A special meeting to complete agenda items not addressed at a shortened Feb. 2 session of Morgan Hill Unified School District’s board of education has been scheduled for a 6 p.m. start Feb. 10 at district headquarters (15600 Concord Circle).
At the top of the agenda list, and the most pressing issue, is discussion of the preliminary proposal of facilities to Voices College-Bound Language Academy’s Morgan Hill campus.
The first-year charter school, approved on appeal through the Santa Clara County Office of Education, withdrew its initial Proposition 39 facilities request prior to the 2015-16 school year. Instead, the school took a one-year lease out at the Advent Lutheran Church.
However, charter school leaders submitted a new Prop 39 request in November 2015 in seeking a more permanent school site within an MHUSD facility. Under Prop 39, a local district is required to make room in existing facilities for a charter school to operate.
The two sides have quarreled, including in the courtroom, over the “in-district ADA projections which (have) yet to be resolved,” according to the agenda item’s rationale written by district staff. ADA stands for average daily attendance and determines the funding a district receives per student.
According to SCCOE staff, Voices Morgan Hill has 91 current students as of a Feb. 4 attendance check they recently conducted.
Before the start of the Feb. 2 meeting, which was suspended after police officers detained a trustee on an unfounded report of a gun, Board President Bob Benevento changed the Voices item from an action item to a discussion item, as it remains for the Feb. 10 special session.
Voices’ facilities request was to locate four classrooms at the Adult Education Site (17960 Monterey Road) or within a two-mile radius of the mid-point of Del Monte Avenue. But MHUSD leaders claim there is not sufficient room at that location, “which is not equipped to serve an elementary program.”
Instead, district leaders are offering two options: three to four classrooms at San Martin/Gwinn Elementary or two classrooms at SM/G and two others at Barrett Elementary.
“Further, if the school district cannot accommodate a charter school’s in-district ADA at any one school site, ‘contiguous facilities’ are also ‘facilities located at more than one site, provided that the school district’ minimizes the number of sites assigned and takes into consideration student safety,” according to the agenda item’s rationale.
At the Jan. 12 school board meeting, Benevento reported out of closed session that the board voted 3-3 to deny the district’s request to appeal a judge’s decision that prevented MHUSD staff from contacting parents of Voices students who live in Morgan Hill. District staff had previously contacted parents to verify their attendance at that school and thus the charter’s ADA.
The next regularly scheduled school board meeting is March 1.
