The executive director of an online learning charter school has been placed on leave while the school’s attorney conducts an internal investigation. Why he is being investigated was not disclosed.
Richard Mestas, executive director and principal of GOAL Academy High School, the state’s largest alternative-education program, has been placed on paid administrative leave during an internal investigation, says the school’s attorney, Dustin Sparks of Monument.
Sparks said Thursday he is conducting the investigation…
Mestas, a Pueblo native, had been acting as executive director since July 2016 before being named sole finalist for the position in February 2017.
He has been affiliated with GOAL, an acronym for Guided Online Academic Learning, since 2007, when he was principal of Dolores Huerta Preparatory High School, a charter school in Pueblo.
Dolores Huerta and GOAL, which became a separate school in 2008, were two of five charter schools in the Cesar Chavez School Network.
But the for-profit education management group experienced massive internal strife. At one point, Mestas was said to be held against his will in his office and physically threatened by the network’s chief executive officer.
The state education department threatened to close all the schools amid staff upheaval, financial mismanagement and allegations that Cesar Chavez School Network was misusing taxpayer money, based on an independent audit. Instead, the schools were released from the network in 2009 and allowed to operate independently.
The management network dissolved in 2010.
GOAL was authorized under the Colorado Charter School Institute but petitioned Falcon D-49 to come under its wing in 2012.
D-49’s board approved a three-year contract extension with GOAL on Feb. 8, accepting a revised budget of $31.3 million for this school year and requiring the school to remain in good academic standing.
Is the problem academic or financial?
Stay tuned.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To answer your question: More likely than not both.
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Duane,
You are probably right … BOTH reasons.
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Ed reformers are breathlessly awaiting news from the Supreme Court on labor unions.
They’re hoping workplace rights are eradicated.
Ed reform is an anti-organized labor movement disguised as an education movement.
When they succeed in eliminating teachers unions then public school families will have no advocates – charter schools will have advocates and private schools will have advocates but the 90% of people who send their children to public schools will have no one at the table either in the federal government or in most state governments.
DC politicians completely ignore public school families now. These ridiculous, out of touch snobs who supposedly work for us don’t even hire public school graduates, let alone send their children or grandchildren to public schools.
Imagine when they don’t even have to meet with labor unions and pretend they support public schools long enough to get union member votes. 90% of schools will drop off the policy and funding map completely.
Public school families are going to have to start insisting that the people they’re paying in government start working for them. I don’t really care if the Obama and then Trump people have contempt for public schools. They’re paid to do a job, and their job includes the fact that 90% of US families use the schools they disdain. They should do their jobs or let someone else who supports public schools work there.
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Speaking of the Mark Janus v. AFSCME case: “Janus argues that these involuntary payments violate his First Amendment free speech rights by forcing him to financially underwrite negotiating positions taken by AFSCME that are necessarily political in nature and are contrary to his interests and political views.”
Violates his 1st amendment free speech rights?! What a total boatload of equine detritus. Who forced him to work at a union shop? Was a gun put to his head to work there? He could have worked at any number of non union jobs. What a phony baloney. Janus is just an anti-union greedy free loader.
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“Ed reform is an anti-organized labor movement disguised as an education movement.” BINGO.
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Exactly
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So-called education reformers are always at or near the top in the Orwellian Deceptive Language Sweepstakes, as seen here, with a non/anti-union private charter school named after Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
Gall, chutzpah, brazenness, impunity, the list of words describing these people’s deceptive use of language is endless…
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