Don Pedro High School’s future is uncertain

August 12, 2009 – © Foothill Express

Cut to Bare Bones

Don Pedro High School is slated to remain open this year, but with only two teachers instead of the five they had last year.

But even though trustees delayed a decision to close the school altogether, their recent actions may have dealt the final death blow to the campus.

Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District trustees made the decision to cut staff at a meeting July 31 at Tioga High School in Groveland.

The board previously had chosen to drastically reduce Don Pedro High’s student body by voting to turn away interdistrict transfer students, except for those juniors and seniors from Mariposa County who have been attending the school at least two years.

Teacher Greg Brown expressed dismay at the plan to cut the staff so deeply. “That is really, really pushing the limit,” he told the board July 31. “That is a huge reduction.”

Board president Ian Morcott told him the decision is a financial necessity. “We’d love to have infinite resources,” he told Brown.

With school’s opening less than a week away, many unknowns remain.

Now that Mariposa County students have been turned away, one teacher said DPHS “optimistically” would only have an estimated 40 students or fewer this year.

However, as word has gotten out about the Don Pedro High cuts, many have voiced fears that still more parents are deciding to send their children to Mariposa High, Sonora High, or elsewhere, or to keep them in Don Pedro and home school them.

This latest issue is yet another of many problems that have arisen for residents of the Lake Don Pedro subdivision because the development straddles a county line, with part of the residents living in Mariposa County and part in Tuolumne County.

For many years, issues have arisen over different building codes, emergency services, and Covenants, Codes and Restrictions for the two counties. But school services have been one of the biggest challenges residents have faced.

Chuck Day

 There is one K-8 elementary school in the subdivision, on the Mariposa County side, and one high school on the Tuolumne County side, governed by the Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District.

Historically, parents on the Mariposa County side have applied for, and received, interdistrict transfers so their children could attend the nearby Don Pedro High School, and not have to spend hours on a bus each day traveling to campuses in distant towns. 

For many years, the Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District received its funding from average daily attendance, or ADA. That meant that outside students brought in extra money to the district, so interdistrict transfers were viewed as a benefit.

But recently the district’s attendance dropped so low that its funding model was changed. And now that that the ADA benefit is gone, officials have said they feel it is a financial burden to have students from outside their boundaries attend school in their district.

Board President Ian Morcott voiced the hope in July that Mariposa County Schools eventually would be able to take over the Don Pedro campus.

But although Mariposa County Schools Superintendent Randy Panietz has been holding meetings with Don Pedro residents about possible options, he said there are no quick, easy solutions.

Panietz said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the situation “kind of landed on our doorstep at the eleventh hour and 59^th minute.”

Panietz said he has his school district’s attorney looking into the legality of several possible options, so he hasn’t yet been able to present his school board with an official plan.

But because the Mariposa school district, like every other district in the state, is struggling financially and looking at further cuts from the state, there is only one thing that is certain: Whatever they propose, it can’t cost the Mariposa district any extra money.

Panietz, a former principal at Lake Don Pedro Elementary, called the situation “tragic for the people down there.”

“The community down there has been pulled every which way,” he said.

Marianne Quinn

Because panicked parents have been frantically contacting other school districts to make arrangements for their children, it’s not even clear how many students still need an alternative, he said.

Panietz compared the situation for Don Pedro families to that of taking the lid off a container of mice and watching them scatter. Many parents have already contacted Mariposa, Sonora, Hughson, and other districts to enroll their children there, he said.

“Nobody was interested in waiting around; they needed to get their kids in school,” he said. 

Panietz said one possible short-term option Mariposa County might be able to offer would be to add a ninth grade at Lake Don Pedro Elementary and to open an independent study program for 10^th-12^th graders. 

Probably the best long-term option would be to form a charter school for Don Pedro High School, Panietz added. That would take a lot of work, but Panietz is optimistic.

“They’re a very hearty group on the north side, and they have a long history of coming together and doing good things for the kids in the community,” he said.

A number of Mariposa County parents appealed the BOFGUSD interdistrict transfer decision to the Tuolumne County School Board this week.

But even some of those parents have a wait-and-see attitude about Don Pedro High.

Francine Lettman said her final decision regarding her freshman son will be based on whether sports will be offered at DPHS. “If they’re going to cut sports, he’ll go to Mariposa,” she said.

A vocal advocate who for years has urged Don Pedro residents to send their kids to the local school, Lettman said, “I hate to drop it now, but if they don’t want us, what else can we do?”

Lettman said she has coached sports, including cheerleading and girls’ basketball, at Don Pedro High for 11 years and her husband Jerry has coached varsity boys’ soccer and basketball for 9 years. Yet the district still has not let them know whether they have jobs this year. “They haven’t even given us a phone call,” she said Tuesday.

Lettman added it’s especially sad because the school’s new gymnasium-multipurpose room was just completed this year. “It’s more than they (Groveland) wanted us to have, but it’s built now. Why not use it?” she wondered.

District parents have also asked the board to consider that, if their funding method changes back to ADA, the Groveland district would be in a position of needing to woo back students that they now are turning away.

Others have asked why the district wasn’t planning to make cuts equally between Don Pedro High and Groveland’s Tioga High.

