BY NATANYA FRIEDHEIM
Daily Post Correspondent
Nine hours after parents gathered Wednesday (Sept. 9) to protest leadership at Sequoia Union High School District, the district’s board proposed “norms of civil behavior” it expects the public to follow.
People who disrupt public school meetings already face a $500 fine. The proposed rule defines civility and examples such as not interrupting and considering other viewpoints.
“It’s always a good reminder to mimic the behavior that we expect our students to be doing,” said board member Mary Beth Thompson.
The board did not vote on the policy.
No one from the public commented on the board’s civility proposal at Wednesday’s meeting, but a group of eight parents gathered earlier in the day at a Sequoia High School to demand the board oust Superintendent Crystal Leach.
The group also broadcasted their efforts to recall three board members who are not up for re-election this year. The recall effort targets Thompson, Rich Ginn, and Maria Cruz.
The parents have until Oct. 24 to collect signatures from 20% of the registered voters in each board member’s area in order to start the recall.
The parents aired a range of grievances including the recent closure of TIDE Academy, the difficulty they face communicating with administrators and what they claim to be insufficient mental health resources for their children.
In April, the board unanimously voted to shutter TIDE Academy, a magnet school in east Menlo Park, citing budget constraints.
The small public high school opened in 2019 to alleviate an anticipated increase in enrollment in nearby schools. The increase never materialized, and operating TIDE cost more per student than other schools in the district.
Tamar Spektor’s two children used to attend TIDE and now go to M-A. She was among the outraged parents.
“This board has failed to hold the superintendent accountable,” Spektor said.
She pointed to a lawsuit filed by a group of Jewish students and their families who claimed the district failed to protect students against antisemitism.
As part of a settlement agreed to in May, Sequoia Union High School District paid $325,000 to the plaintiffs and began requiring district employees who work with students to attend annual antisemitism training, among other changes.
Lawsuits against the district was a theme among the parents Wednesday. They said attorneys fees paid by taxpayers could be avoided under better leadership.
“We all have different stories and different reasons for being here today, but it all comes back to one thing: failed leadership,” said Sequoia parent Johanna Mahal.
Spektor also spoke out against the district’s decision to reduce the number of honors classes for 9th graders.
Leach did not address the recall effort or calls for her removal at last night’s school board meeting. In a statement sent to the Post, she said the board is focused on expanding opportunities for students.
“I understand that community members will not always agree with governance decisions, yet I hope some level of understanding for the decision will grow with time,” she said.
“Expanding opportunities for students”, so that’s what she Leach says now, eh? I guess that’s a little better PR line than what she said before, that these parents are ‘acting out’ (like what you say about frustrated children). On the peninsula people were already not clear about d.Tech, and then when TIDE opened people maybe made a quick mental footnote on the assumption that they are the same = STEM school. d.tech existed first as a program without a building, run as a ‘pilot’ before its campus was built, and it’s a charter school. TIDE was BUILT AND CONSTRUCTED to be a small school campus, not started as an exploratory pilot, and it’s public, which is why it served students with IEPs (charter schools can turn ‘difficult’ kids away). SUHSD trustees never made it clear to parents that TIDE was not a boundary school, and served the whole district (busing available). They made it difficult to choose TIDE, bc the enrollment process to opt out of your boundary school only let parents choose one other option (i.e., if you were interested in Carlmont and TIDE, you couldn’t do ranked choice, so if there wasn’t space at TIDE then you would be forfeiting trying for a spot at Carlmont by listing TIDE as your choice). TIDE opened during the pandemic and had a lot of turnover of principals and Superintendents too. It probably would have reached its enrollment cap if Leach/Thompson/Ginn had not interfered with its ability to recruit during November-Feb. Nearby charter schools EPAA and Summit Prep got 5 years’ renewal despite enrollment concerns just months before Leach acted on not wanting to do any work on TIDE around figuring out running a ‘small school’ and hired consultants to build a case and timeline to say SUHSD is closing a budget gap… or low enrollment? Which arguments sticks better? Try both, or neither, or whatever, just use the bogeyman that teachers will get fired if they don’t save money by closing TIDE. Ended up that no TIDE teachers, not even the principal, were let go – they all got reassigned, so no real $ saved there.
TIDE deserved to get a FULL examination and thorough discussion, why not pivot on its ‘charter’ and it on ‘a plan’ like the 5 years that the charter schools got? RACE plays a role. Ginn and Thompson’s districts (C,B) are the areas west of El Camino (the areas East of El Camino get broken into Area D, which overwhelmingly has Menlo Park voters so N. Fair Oaks goes unheard, and Area A where the trustee is practically guaranteed to care about BRSSD voters over Hoover & Taft’s.) Trustees B & C headed up the ‘commission’ with no parents or community leaders/taxpayer watchdogs on it, to start the Superintendent’s goal to using their hands instead of her own to propose closing TIDE.
A couple of things that never came up in the rush to vote on TIDE closure. Palo Alto’s third high school, Middle College, is 9-12 on the Foothill Campus. There was ZERO discussion on the validity of dual enrollment, and TIDE gave SUHSD families an option very similar to Palo Alto’s. SUHSD’s Middle College is only for junior and senior years, and the “principal” Diana Wilmot is also “Director of Research” to put together the slideshow of ‘facts’ to argue for closing TIDE. If TIDE were successful, it would take student count away from Middle College. This conflict of ‘fiefdom’ protection is an example of lack of transparency. Another is Thompson’s connection to Summit Schools. She should not have volunteered for a commission on closing the school located just 2 miles away from Summit, and if she didn’t know it was headed that way in advance, then she should have recused herself from the voting. Let’s back it up: legally she should not have been on the ballot as a current Summit employee at the time of her election. Her current private school employer BENEFITS if SUHSD has fewer pathways. It’s the same pool of students that her school (past and present employers) compete for.
The district put up some numbers on the cost of a TIDE student vs its other schools. But it was like a flashcard, they didn’t break down or allow critical analysis of how they arrived at those numbers. M-A Foundation gives $2.2m annual grant to pay for 8 teachers, three counselors, plus additional coordinators. TIDE as a 6 years old, lower SES school didn’t have a wealthy foundation to lower its costs, and by popping the ‘closure’ discussion over Christmas break, there would be no chance for its parents to seek out grands or do fundraising to address budgeting to try to save the school. Finally, the vote on moving TIDE to Woodside was unexamined, and it is a violation of IEP parents’ rights to have a say in their student’s school placement. So AFTER the vote occurred, SUHSD did an open enrollment process to let TIDE families choose a different school, but that is not the same thing at all as working with families with IEPs to understand the individual cases; also, the end result was just 26 families going to Woodside and the vast majority going to M-A, which could have been predicted. The trustees just never asked or looked into how TIDE kids would be affected by the closure. Nor did they care that this cohort of students are the ones who experienced pandemic-school-closures during their formative years, and by evicting them from TIDE gave them another shove to the ground when they were trying to get on their feet.
The Board and Superintendent are currently spending far more time on trying to figure out how to run a survey on phone policy so that they’ll get replies, in order to performatively show that they suddenly care about getting input, than they ever did to examine the cost-benefit of abandoning a $50m+ school and the path forward for the evicted kids. Replace them all!