Supervisors drop funding for county-supported charter school

Pima Vocational High School is an alternative charter school with a lot of heart, but in the eyes of its owner, Pima County, the cost of running it was too high.

The Pima County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to surrender the charter, thereby disbanding the school at 5025 W. Ina Road. The county spent about $600,000 from its general fund supporting the high school.

Pima Vocational was established in 2000 with the understanding it would eventually become self-sufficient.

When she was sworn in as a county supervisor in 2021, Adelita Grijalva, now the board chair, started asking questions about the county’s involvement.

“I said, tell me about what’s going on here. I don’t know why Pima County, as a county, and the only county in the state of Arizona (doing so) was running its own charter,” Grijalva recalled.

In the 2022-23 school year, there were only 59 students enrolled in the school, according to the Arizona Department of Education.

Connor Gentry, 17, is one of those students. He struggled in other schools before coming to PVHS, his mother, Lisa Gentry said.

“Connor has had a rough time through school because of his ADHD. Then COVID hit, and it got even worse.”

The school serves at-risk students ages 16-21. The school is to help students “obtain an accredited high school diploma, sustainable job skills and career-oriented work experience within a small-school learning community,” according to the mission statement provided to Arizona Department of Education.

In school year 2022-23, 80% of Connor’s schoolmates were people of color, according to ADE. More than ten of those students struggled with housing insecurity, according to the department. Joseph Casey, who has taught at PVHS for eight years, estimated about half of PVHS’s students are homeless or facing housing instability.

“The Island of Misfit Toys? Those are our kids. It’s a mix of kids who are bullied, or they’re wallflower kids,” Casey said. “We’ve got kids who don’t fit in. A large number of them are kids who just get lost in the big schools. When they come to us and they see the small classes of 10, 12,14 kids, they feel much more comfortable and safer.”

In 2017-18, the most recent school year available, Civil Rights Data Reporting received zero complaints, which include: incidents of in- and out-of-school suspensions; law enforcement referrals from the school; incidents of harassment or bullying based on sex, race, color, national origin or disability; and incidents of violence.

Conner said he stopped going to his last school because he was being bullied.

Connor’s mother said, “He did not fit in. He would hide in the stairwells at school. He would come home looking like he’d been beat up by the world. He did not want to get up out of bed to go to school. I switched him to online (learning) that was even like, Nope, don’t want nothing to do with it.”

After matriculating in PVHS, Connor changed, Lisa Gentry said.

“It’s a different kid, to see him want to get up and to come to school and want to do the work. To see that, as a parent — that makes me happy. And to know that there are people here that understand him and care about him? That’s even better.”

Connor learned about graphic design at PVHS, Lisa Gentry said.

“I think the teacher kind of opened that whole new a new side to him to show him a new interest. With this school, they opened doors up for these kids, and they show them hey, look, there’s so much more you could do.”

The school was given a B grade for its most recent ADE report card, the means by which the state department of education rates schools. Out of 35 College or Career Readiness Points, the school received 34.1 points from the state on its report card.

Much about PVHS has been unclear, from the top-down.

Pima County Community and Workforce Development has been involved in school operations. The school also has a governing board.

“(The board of supervisors) really didn’t have oversight,” Grijalva said. “That’s why they have their own governing board. We’re just the umbrella. Once we started asking questions, we realized how much unpacking and a critical eye needed to happen there.”

In an email submitted to the Pima County, PVHS teacher Casey referenced instability in the county-provided leadership:

“The Pima County Community and Workforce Development (CWD) employee assigned as a placeholder for our incoming director has a full-time job within CWD. Her full-time job requires her full-time attention. The placeholder employee has been on the PVHS campus for a total of seven hours since January 14 …. Staff are wondering who is in charge.”

Pima Vocational High School governing board president Mary Fellows said in an email to the Arizona Daily Star: “All personnel were hired through the County HR department and paid by the County. All contracts were processed through the County procurement department and again paid by the County. All financial transactions were through the County financial system including state equalization payments, state, federal and any private grants.”