During their July meetings, the board and staff also discussed the possibility of closing Don Pedro High altogether, but decided to delay that decision due to uncertainties regarding state budget funding, as well as major conflicts that the district is going through.

The conflicts are particularly notable because of the fact that, since a recall vote unseated the previous board members last May, all five of the new board members in the Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District are residents of the Groveland area.

But despite seating an entirely new board and eliminating representation from the Don Pedro area, tensions within the district have continued.

Acting Superintendent Marianne Quinn and her assistant, Rhonda Crow, acting assistant to the superintendent, both announced July 29 that they would no longer serve in the interim superintendents’ office positions, although they would continue at Tenaya Elementary School as principal and secretary, respectively.

“I do not feel I have the full trust of the board,” Quinn told them July 29. She referred to some encounters during recent board closed sessions that indicated “there wasn’t much respect for me as your superintendent.”

In addition, Chief Buisness Official Tonya Midget submitted her resignation.

Quinn said Midget resigned “because of the way we treated her.”

Quinn explained that one factor that played a part in the resignations was a controversial email sent by board member Mike Malloy in June, which resulted in one district employee obtaining a restraining order against him.

Also as a result of that conflict, Quinn told the board July 29 that their insurance company has mandated a “security audit” of the district. An investigator will be visiting all the campuses, interviewing employees and making safety recommendations.

Quinn said the security audit was triggered by “the incidents leading up to the restraining order (against Molloy),” as well as “something that was said in closed session in July.”

The district does not have a choice about submitting to the audit, but it will be conducted at no cost to them, Quinn told the board.

 Asked whether the district will be required to follow the investigator’s recommendations, Quinn said yes, “If we want to keep our insurance.”

 She added that the security audit “could be a very positive thing … It could ensure the safety of the district staff and students.”

The board had a lengthy discussion July 29 about whether to remove Molloy as clerk of the board, because serving in that position would require contact with the employee he is forbidden to communicate with.

Molloy said he felt it would be “inappropriate” to remove him as board clerk. He said the restraining order was “really a personal matter between (the district employee) and me” and added that “the judge hasn’t ruled that I’ve done anything wrong yet.”

The email in question complained to three people, including Quinn and Midget, that someone released information about vouchers he was investigating. Molloy reportedly made the statement, “If this happens again, I will investigate, and the person responsible for releasing confidential information will be first skinned, then fired.”

 Molloy denied at the July 29 meeting that he intended those words as a threat of physical harm. He said he was using hyperbole, or exaggeration for effect.

Several board members and audience members saw it differently.

Doug West urged the board to take some kind of action against Molly.

“Even though you blew it, and apologized, you still have consequences,” he said to Molloy.

West compared the situation to one more than a year ago, in which Charles Day, one of the now-recalled board members, tore up a letter while West was reading it to them to air some of the Groveland community’s concerns.

“The board should have done something about that right then,” West said.

If the board failed to take a stand, West said they would be following in the previous board’s footsteps and accepting Molloy’s misbehavior “as the norm.”

At the July 29 meeting Molloy set out copies of an explanatory statement in which he hinted that the real reason for the scandal was his investigation of invoices, warrants, payroll orders and supporting documents.

“The person who is most responsible for cash payments for the district applies for a restraining order against the person who was charged by the board to investigate cash disbursements. That should also tell you something,” Molloy wrote.

He pointed out that, rather than follow district policy and procedure for filing a complaint against someone, the person chose “to resort to a sensational, public, and political approach. That should tell you something else.”

Molloy added that in his response to the application for the restraining order he said, “Any emotional distress suffered by (the employee) was caused by another source that I cannot legally disclose to the public.”

Board member Gloria Marler defended Molloy, saying the matter “has nothing to do with the board or the district.”

In the end, Molloy offered to resign as clerk. But when the board took a vote to elect Lori West as the new clerk, Molloy and Marler voted “no.”

In response to Quinn’s resignation as superintendent, several people complimented her work and urged the board to try to get her to reconsider. “Please don’t allow this excellent administrator to leave her position,” said Dave Palmer.

Quinn declined the appeal. “With Tonya (Chief Budget Official Tonya Midget), I might have been able to,” she said. But the “immense task” would be far too great without an experienced CBO. Quinn said her loyalty is to Tenaya Elementary and her work as principal there.

Her husband, Ed Quinn, a former Tenaya Elementary School principal and now a school superintendent in Tracy, told the board that the loss of a CBO is a “devastating” blow to a school district. He said his district lost a CBO three years ago, and it has taken the replacement two and a half years to just begin to understand the job.”

Mr. Quinn said some of the same people who were complimenting his wife’s work at the meeting had been yelling at her behind closed doors.

In discussing a replacement superintendent, Edie Lazzeroni urged the board to choose someone local to fill the role, because the district “is like a big family. Outsiders don’t get it.”

Last week, the board met again and voted to hire Mike King to replace Quinn.

“Mr. King is well respected in the area and has been an Interim Superintendent several times before,” said Morcott. “He was the superintendent of Sonora High School District at the time when BOFGUSD was initially formed.”

He added, “We were lucky to be able to retain his services.”