County report on CVCHS sparks more questions than it answers
A long-awaited report to the Contra Costa County Office of Education concerning charges made against Clayton Valley Charter High School’s administration and governing board was released publicly last week, and rather than bringing long-standing issues to a conclusion, the report seems to have created more controversy.
The report, which hit the week before students settled in for the new school year, had both critics of the school and the CVCHS administration claiming victory. While critics of the school say the report validates their complaints, CVCHS administrators say the report did not fully investigate the allegations and didn’t seek information from the school to rebut the accusations of wrongdoing.
“In assuming the validity of each and every complaint made, the report presents CVCHS in the worst possible light and in a fashion of ‘guilty until proven innocent by specific written documentation’ – biasing the investigation and report in the favor of the complainants,” Executive Director David Linzey said in a statement after the report was published last Thursday.
The full-service education law firm Dannis Woliver Kelley was hired in January to investigate myriad charges made against CVCHS, which included conflicts of interest, Brown Act violations, board election procedures, fiscal impropriety, hiring practices and athletic department issues. DWS says in its executive summary that “the report will not make factual findings or determinations regarding the validity of the facts presented” yet then proceeded to make 39 “critical recommendations” based on allegations without determining their validity.
They added, “This report is intended to serve as a tool to assist in evaluating the complaints and allegations against CVCHS when making the independent determination of how to proceed, if at all.”
Both the factions making charges against CVCHS and Linzey claimed the report buttressed their position. The dialogue continued this week when the school started its fourth year as a charter Wednesday morning and that afternoon CCCBOE had its monthly meeting that was slated to include discussion of the report.
School supporters claimed the report’s authors not only failed to properly investigate the charges or give factual findings but that they have a major conflict of interest. DWK was hired by CCCOE to handle the investigation and they also have a six-figure annual contract as an outside counsel with Mt. Diablo Unified School District, which is still smarting from having CVCHS leave the District in 2012.
Allison Snow, who has been an outspoken critic of the charter and one of the founders of Stakeholders for Transparency Facebook group, sent an email with the DWK report to the press saying, in part, “The findings are as we anticipated: The Director and Board have apparently far overstepped the charter and therein contains long list of immediate fixes to their operations.”
The report includes four and a half pages of “critical recommendations” that DWS suggests the school or its governing board implement to address allegations made in 2014 about CVCHS.
The report’s one-paragraph conclusion begins, “At this time and with CVCHS’s cooperation, the issues appear largely resolvable through additional training, transparency, communication and oversight.” It says there are a number (39 termed “critical”) of suggested actions for the county to consider.
At the same time, Linzey issued a long statement challenging the process and recommendations: “It is now clear that CVCHS has not violated the law or its charter petition, that there is no basis for the call for revocation coming from some anti-charter elements in the community, and that many of the complaints were in fact based on misstatements of fact and misinterpretations of charter school law.”
He goes on to say that this does not imply that CVCHS agrees with the process used by DWK in developing the report, “the factual inaccuracies and analysis that are contained in the report, or the initial premise that DWK has operated from in assuming that the allegations are “not false” (i.e., true) without giving the Charter School the opportunity to rebut these allegations.
“It remains disappointing that CCCOE and DWK did not afford CVCHS the opportunity to address the allegations addressed in the report [and] to submit documents directly responsive to the allegations,” Linzey said.
The full report can be viewed at CCCOE’s website, www.boarddocs.com/ca/cccoe/Board.nsf/files.