. Funds were delayed. Three board members walked off the job. Parents pulled their children out. The state audited the books. The press ran story after story about the school's tribulations.
But the little compound in the desert held firm. Today, fresh asphalt—paid for with state transportation money—covers the parking lot. Scott Jackson occupies the principal's office, from which he can see monkey bars funded by a state grant and landscaping planted by a crew of parents. Valley Academy survived its first stormy year to become "one of Arizona's charter school success stories," according to Kathy Haas, charter schools administrator for the state education department.
rizona's charter schools law wasn't on the books when a group of parents and teachers started meeting in Cuyler (say KY-LER) Reid's living room six years ago. With a child's Fisher-Price chalkboard as a visual aid, the group huddled for discussions about the new language arts curriculum Deer Valley School District had adopted. Out among the industrial parks, housing developments, and shopping malls of Phoenix's booming northwest end, Deer Valley, like many districts nationwide, has moved away from phonics, basal readers, and rote learning. Drawing on research on developmentally appropriate practice, the district had adopted a whole-language, discovery-based curriculum.
But Reid and her husband Thomas, along with a growing cadre of like-minded parents, were uncomfortable with an approach to learning that to them seemed dangerously unstructured. Where were the phonics drills? The lined paper? The penmanship practice? What about spelling tests? Homework?
These were the questions the group began raising with the school board. They came armed with research findings that supported their belief in a traditional reading-and-writing curriculum.
The school board, Cuyler Reid says, stonewalled. "Imagine a real friendly war going on," she says, laughing.
The battle raged for four years, with volleys exchanged not only in school board meetings but also on the editorial pages of the Arizona Republic. At times the war veered from friendly to nasty. A few parents even got phone messages saying, "'Watch out—we've got guns,'" Reid recalls. "It really was a very heated debate. When you get into educational philosophy, it becomes very heated. These are our children we're talking about, and our children's futures.
"We wanted some validation as educated people who've done research, as parents making choices—parents who have a right to have some say in their children's education."
In 1994, just when the Reids were about to give up and send their daughter to a private school, Arizona passed its charter schools law. The law looked tailor-made for this group of back-to-basics parents. They had honed their message in countless school board meetings. They had scoured libraries, consulted experts, and solidified their thinking in a four-year effort to influence the school district. They had a vision of the school they wanted for their children. So they submitted an application to operate a charter school under district sponsorship. But just to be safe, they took advantage of the law's flexibility in sponsorship and submitted a second application to the state Board of Education. (Arizona, with one of the nation's most liberal charter laws, has created a state board for charter schools that offers yet another sponsorship option for start-ups.)
The day before the Deer Valley board was scheduled to vote on Valley Academy, a back-to-basics parent was lunching at a local restaurant. She overheard a board member in the next booth telling a PTA member that the charter would never pass. But by that time, it was a moot point: The state board had given Valley Academy its blessing. (The Deer Valley School Board voted down the charter school the following night.)
That was January 1995. The Reids and their fellow founders quickly signed up more than 900 students for the fall. But elation turned to consternation as the founders dug into the gritty details of turning a vision into a school. Backed by a detailed business plan and a line of credit from a bank, plus background checks and resumes for board members, they tried to lease a parcel of land. They ran into resistance and roadblocks everywhere. "We became experts in zoning," Cuyler Reid says, adding, "I was surprised at how many people didn't want children on their property."
By July, they were getting desperate. "We'd drive for hours and hours and hours," she recalls. "Every time we'd find vacant land we'd call about it. We found a couple of places that looked good, would probably have been excellent for a school, but because of the rules and regs—we would have to do neighborhood surveys, for instance—we were looking at a minimum of three months.
"There are so many rules and regs and so much money that has to be put down," she laments. "And if you don't know somebody, it's so easy to be put on the bottom of the list for inspections and such."
Ultimately, it was "knowing somebody" that got them their little piece of desert. A parent who worked for Honeywell pushed through a lease agreement for a 10-acre parcel owned by the electronics giant. "We accomplished in a few weeks what normally would have taken about a year and a half," says Reid. "There had to be corporate willingness. Lots of people who didn't know us went out on a limb to speed up the process."
They got their plot. But, like weary hikers who think the trail is leveling off, only to find another peak towering around the bend, the charter starters soon found themselves facing new challenges.
"One of the first things that became evident," Reid says, "was that planning and zoning departments could shut down the whole charter school movement. We had to have permits to break ground, permits to dig trenches, permits to cover the trenches, permits to get the building zoned."
While wading neck-deep through local land-use laws and building codes and paying overtime wages to round-the-clock workers, the would-be school hit another snag. State dollars earmarked for Valley Academy students—the same dollars that would have followed them had they enrolled in public schools—were delayed by three weeks. Funds that should have been released in July didn't arrive until August.
"There was never any official reason given to us," Reid says.
September rolled around, and still the doors remained closed as parents spent evenings frantically cleaning classrooms and setting up used desks, bookshelves, and filing cabinets. Some of the furnishings were donated by Honeywell. Others were bought from another district at bargain-basement prices—50 cents for chairs, $5 for a box of books. Meanwhile, Valley Academy teachers were sending lessons home for the waiting charter students.
By the time the school finally opened on September 25, enrollment had plunged. Spooked by the school's start-up struggles, parents of some 300 prospective students had sent their kids elsewhere. When state dollars finally flowed into Valley Academy's coffers, fewer than 600 kids showed up for the first day of classes.
But the school's woes were far from over. In October, city building inspectors cited the school for violating a number of building-safety requirements, such as providing security lights, lanes for fire trucks, and access for people with disabilities, the Arizona Republic reported. County health inspectors found restrooms that needed toilet paper and soap, and cited the school for operating without a county health permit.
