Summit Public Schools, a Bay Area chain of charter schools that receives tens of millions of dollars from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Gates Foundation, found a way to skirt the intention of California’s recently passed charter transparency bill, SB 126. They held a board meeting 12/12/19 and only allowed six members of the public in the boardroom. Summit’s CEO said it was because allowing more of the public to join in person would “create an inappropriate working environment.” The rest of the 40 or so students, parents, and teachers who drove 30 miles to attend the meeting were shuttled into in a nearby Summit charter school to watch over video.
One provision of SB 126 requires charter management organizations with multiple campuses to establish two-way video-conferencing from each campus for their board meetings — with the intent of making these board meetings accessible — so that families, students, and teachers don’t have to travel hundreds of miles if they are not able to attend in person. It appears that Summit is using this provision to decrease transparency and democracy by preventing members of the public from being able to attend charter board meetings in person.
This was an important meeting because, last month, out of nowhere, Summit announced it was closing one of its schools, Summit Rainier, at the end of the school year, with seemingly little plan for what would happen to Rainier students. Summit educators, who recently unionized, have demanded to bargain for weeks about the impacts of this closure on Summit students, families, and teachers.
Students from Summit Rainier wanted to attend the meeting but were told to watch it in an adjoining room by video.
They got a lesson about what democracy is not.
Numerous community members prepared to attend today’s Summit Public Schools board meeting to discuss the closure of Summit Rainier but faced a surprise. Upon entering Home Office, where the board was meeting, they found out they had limited access to speaking to the board in-person.
CEO Diane Tavenner informed the crowd a total of six people could enter the board meeting and the rest would have to watch from an overflow room at Summit Prep, a school building adjacent to the SPS Home Office.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
CREEEEEEEPS! What does Summit Public School Board have to HIDE?
So, will the charter leadership retaliate against those who have complained? This is something that needs to be watched closely, over a considerable time period.
This school, and CEO, were ridiculously over-promoted by ed reformers.
It’s the ed reform version of Theranos. All puffery and marketing and gullible elites.
Chiara, if what you say above is correct, why are all of these students so passionate about saving their school??? Please see my more detailed comment further below.
Also- Facebook is in the misinformation business. It’s what they do. Does anyone in ed reform have any concerns about handing this company control over some public schools?
Any contradictions between their business model and “education”?
“This was an important meeting because, last month, out of nowhere, Summit announced it was closing one of its schools, Summit Rainier, at the end of the school year, with seemingly little plan for what would happen to Rainier students. Summit educators, who recently unionized, have demanded to bargain for weeks about the impacts of this closure on Summit students, families, and teachers.
Students from Summit Rainier wanted to attend the meeting but were told to watch it in an adjoining room by video.”
Maybe one of the thousands of people who are paid to “analyze” charter schools could ask why so many charter schools seem to mysteriously close the moment their employees join a union.
Not to worry, folks. The unfashionable public schools in that area are there as a safety net to accept the students from the closed charter.
Must be nice to operate in an environment where all of the risks of your experiments are covered by the public sector entity you denigrate. All of the privileges of a publicly funded entity and none of the responsibility.
Chiara,
Smart comment.
Their proponents often tout charter schools as laboratories of innovation that public schools, stuck in their old ways, can learn from. But I can’t think of a single worthy “innovation” that has trickled down to public schools. (None of calling children “scholars,” as is the case in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies, dictating the color of the socks children must wear, or turning classrooms into mini test prep centers is an innovation; they are, in order, silly, controlling, and disturbing.)
As you suggest, when charters crumble or otherwise fail to educate their students, it is public schools that are left to pick up the pieces.
The California Department of Education should have something to say about the charter skirting open meeting law. It’s the law now, right? Their charter should be revoked for noncompliance.
As I noted further below, all remote sites had two-way videoconferencing and people could ask questions and express concerns. There doesn’t seem to be an actual case of non-compliance although the Summit administration clearly did not endear themselves to the people who made the trip to appear in person.
Another Summit charter school is closing, to thwart teachers from organizing a union. See comments:
https://sanjosespotlight.com/another-charter-school-in-east-san-jose-set-to-close/
Interesting article. I made a few comments on it at the (current) end of the comments section in response to your second posting of the link above.
I started reading Diane Tavenner’s book “Prepared” the other day and made a few initial comments about it on my blog at http://eduissues.com/2019/12/13/prepared/.
I am in the middle of finals week and do not have a lot of time to comment today, but would like to note a couple of simple points.
From a quick read through the student news article link in Diane’s post, and then looking at a link to the school closing announcement at its end, it appears that Summit had a second school in Tahoma, WA and had some kind of lease problem which may have put them in an awkward position. Clearly, however, their attempt to “manage” the Board meeting left a lot to be desired.
(As an aside, I should note that Summit’s student news website is very well done!)
There are many things about Summit that concern me, such as “Summit Learning,” their “personalized” learning software, which I discuss in my blog article and, even more so, their link to Zuckerberg.
