Guest View

On March 15, 2016, the Morgan Hill Unified School District board of education held a meeting in which Superintendent Steve Betando informed the board and the public of his recommendation that the newly opened Voices Charter School be co-located upon the site of the Charter School of Morgan Hill.  This decision is a momentous one which will impact hundreds of students and families. As such, parents and teachers from Voices and The Charter School of Morgan Hill attended this meeting to hear what Mr. Betando had to say, and to express their own concerns.We are writing from the perspective of the parents and teachers who were relegated to the overflow room and warehouse during the March 15 MHUSD Board meeting. There were over 200 people who had to watch the meeting via a TV monitor from these auxiliary rooms. Many of us have attended past meetings where the board room has been very crowded and people have been allowed to stand around the perimeter, sit on the floor and view the meeting from the hallway.  We attended this meeting because we wanted our presence to be felt and heard by the board and district staff, and we were denied this opportunity. We feel especially disappointed because there were multiple requests made to Mr. Betando last week to move the meeting to a venue which would accommodate the expected crowd. We feel that this request was purposefully denied.  We also feel that Mr. Betando orchestrated the setup to shield the board and squelch our ability to demonstrate our voice as a united front. Seats remained open in the board room for the entire meeting that members of our community were not allowed to access because they did not have the correct number on a sticker. Instead, many of us viewed the meeting from a room where the sound quality was so poor that it was difficult to hear the dialogue, and the lights kept flickering on and off.  The California legislators have passed the Brown Act for the purpose of facilitating public participation and it is through this type of participatory democracy, debate and discussion that the best ideas will emerge. Instead of embracing this through a simple change of venue, it appears that the district did everything in their power to limit this participation rather than encourage it.Signed by 212 CSMH parents, teachers and community members.