The Antioch Unified School District issued the following press release in response to a release that went out last week by Dozier-Libbey High School supporters who claimed a “minor victory” in a court decision. The School District is wanting to correct any misinformation that went out by the petitioners.
According to the release by AUSD, they did credit the petitioners release with getting one thing right by claiming the District has been forced to use money and resources that should be going to 18,000 students in order to respond to the unsupported and unnecessary actions of 23 petitioners.
Here is the Press Release in full:
Correcting the Misinformation Campaign by the Petitioners Attempting to Convert Dozier-Libbey High School to an Independent Charter School
(ANTIOCH) —The Antioch Unified School District is once again forced to respond to misinformation from the petitioners attempting to convert Dozier-Libbey Medical High School (DLMHS) to an Independent Charter School. On Friday, April 4, after the Superior Court denied the petitioner’s request for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), inaccurate information was sent to parents and media through a press release. The District wishes to respond to this misinformation:
Misinformation #1:
The petitioners’ press release states that the Dozier Independent Charter Petitioners, “won a small victory in the Superior Court of Contra Costa County when the Honorable Judge Laurel Brady agreed that demands being made by the Antioch Unified School District (AUSD), with the regard to a questionable counter charter proposal, were unreasonable.”
Fact:
- On Thursday April 03, 2014, the conversion petitioners’ lawyers with barely 24-hours’ notice to the District filed for a TRO against the District and Associate Superintendent Stephanie Anello and Superintendent Dr. Donald Gill.
- The petitioners sought to restrain the Dozier–Libbey Medical High School-Dependent Charter School (DLMHS-DCS) from using the name Dozier-Libbey, and from enrolling students and hiring staff to work at the lawfully approved dependent charter school.
- The application for the TRO was heard on Friday, April 04, 2014 at the Superior Court of Contra Costa County in Martinez. The Honorable Judge Laurel Brady refused to grant the TRO, due to her need for more time to review the “complexity” of the case, and instead postponed the matter to a full hearing on April 28, 2014
- Until the hearing, the Judge requested the District extend the deadline for students and staff to express interest in attending and working at the new dependent charter school until April 28, 2014. The District agreed to do so. At no time did the judge say that the Dependent Charter was “unreasonable” in its effort to launch this new start-up charter. The Judge also confirmed DLMHS-DCS is not restrained from continuing with its activities.
Misinformation #2:
The petitioners’ press release states, “The process to convert the Dozier Libbey into a public charter school was greatly confused last month, apparently deliberately so, when the district filed and approved its own petition to convert the high-performing medical pathway school into a district-dependent charter school, immediately after denying the original independent charter petition submitted by the faculty of Dozier Libbey Medical High School.”
Fact:
- The District has not and will not deliberately confuse our parents and staff! The fact that the petitioners met in secret without involving students, parents, and the community in their plans is what caused confusion. Continued misleading information such as the press release sent out on Friday April 4th continues to confuse students, their parents, and the community.
Misinformation #3:
The petitioners’ press release states, “The legality of the district’s petition is highly suspect as the district was unable to obtain a single signature from Dozier Libbey faculty (California Ed Code requires concurrence of 50% of the current teachers plus one). A preliminary injunction request has been filed with the court against AUSD on behalf of the students, parents, and faculty of Dozier Libbey Medical High School, the hearing for which is set on April 28th.”
Fact:
- The DLMHS-DCS petitioners did not file a ‘conversion’ charter petition, they filed a “start-up charter petition” to form a charter school that supports and enhances the current DLMHS. The teacher signature requirements for a “start-up” petition are different in that they may be signed by any teacher “meaningfully interested” in working at the school. It is interesting to note that the dependent charter petition contained 127 teacher signatures “meaningfully interested” in working at the school–nearly six times the number of signatures in support of the independent, conversion charter petition.
Misinformation #4:
The petitioners’ press release states, “Pending this hearing, the judge has ordered the district to withdraw its demand that parents enroll their children in the district’s dependent charter by April 7. The district has repeatedly admonished parents that in failing to do so parents will risk losing their spot at the school next year. The judge further ordered that the district withdraw its demand that Dozier Libbey teachers commit to employment at the district dependent charter by the close of business today, or risk termination.”
Fact:
- Judge Brady did not order the District to withdraw any “demand.” Rather, Judge Brady extended the time frame for students to express interest in enrolling in the new DLMHS-DCS. She never used the words “rescind” or “withdraw”. She asked the District to extend the deadline and the District agreed.
- Following the approval of the new DLMHS-DCS, parents and community members currently enrolled at DLMHS continued to ask for assurances that their children could attend the new DLMHS-DCS. The District sent out a letter to these parents first granting them a spot if they so choose. Starting a new school takes a lot of planning and hiring so knowing how many students would enroll in the new school was a crucial and necessary first step.
- Additionally, the District sent out a letter to current DLMHS staff asking if they would be interested in working at the new start-up DLMHS-DCS prior to opening the positions for transfer according to the Antioch Education Association (AEA) bargaining contract. At no time were staff told they would be terminated. Proponents of the independent charter appear to have misinformed students and parents.
Misinformation #5:
The petitioners’ press release states, “Although the district’s charter was initially described in public hearing as a new start–up charter, AUSD has since announced via social media that its charter will replace the current Dozier Libbey Medical High School. The district has not yet provided legal justification for how it would accomplish what would appear to be a clear violation of both California Education Code and the Charter School Act of 1992.”
Fact:
- The District has not announced via social media that the DLMHS-DCS would replace DLMHS. DLMHS-DCS will enhance and support the current curriculum and supports provided by DLMHS. Once the community advisory committee comprised of parents, community, and staff is established, enhancements such as a dual immersion medical courses, an opportunity for students to receive a seal of bi-literacy, or a middle college opportunity will be discussed.
