Sanger school board won’t stop school merger, but will it drop its charter status?
Two Sanger Unified school programs will merge next year, despite outcry from some parents who have asked the school board to reconsider.
But the merging of Hallmark Charter School and Taft Academy isn’t a board decision, district officials have said. The school board will decide whether Hallmark remains a charter school or drops that status.
“The starting of Hallmark Academy – and the transition of Taft Academy – continues to move forward and evolve,” Sanger Unified Deputy Superintendent Eduardo Martinez said. “And that evolution or transformation isn’t contingent on the dissolution of the charter. Hallmark Academy will evolve independently and transform Taft Academy into Hallmark Academy.”
Frustrated by the process, parents and teachers from Hallmark Charter School continue to question district leadership about the swift action to drop the school’s charter when the programs merge.
Taft parents are eager for the merger, so their children can reap the benefits of what Hallmark has to offer while still being under the online learning platform they need from Taft. The pushback from Hallmark families opposed to dropping the school’s charter status as part of the merger is what’s frustrating to Taft parents.
“‘Every child, every day,’” Justin Mesloh said, quoting the Sanger Unified motto during the May 24 board meeting. “You instilled that in me. I still believe that with our Taft Academy students. This exact phrase is the reason I believe the only way our Taft Academy students, including my daughters, will receive extracurricular activities is through this merger.”
Sanger leadership has proposed dropping Hallmark’s charter status starting in 2023, which would free up its funds for the Sanger Unified district as a whole.
“As a community, parents, students, and staff, we wouldn’t be here if district officials did due diligence before bringing the proposed merger of Hallmark Charter and Taft Academy to the board,” Hallmark Charter parent Auriette Larbi said. “We are here because our leaders have made a crucial and important decision without engaging stakeholders.
“We are asking our leaders: take time, engage the community and be transparent with the issues….”
The board will vote on the charter status dropping — what parents are frustrated with — not the merger of Hallmark and Taft to become Hallmark Academy, district leaders have said.
Superintendent Adela Jones said the district’s administration can evolve programs “for all our parents to access.”
“We don’t need board approval for that,” Jones said about the evolution of Hallmark Academy.
Taft parent perspective
Mesloh said his children need the hands-on learning experiences Hallmark provides but need to remain Taft students.
Hallmark has music, art, enrichment classes, tutorials, and lab science programs.
One of his children was distracted while a part of in-person classes, which is why he and his wife chose Taft’s online platform, where she has grown and thrived, exceeding grade-level expectations.
That’s why they want to keep her at Taft. But keeping her at Taft has also meant that she doesn’t have access to extracurricular activities, like the optional, on-campus activities Hallmark offers.
“As parents, her mother and I would love the opportunities for her to receive some parts of STEM, art, music,” Mesloh said. “It’s become evident that the only way that this is going to happen is with this merger.”
Their second daughter would benefit from the merged Hallmark Academy as well because she needs hands-on activities and an at-home learning environment since she’d be entering school for the first time as a kindergartner. The Taft online learning platform with Hallmark’s opportunities is what they see as best for her.
What Hallmark parents continue to say
Larbi and Hallmark Charter teacher Angela Ballew asked the board to take the time to consider their actions of dropping the charter status.
There are several reasons behind the decision to dissolve the charter, Jones previously told the Ed Lab. Those include the charter school’s declining enrollment for several years; streamlining business operations for both programs because the charter school’s Local Control Accountability Program dollars would become a part of the district’s funding to support the SUSD initiatives at Hallmark Academy; and allowing more equity and access to both programs.
This school year, Hallmark Charter School planned to spend more than $3.9 million, in which $216,670 was tied to services in LCAP, according to the local control funding formula budget overview accessible on Hallmark’s website.
Hallmark Charter was created 22 years ago for enrollment as a homeschool learning model just as it operates today, but that was when there weren’t many charter schools for it to compete with, Jones said. Sanger Unified’s charter schools join more than 1,300 as of the 2021-22 school year, according to the California Department of Education’s website.
“You have this charter; you worked hard to get it,” Ballew said. “We worked hard to keep it and make it something beautiful and special.”
Like most programs, Hallmark Charter might need to evolve to educate kids better, she said, but teachers need time to do that.
Without the charter status, out-of-district families must enroll through an interdistrict transfer, something that both Sanger and the other district must approve, leaving parents wary.
“I can speak from my experience,” Ballew said about the success of students who’ve been able to “just come” from across the Central Valley. “They just come. And they find their way.”
About 102 students from 10 other districts will have to use interdistrict transfers after Hallmark’s charter status is removed.
According to Associate Superintendent Tim Lopez and Jones, at least 24 of those families have completed the interdistrict transfers, which have to be done annually.
The district has reached out to each of the 10 other districts about the transfers and provided the links to the one-page transfer forms, Lopez said.
Currently, 491 students do transfers out of Sanger, 220 do interdistrict transfers, and around 300 who do intradistrict transfers, all of which require approval from the district students are leaving and entering.
Some districts require board approval or district office approval, Lopez said.
What administration is saying
The district wants parents to have a “school of choice” with access to opportunities rather than either Hallmark Charter’s homeschool model with extracurricular opportunities or Taft Academy’s virtual program with no opportunities.
“The choice is around having two platforms under one school of choice,” Jones said.
Of Hallmark’s 252 students and Taft’s nearly 500, 455 have expressed their intentions of enrolling in the merged school. Some plan to continue Hallmark’s homeschool model, some plan to continue Taft’s virtual platform, and some have switched to the other learning model from their current learning style, Associate Superintendent Tim Lopez said.
Under the name Hallmark Academy, the merged school will still have:
- Hallmark’s traditional homeschooling with one-hour advisory
- Hallmark’s hybrid program with split classes and one-hour advisory
- Hallmark’s on-campus enrichment courses and on-campus tutorial
- Taft’s virtual instruction via Zoom for K-8 students
- Taft’s Independent Study with advisory and in-person tutorials
- Hallmark’s homeschooling, rigorous curriculum, music, art, enrichment classes, tutorials, and lab science programs will continue, but with Taft students having access to them.
Families would choose between Hallmark’s homeschool option and Taft’s virtual programming that logs on for classes at scheduled times throughout the day.
“The program of Hallmark is not going away,” Jones echoed both times she spoke with the Education Lab.
There are informational flyers — which Hallmark Charter parents say started being distributed at or around the time the merger proposal was first presented to the board on May 10 – about Hallmark Academy.
What board will decide
What’s left for the board to decide is whether to dissolve Hallmark’s charter status.
The board’s vote on the charter status will occur at a future board meeting, Jones said, and the district is “moving forward” with enrolling students in the new school of choice that Hallmark Academy is becoming.
To Larbi, the district has disregarded the school board.
Parents such as Larbi and Sara Florez and teachers like 22-year educator Shannon Anderson view the district’s actions as a “work-around” board approval.
Larbi told the board that the community trusts them to do the what’s best for students, families and the community.
“You do have a voice,” Florez repeated to the board. “No matter what the district has said about how they’re going to circumvent or go around you, you do have a voice. And your voice is supposed to be our voice, right? You’re representing everybody in the community, not just Sanger Unified School District (but) everybody in the community.
“You can speak for us.”
The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Learn about The Bee’s Education Lab at its website.