However, when I read comments like “This school, and CEO, were ridiculously over-promoted by ed reformers.
It’s the ed reform version of Theranos. All puffery and marketing and gullible elites.”, in the interest of fairness, I should point out that, in reading the student news article, it is very evident that the students in Rainier think that their school is a very good school, and some explicitly stated that they were not going to be able to get as good of an education at the other schools that they had attended previously in the area. If the school was “the ed reform version of Theranos. All puffery…” it is obvious that these students and their teachers would not have made the long trip from Washington state to the Board meeting!!
American politics is overwhelmed by people trying to whip everything up to an emotional fever pitch (and this clearly extends right up to the top of the pile). We have serious problems that we need to deal with in a rational manner. There are always multiple sides to any complex issue and overly simplified inflammatory rhetoric does not lead to good solutions.
Upon reading much further in the Summit News site, I see that both Summit Rainier and Summit Tahoma are located in San Jose, CA, not Washington state! Very odd naming system!!
Tacoma is a different word than Tahoma.
Yes, it is!
I apologize for my confusion regarding the location but Tahoma is also a place in Washington state.
Reserve praise for an independent, free press. In a corporate model, skills can be on display but, there is no guarantee about how long or what version of truth will be allowed.
A photo of students posted at the Summit News site concerned me. Are there demographic groups more likely to send their students to
schools run as business hierarchies? If so, it perpetuates a culture inconsistent with America’s founding as a representative democracy.
David, while you are dealing with things in your preferred mode- rationality, how about taking a look at the people with political power who are promoting privatization e.g. the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the state Catholic Conferences. Recommended reading- Prof. Sandy Levinson’s, “Why Ken Kersch’s book is an indispensable revelation about our constitutional situation”, published in Balkinization (June 7, 2019) and, Udi Greenberg’s, “Catholics, Protestants, and the Tortured Path to Religious Liberty”, published in the Journal of the History of Ideas (July 2018).
Please read the student site. The articles are extremely critical of the way Summit is closing down the school. If this was “corporate news,” these student articles would have never appeared.
Summit is closing the charter in East San Jose to avoid teachers forming a union
So you are saying that the Hispanics from East San Jose are culturally biased to attend “schools run as business hierarchies?” That is a very impressive hypothesis supported by references nonetheless, but I think that the real people involved would strenuously disagree.
The posted photo was not of Hispanic students. Catalina Huang wrote a doctoral dissertation in 2017 about politics and Asian Americans. She warned against generalities because there are “specific disparities in this racial group”. She expounded, the high population numbers of Asian Americans and the prominent presence of the tech industry, makes California’s 17th Congressional district an exceptional political arena… Asian Americans who supported Trump believe that they are different than other minorities- they “adhere to a stereotype as a ‘model minority’ “….they ignore the anti-immigrant, anti-refugee rhetoric…many indicated that jobs and the economy were most important to them.
PS – also note that the overflow room as well as remote sites had two-way video conferencing, so people not immediately in the Board room were still able to ask questions or express concerns to the Board, not just watch. The “optics” of the situation were nevertheless not good.
Another Summit charter is closing, to block teachers from forming a union. See comments
https://sanjosespotlight.com/another-charter-school-in-east-san-jose-set-to-close/
The really shocking thing in the above article is that a KIPP charter is apparently currently co-located in a regular public school with the Summit Tahoma charter! This appears to be an attempt by the two charter chains to optimize their use of space. Move KIPP to where Rainier is now so it can expand as a sole charter at the Rainier site and combine two Summit Schools where Tahoma is currently located to avoid competition from KIPP. I really feel for the poor public school (Oak Grove HS) that has to provide facilities to both of these operations! That is the biggest travesty in this whole story so far!
This might also be an attempt by Summit to hit back against unionizing teachers. The cover of the above consolidation gives Summit a convenient excuse, but no proof is presented, only speculation by a commenter.
Whatever is going on behind the scenes, it is certain that the students and teachers who lose their jobs are the ones taking it in the neck. Treating schools like businesses that open and shut their storefronts is clearly not a good model of operation for education.
PS – I agree with Bob above that this situation should be monitored. If Summit is stupid enough not to rehire the union organizer(s) after this site consolidation, one would hope the union representing them would take legal action to assist the teacher(s) who are exercising their rights. If anyone reading the blog knows the teachers involved, perhaps passing their contact info on to Diane or NPE and then contacting them to follow up might be an appropriate path forward.
David, another reader tells me that the problem at Summit was under enrollment, which made the consolidation necessary.
That’s not surprising if they were in close competition with KIPP.
If we learned that Priscilla Chan and Melinda Gates thought they were superior, that they loathed unions, that they opposed democracy, would anyone be surprised?
What is Diane Tavenner hiding? Stealing children’s futures should be criminal
SB 126 was not passed as an urgency measure, so it doesn’t become law until Jan.1, 2020. Still, only allowing six people into a board meeting speaks very poorly about Summit’s plans for the new year.