VISTA: School district to investigate Guajome Park Academy
North County Times
By STACY BRANDT
January 15, 2009
School district officials decided Thursday to investigate Guajome Park Academy to ensure there are no problems with leadership or instruction at the charter school.
The request for a "compliance review" was prompted by recent complaints from parents about curriculum and school administrators, said board President Carol Herrera, though she said she couldn't give more specific details.
"The whole charter has to be looked at," she said before the meeting.
The board voted unanimously to proceed with a review.
Several parents and employees from the academy attended the meeting to either praise the school or to encourage an investigation.
Guajome Park Academy has been without a superintendent for six months, since Penny Harrison quietly stepped down. Chief Business Officer Carla Skaggs has filled in since then...
In the past the district has sent complaints to school officials to address the concerns, she said.
Guajome Park serves 1,500 students in grades six through 12 with a project-centered curriculum. It's a charter school, which is a publicly funded school that operates independently, outside of many of the rules typical public schools face.
Chartering districts are responsible for monitoring the schools to make sure they're financially and academically successful.
"In the past, we haven't perhaps provided the oversight for that program that we needed to," Herrera said...
5 comments:
For the past 2 years, the charter school (San Jacinto Valley Academy) in which Penny Harrison has been the CEO for, has been having all the same issues that Guajome park had. It is absolutely ridiculous! There are many parents pulling their kids out and some who are remaining loyal to Penny. The board has just voted to keep her on for another 2 years! Someone should investigate her over at SJVA!! Our family is done there!!
I agree, my son has been a student there for two years and both, his kindergarten teacher and first grade teacher where fired the last day of school for no apparent reason. I'm seeing a very high turnover of many great teachers. I just read on the website that the school hours changed also. 7 full hours. I was not given notices of th is either, I just wanted to look on the website to see when school starts up again. I will have to pull my son out of school since I have another child who is disabled who attends a special private school 30 minutes away and gets out of the same time. This school has not been consistant with anything!
I agree with the last two post. Penny Harrison is single handedly destryong SJVA. She hd the vp fire at least eight teachers on the last day of school. Parents and students are not happy there anymore. It is a very tense environment snd can feel the tension when you step onto campus.
I agree. Recently one of the best employees of SJVA was fired due to Penny Harrison. This employee was in her bad side for no apparent reason. Once your on her bad side, she will do whatever it takes to Fire you. Just like the past teachers that worked at the school.
This is Penny's playbook. She came to GPA in 2003 and completely upended the camaraderie all of the stakeholders had with each other. She pitted middle school teachers against high school teachers - and she ran out the absolutely best teachers. 80% turnover of teachers within 3 years. She packed the Board with parents who sided with her and gave her a "blank check" to do whatever she wanted done. I would love to see what the reason was for her to "quietly" leave GPA in 2008. She shares the same playbook with DJT.
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