The Green School

“Charter school, interrupted.” Chico News & Review (CA), 8/25/2011

“Sydney Cambra, who spent her sophomore year at the fledgling Chico Green School, scrambled this week to enroll at another school a week after classes had begun in the Chico Unified School District.

Cambra, who chose Chico High School, was forced to make the switch after CUSD revoked the Green School’s charter and reported it in violation of state law. Representatives at the school subsequently announced it was closing its doors to fall-term students.

Chico Unified School District says the charter high school has violated the Brown Act, California’s open-meetings law. The decision to pull the year-old institution’s charter was based also on its failure to become a candidate for accreditation after a spring visit by an accreditation committee, but it was the Brown Act allegations that dealt the hardest blow. Violations of state law trigger a cut-off in funding to charter schools that are run independently but financed by public monies...

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“Chico Green School could face losing charter.” Contra Costa Times via Chico Enterprise-Record (CA), 7/31/2011

CHICO -- A charter school that has had a series of directors, substantial turnover in the faculty and other alleged problems since it was launched about two years ago may now be facing the loss of its charter...

According to the agenda, Green School leadership will be asked to explain why the school has yet to establish a curriculum that would be adequate for a graduate to earn admittance to the University of California or the California State University system.

The school will also be questioned about allegations its governing board has failed to comply with the state's open meeting law...

The Green School, housed at 2424 Cohasset Road, was chartered in October 2009. According to its administrators, it is the only post-eighth-grade charter in the country inspired by the "Waldorf" theory of education, which aims to tailor the curriculum to the various ages of a youngster's development...

The CUSD report for the meeting includes a letter to Green School dated June 30 that says the Western Association of Schools and Colleges — the agency that accredits schools — would not accredit their operation...

The district is also charging that the 50-student school was chartered only to offer classes to ninth and 10th graders, but last year they had 11th graders enrolled.

Murray acknowledges the school had 11th graders last school year and that they have five 12th graders enrolled at present...

The school was brought before the CUSD board before, in September 2010, on many of the same allegations. At that time, the board issued a letter outlining what the school had to do to correct the problems.