VALLEY CENTER –
Facing revocation of its charter over accusations of financial mismanagement, a school for students living on North County Indian reservations has decided to close and reopen under a different structure.
A lawyer for the All Tribes American Indian Charter School announced the move last night just as a local school board was about to vote to pull the school's charter.
The Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District board went ahead with the revocation anyway, but the two dozen school supporters, who included staff members, Indian leaders and students, laughed.
“If they don't want us, why are we trying to stay here?” said Mary Anne Donohue, who runs the school for about 60 students in sixth-through 12th-grade on the Rincon reservation.
School officials and their lawyer said the district is motivated by money. Indian students who live on reservations generate about twice as much funding as other students.
The school's annual budget is about $800,000, which comes from the state and federal government, lawyer Jerry Simmons said. The school isn't affiliated with any tribe, and doesn't get significant tribal funding.
District Superintendent Lou Obermeyer said funding isn't the issue. Instead, she pointed to a long list of problems the district found, including issues keeping track of attendance and how money is spent.
Donohue said she believes the school would have prevailed had it challenged those findings, but didn't want to spend the $60,000 in legal fees that would have entailed.
“If half of what they said was correct, I would have revoked us,” she said.
Instead, the school is now looking at its options as it plans to reopen with the same staff and students in September.
It could reorganize as a private school, become affiliated with another charter school or a school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or try to get a charter through another district or the state, she said.
Donohue wasn't sure which way the school will go. “We're still trying to iron that out,” she said.
This isn't the first time the school has run afoul of the district, which pointed out problems several years ago.
At that point, the dispute ended when the district and the school entered into an agreement calling that future problems would be dealt with through mediation.
But when problems came up again, the district rebuffed the school's efforts at ironing things out, Simmons said.
Onell Soto: (619) 593-4958; onell.soto@uniontrib.com
