RANCHO SANTA FE NEWS
APRIL 19, 2013
B3
ODD San Diego County board denies charter school FILES
by CHUCK SHEPHERD
By Rachel Stine
Compelling Explanations In March, Washington state Rep. Ed Orcutt, apparently upset that bicyclists use the state’s roads without paying the state gasoline tax for highway maintenance, proposed a 5 percent tax on bicycles that cost more than $500, pointing out that bicyclists impose environmental costs as well. Since carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas, he wrote one constituent (and reported in the Huffington Post in March), bike riders’ “increased heart rate and respiration” over car drivers creates additional pollution. (Days later, he apologized for the suggestion that bicyclists actually were worse for the environment than cars.)
Ironies A Boston Herald reporter said in March that he had been kicked out of a State Ethics Commission training session (which might not be unreasonable, as the meeting was for Massachusetts House members only). However, at least two people in attendance refused to give their real names to the reporter as they left.Rep.Tim Toomey insisted he was not a member (though he is) but was “just passing through,” and Commission chairman Charles Swartwood III (a former federal judge magistrate) refused to give his name at all, telling the reporter, “I’m not saying because that’s a private matter.”
The Litigious Society Aspiring rap music bigshot Bernard Bey, 32, filed a $200,000 lawsuit in February in New York City against his parents, alleging that they owe him because they have been unloving and “indifferent” to his homelessness and refuse even to take him back in to get a shower. Bey, who raps as “Brooklyn Streets,” said everything would be forgiven if they would just buy him two Domino’s Pizza franchises so that he could eventually earn enough to become “a force to be reckoned with in the hiphop industry.” (His mother’s solution,as told to a New York Daily News reporter: “[G]o get a job.He’s never had job a day in his life.”)
Life Imitates Art Ferris Bueller caused lots of mischief on his cinematic “Day Off” in the 1986 movie starring Matthew Broderick, but he never mooned a wedding party from an adjacent hotel window by pressing his nude buttocks, and then his genitals, against the glass in full view of astonished guests. In March, though, a young Matthew Broderick-lookalike (http://huff.to/14XQEJ6), Samuel Dengel, 20, was arrested in Charleston, S.C., and charged with the crime. (Another Bueller-like touch was Dengel’s tattoo reading, in Latin, “By the Power of Truth, I, while living, have Conquered the Universe.”)
CARLSBAD — In front of shouting, poster-wielding crowds of OPA (Oxford Preparatory Academy) supporters, the San Diego County Board of Education (SDCBOE) denied OPA’s appeal to open a charter school in Carlsbad at its April 10 meeting. In December last year, the Carlsbad Unified School District (CUSD) Board of Trustees unanimously denied OPA’s original application to open a charter school for kindergarten through eighth grade students. OPA’s application and subsequent appeal of the CUSD Board’s decision to the SDCBOE inspired a debate that has pinned school choice against standing by public schools. Citing the fact that some of the SDCBOE members’ children attend charter schools within the county, Carlsbad resident Ami Calhoun said to the board, “By denying OPA, you are saying that your children deserve a choice and mine don’t.” “This is not just a rubber stamp denial,” said Dr. Eric Beam, OPA’s director of special services, addressing the board. “You have to look at these parents in the eye.” “I understand why you doubt the district, they have an interest in the status quo,” said Board Member Gregg Robinson, addressing the audience, many of whom urged for OPA’s approval during public comments. Yet ultimately, Robinson, along with Board President Sharon Jones and Vice President Susan Hartley, composed a majori-
about OPA’s appeal. When pressed on if she had watched the recording by fellow board members, she acknowledged that she had but still felt uncomfortable voting. Jones was berated by shouts from the audience when she said that the parents have every ability to change the education system in Carlsbad public schools. After the Board’s vote, the meeting’s attendees filed out, murmuring comments including, “This is disgusting,” and “I can’t take this anymore.” “Although we’re disappointed, this is the result we expected,” said Beam. He said that OPA staff and parents would have to debrief and discuss before deciding whether or not to appeal the decision to OPA supporters who attended the San Diego County Board of Education meeting on April 10 held up signs California’s State Board of with messages including, “We will not back down,” and “Sue Hartley, you represent ALL of North County, not Education. just CUSD staff and its board members.” Photos by Rachel Stine
ty vote to follow their staff’s recommendation to deny the charter school’s appeal. A committee of San Diego County Office of Education staff reviewed OPA’s charter petition and concluded in a final report to the board that the petition presented an “unsound educational program” that is “demonstratively unlikely to successfully implement.” OPA currently operates two charter schools, one in Orange County and the other in Chino Valley, which have achieved API scores above those of CUSD’s highperforming schools. Board of Education member Mark Anderson opposed the staff’s recommendation and voted in
favor of OPA’s appeal. “I see this energy, I see this power, I see this force that you are putting into this,” Anderson said to the present OPA supporters as they clapped and cheered for him. “I hope that you continue to fight (for your children’s education).” Board Member Lyn Neylon abstained from voting because she was unable to attend a public hearing
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760.634.2403 “I hope that you continue to fight (for your children’s education),”said San Diego County Board of Education Member Mark Anderson (third from left) to attendees at the April 10 meeting. He was the only board member to vote in favor of Oxford Preparatory Academy’s petition to open a site in Carlsbad.
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