SACRAMENTO - The California Teachers Association is hailing a Sacramento Superior Court ruling that requires the Sacramento City Unified School District to rescind its hasty and illegal approval of a charter school on the Sacramento City High School site. The court ruling represents the second time in recent weeks that district officials have been attacked for mismanagement at the high school.
"Teachers and parents told Superintendent Jim Sweeney and the school board that their actions were hasty, ill-advised, and illegal, and the superior court has agreed with us 100 percent," said CTA President-elect Barbara E. Kerr. "It's time for the superintendent and the board to accept responsibility for their failed policies at the school and to work cooperatively with parents and teachers to pursue excellence at Sacramento High."
The ruling requires the school board to rescind its approval of the St. Hope Corporation charter for Sacramento High School. The court ruled that the district tried to side-step state law by closing the high school and then immediately re-opening it as a charter school. The law requires that a petition to convert an existing public school to a charter school must be signed by at least 50 percent of the permanent teachers employed at the school. Because the St. Hope charter petition did not meet this requirement, the judge ruled "the petition clearly was invalid under the Education Code."
The ruling by Superior Court Judge Trina Burger-Plavina also found that circulators of a petition supporting the St. Hope Charter materially changed the terms of the charter after they had secured parent signatures on it.
In addition, on May 23, a report by the School Assistance and Intervention Team (SAIT) found district and administrative mismanagement a major reason that Sacramento High School failed to meet educational expectations.
"First, a state audit clearly points to management malfeasance at Sacramento High and then a court rules that the district violated state law by closing the school to turn it into a charter school. It's time for the school board to step up and do what's right for the students attending Sacramento High," said Marci Lawney, president-elect of the Sacramento City Teachers Association. "We urge Superintendent Sweeney and the board to move quickly to announce an open enrollment period for Sacramento High School and to work with teachers to improve educational offerings in the eight weeks remaining before the beginning of the school year."