Still, the board of supervisors rarely heard much about the school, said county supervisor Rex Scott.

A document was distributed to board members in December, advising the school disband.

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“During the last year staff have undertaken a comprehensive evaluation of PVHS operations. This analysis demonstrates qualitatively and quantitatively that, in light of trends over the last decade, it is appropriate to reconsider Pima County’s role as a charter holder and substantial funder of PVHS,” the document read, in part.

Before that?

“Pretty much nothing,” Scott said.

At Scott’s request, two memos – one March 11 and the other March 15 — were distributed to the board of supervisors.

“We had been getting some emails from PVHS staff that I didn’t feel were being addressed by some of the previous communications that we’ve been getting from administration,” he said.

Scott added that those memoranda stated that the last time the Board of Supervisors got any comprehensive report on Pima Vocational High School was in 2014.

Grijalva said she was more privy to the state of PVHS. For years, she worked a building shared with the school, she said.

“I’m very familiar with the program, the administration, the goal of the program, and the fact that the students were in class in the morning, and then the afternoons they did their internship.”

Grijalva said she was also concerned by the drops in student enrollment, particularly average daily membership, which determines basic state aid.

Connor’s grandmother, Alexandra Munro, said there is plenty of blame to go around for the school’s closure.

“There’s a two-way street. Part of it is on Pima County. They say oh, no, it’s not our fault. We blame the school. No, you have to blame the board (of supervisors), too, because they didn’t come and talk to these people.”

“I think if there had been a requirement back when the school was set up, for there to be some kind of annual comprehensive report provided to the board, then we might have been able to give some more guidance and direction,” Scott said.

“I don’t think that the chances of the school’s revival, in terms of its original mission as both an alternative school and a school that provides vocational opportunities, were very high,” Scott told the Arizona Daily Star. “Secondly, I think it would require a pretty significant investment from the county beyond what we’re already doing.

“And third, I really question whether the county should be in the business of operating a charter school. We’re the only local government in the state, as I understand it, that that holds a charter. I don’t see that as one of the essential functions of local government.”

Sitting in a classroom of her son’s school, visibly upset, Lisa Gentry said, “Pima should have come to the table and said, Okay, let’s figure the numbers. Can we cut the budget for the school, still keep the school floating, and do what we need to do instead of throwing a bunch of kids out of their school?”

The school was too far gone, Grijalva said, pointing out the decreased student average membership and annual per-student costs eclipsing $20,000.

Nearly half of the $600,000 the county was spending on PVHS was for IT costs, Fellows said. “We were required to utilize county IT hardware, software and telecommunications. The County allocated $295,000 of expense to the school annually in the past two years.”

Casey said that until recently, there was little communication between Pima County CWD and the school.

“On day one, if they asked us, What do we need to do for you? What do you guys need? That would be perfect,” he said. “This is what they said: This is what we will figure out how to help you.”

Some entities aren’t cut out for leading schools, Pima County School Superintendent, superintendent Dustin Williams says.

“Schools need 100% attention,” Williams said “To have a government entity delving into the education world, especially owning an actual school, it’s really, really hard to balance that because it needs so much attention. Pima County government has so many other responsibilities. That in all honesty, was probably not the best model.”

The school was on spring break last week when the board voted to drop its charter, so the teachers haven’t seen many of their students.

Pima County has promised to help find new schools for the students. The school’s teachers have been spending their spring break since the board of supervisors’ vote searching for schools, with or without any additional help from Pima County.

“We’d prefer not to have any interface at all,” Casey said. After all, the school’s staff are the ones who truly know the students, he said.

Following the supervisor’s decision, text messages bounced between PVHS students.

One student told her classmates: “I got a headache from crying too much and (a board member) had the nerve to say she gets how hard it is.”