Misinformation #6:
The petitioners’ press release states, “Supporters of the Dozier-Libbey believe that the court, like much of the Antioch community, will take a dim view of the school district’s attempt, with great expenditure of public funds, to confuse the issue of the school’s legal conversion to a public charter school.”
Fact:
- The community has voiced little to no support for the independent, conversion charter petition submitted by the 23 Dozier Libbey Medical High School teachers. In fact, at the public hearing before the Board of Education on March 19, 2014, parents and community members expressed their overwhelming disapproval of the petition to convert DLMHS into an independent charter school.
The petitioners’ press release did get one thing right —the District has been forced to use money and resources that should be going to 18,000 students in order to respond to the unsupported and unnecessary actions of 23 petitioners.
Information provided by the Antioch Unified School District
12 comments
Thank you for posting this. I was shocked at the Dozier Libbey peoples release last week who flat out lied. I am glad AUSD responded. Shame on them for lying to the public so they can get their way.
Lies, Lies, and more Lies AUSD!
Fact #1: While the District may have agreed to extend the deadline of receiving signed letters back from the parents, it is interesting that your District employees collecting the letters yesterday had no idea of the extension until mid-day and continued to inform parents that the letters of intent were due yesterday.
Fact #2: You are confusing students and staff purposely. The Dependent Charter was created to do just that and slow down the Independent Charter. A District employee stated that in the second half of the special District meeting in March.
Fact #3 As stated above, the Principals at Antioch and Deer Valley strongly urged their teachers to sign the petition and in some cases Distict suits stood by while they watched the teachers sign.
Fact #4 The District may have agreed to extending the teacher and student commitment until April 28, but the District did not communicate this extension to anyone and District employees continued to tell parents that the deadline was April 7 both at the school and on the phone yesterday, April 7. Wasnt’ the hearing on April 4?
Fact #5 The District boasts a community advisory committee that will guide the school in its decisions and that parents will have a greater role of providing input into this new Dependent Charter. Funny, then why is a new principal for the Dependent Charter being decided upon at a closed door meeting of the School Board tomorrow night? Where is the community input? Where are the parents?
Fact #6 Who do you refer to as the community when referring to the Dependend Charter support? When I look down the speaker list, all I see are District employees (mainly administrators) who did not own up to that, but paraded around as concerned citizens. When I looked at the support for the Independent Charter, I saw a large group of people speaking equal to the number of District employees standing on the other side. And don’t discount the fact that there were a large number of students speaking. My student would not have been allowed to speak if I did not support the Independent Charter. My child would not have been driven to that meeting by me if I did not believe that what the teachers were doing was in the best interest of the students.
Oh, and by the way, the Independent Charter will be a public school, not a private one as one of your lead petitioners so wrongly stated in writing on social media.
Who is misleading the public? As I say to my children, take that finger you are pointing and point it right back at yourselves.
I look forward to the day that I will be voting out the entire School Board. Antioch Unified, you should be ashamed of the way you have conducted yourself in this matter! The only ones spreading misinformation is School District personnel. There are more people against the Dependent Charter than you think.
Transparency by the school district on such a life impacting issue on families is absolutely beautiful! Please keep the “truthful” communications coming. More concerned now as to what these 23 teachers are really teaching our youth??? :-/
Those 26 teachers are teaching our youth how to be honest, responsible, caring individuals and productive, hard working citizens. They are leading with poise and dignity. The students at the school are very aware of how the District is handling this situation and are pretty disgusted by the constant lies and how the District pitted the students against their school on both the sports issue and forcing them to commit to the questionable Dependent Charter before the Independent Charter could go through the appeals process that is their right. There is no transparency by the District when the Superintendent, 3 Assistant Superintendents and 2 District employees stood in front of the school every day last week and posted/defaced school property with 4 large banners. The District is teaching the kids a lesson no parent should ever support – bullying to get your way through lies and deceit. Oh, and also how to waste taxpayers’ money.
Misinformation #7 the AUSD is spending funds to fight their battle with current Libby staff.
Fact: The AUSD receives a salary for no known reason….
Fact: Antiochs mayor surrounded by at least seven NAACP members fought to stop this petition … Seems pecular because of racially violent Deer Valley is on the way to Libby that has no racial issues….
I hope Dozier gets what they want. I agree that AUSD is a failure in every way.
I am so over this. Both sides are acting like children. Sick and tired of politics at play when it comes to education. Replace the Board with real people who care.
So AUSD was good enough to build this school and now the staff wants to take it over? Well I think that if they want to break away and be independent from the district, they should pay for the school and the property its on. Shame on the teachers!! Don’t get me wrong, AUSD has gone down hill but I think the resources they have to use to battle this should be used for the teachers that have to buy paper out of their own pockets because the school and ZERO paper!!
If you read the petition, you would see that they offered to rent everything from the district.
JIm, I agree but it has always been that way. The politics of the district is worse than the city council. We need to replace the superintendent as well as the whole board. Trouble is some board members are running for city council. Don’t let them do this folks.
A few teachers decided to take a public school building use public funds and choose who they want to attend their little school while leaving parents, colleagues or the district they earn their pay checks from out of any of the decisions. It has been overwhelmingly clear that once the charter was proposed the public was not in favor. The teachers who i believe started this with good intentions were not prepared. The independent charter might have stood a chance had they included the parents of DLMHS, and the community. They went about it wrong, made a mess and now they are grasping at anything to save face. Let it go DLMHS and while you are at it maybe look for new jobs outside of AUSD since you hate this district so much. You are embarrassing yourselves.
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