Spanish-English immersion school gets OK

Published in the Nov. 26 – Dec. 9, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life

By Staff Report

The Santa Clara County Board of Education voted 6-1 at their Nov. 19 meeting to approve Voices College-Bound Language Academy as a new charter school in Morgan Hill but rejected by a 4-3 vote Morgan Hill Prep School because trustees said petitioner Navigator Schools had not adequately described its education plan.

Voices is a Spanish-English immersion school that intends to open its Morgan Hill campus in August. It has requested classroom space from the Morgan Hill Unified School District. Only Trustee Anna Song voted no in the vote that was taken at 12:30 a.m. after a meeting where about 150 parents, students and educators spoke to the trustees.

“I was not surprised by the results (of the Voices approval) because the county has proven time after time that they are not concerned about the welfare of the district and they have approved charter petitions that are extremely deficient and the Voices College-Bound Language Academy charter is one of them,” said MHUSD Superintendent Steve Betando. “Their own staff recommended not approving it based on deficiencies and we found many problems and many areas with their program.”

Betando said three county board members “will approve any charter regardless of its appropriateness.” They are board President Leon Beauchman, Grace Mah, and Julia Hover-Smoot. Hover-Smoot represents Morgan Hill in area 7 and will be replaced by Claudia Rossi as a result of the Nov. 4 election.

Betando questioned the reasoning of the trustees in basing their decision on charter law, even though staff at the MHUSD and the county found significant deficiencies in the petitions from both charter schools.

“(Voices) will be a county school that the trustees believe is better than our (public school) education system, even though many of them have visited our schools and congratulated us on our high achieving program,” he said.

In other education news, Sobrato High School was recently recognized for establishing equity in its Advanced Placement program, reaching parity in its AP class enrollment across all subgroups of students.