In November, the school ran out of cash. One day, Reid spotted a TV camera crew outside the school. "I thought, 'This is great. We're getting some publicity,'" she recalls. The publicity, it turned out, was not the kind she had hoped for. A Valley Academy parent had called a press conference to announce that the school was in dire financial straits and was in imminent danger of closing. By the next day, news of the school's money crunch was splashed all over the media, and the bank shut down the school's credit line.
On Christmas Eve, Jim Weiers, a Republican legislator with four children attending Valley Academy, loaned the school $100,000 to keep it afloat for a month. But the state, "under immense pressure to do something now," in Reid's words, sent a team of auditors to scrutinize the school's books. Their findings: The school had failed to comply with the requirements of the Unified System of Financial Reporting (the rules that all public entities must abide by) in 27 areas—"everything from controlling inventory to purchasing bookkeeping services," Reid reports. "They said nobody had done anything wrong, we had just done everything the wrong way."
A group of retired businesspeople plunged into the school's books and began sorting through the tangled records. The Executive Service Corps of Arizona (ESCOA), the state chapter of a national association set up to help nonprofit corporations, sent a team that included a certified public accountant, an administrative architect, and a bank manager to straighten things out. Their charge: only $3,500 for what Reid describes as "countless hours of work."
But meanwhile, other troubles were brewing. When Reid drove up to the school feeling hopeful after her first meeting with ESCOA, a sign posted on the door stuck a pin in her optimism: emergency board meeting, it blared in bold black letters. Three of the six board members had resigned. Reid will say only that "differences in how to run a business and how to approach problems" caused the rift. "Some of it was philosophical, some of it strictly business, some of it personal," she says. "It was a very hurtful time."
In a letter to other board members, the three who quit said they were stepping down to "bring to an end the existing state of conflict, friction, division, and stalemate of the board," the Arizona Republic reported.
The split came after the founding parents had endured months of tri-weekly board meetings, late-night work sessions, and close scrutiny from press and public. "By the time you've been through as much physically as we had, everybody was totally exhausted," she says. "That's not when you're the most open to calm, sane solutions."
"I believe very strongly that your goal is to be a good thinker," she says. "But if you don't have information and knowledge with which to think, it's like having a computer without any software. I really believe in building a strong academic base and then, as that base gets stronger, you start bringing in the thinking skills and such."
Visitors can see Reid's rejection of current reform ideas in Valley Academy's highly regimented classroom culture. Students wear uniforms of starched white and crisp navy. They sit in straight rows, facing front. To rapid-fire flash cards, they recite vowel sounds and consonant blends in unison. Classes are small (19 students in kindergarten rooms, 21 in first grade, 22 in second grade, 23 in third grade). Enrollment continued to dwindle the first year, finally stabilizing at about 455 K-9 students who are served by 40 employees, 31 of whom are teachers. About 25 percent of the school's students had been in home schools or private schools, Reid estimates. As of February 24, 1996, the school had received $2.2 million in state funds, according to the Arizona Republic.
With the "granddaddy" of traditional schools—the Benjamin Franklin School of Mesa, Arizona—as a model, Reid and her fellow founders felt confident in their educational mission. But when they traded their educators' hats for business hats, they struggled.
"One of the areas that we were really ignorant in was running a business," Reid confesses. Despite a bachelor's degree in science education, a master's in public administration, and 18 years of experience running hospital laboratories, Thomas Reid, who was named CEO of Valley Academy, found himself overwhelmed in the early stages. "The job we were asking him and Patty (the secretary) to do is now being done by one, two, three, four, five, six full-time people and a half-time person," Cuyler Reid says as she mentally ticks off the administrative staff members. "And even at that, nobody has a slack day."
She has a long list of ideas that would smooth the start-up process for new charter schools. Here are a few:
- On laying the groundwork: Local officials need to be informed about charter schools when they first appear in a community. Otherwise, charter founders are apt to get the "bureaucratic run-around," says Reid. "Charter schools were a new entity, and people didn't know how to deal with them. They were confused about whether charter schools are public or private, and they didn't have procedures firmed up." When Arizona education department staff, along with several state legislators and charter school experts, called on city officials to explain the charter schools concept and law, they paved the way for more cooperation and understanding, Reid says.
On working with the powers that be: Reid and her co-founders suggest doing "a mental turnaround" in dealing with local and state agencies that may seem uncooperative. Instead of seeing officials and their rules as roadblocks, Reid came to view them as partners. "It's so frustrating when you're trying to do something and someone is in your way, and you think maybe it's deliberate," she says. "But they've got their own set of requirements they have to meet. So we said, 'OK, we're going to work with these people and engage their help.' When we changed our attitude, they changed their attitude." On initial costs: States should offer short-term, low-interest loans to new charter schools for start-up costs. "We have no capital," she says. "Everything has to come out of maintenance and operations. If you're not in an area where there are a lot of abandoned buildings, there has to be some way to get started—presuming you want the public to be involved in it. Otherwise, you have to have a business or deep pockets behind you." On structuring the organization: "Looking at charter schools nationwide, many problems come from internal conflict," Reid stresses. "Before you open up, everybody should understand what their rights and responsibilities are. You need job descriptions. It's a good idea to look to arbitration before you look to lawyers. It's a good idea to have some outside sources that are not emotionally involved that you can go to for guidance and direction." Rather than viewing charter schools as threats, school districts such as Deer Valley should view them as tools, Reid says.
"What Deer Valley does, they do very well," Reid maintains. "But you're never going to please all the people. When you have a significant minority, if you have safety valves or steam vents, then instead of fighting to see who wins what, you're really doing what needs to be done for the children. I hope that's where charter schools end up."
—LEE SHERMAN CAUDELL
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