This page is meant to serve as a reference place for information for
those of us trying to tell people what is really going on with Blue
Mountain. But everything here is public, and there is nothing that
can't be shared with anyone who is interested.
We had been asking people to contact the South Lane School Board. It
is not clear if there is any point to that at this stage.
The school board heard our appeal to reverse their 4-3 decision to
terminate Blue Mountain's contract on August 16th 2007.
In spite of the fact that I think we made a sound case that not only
had we fulfilled our contract, but even the violations they allege
don't justify termination, and in spite of the fact that Blue Mountain
has had a huge outpouring of community support, and in spite of the
fact that the chairman of the school board made a very fair motion
addressed at both reinstating our contract, and resolving the conflict
between the district and Blue Mountain, the school board voted exactly
as before and rejected our appeal completely.
The next step, which Blue Mountain has now pursued, is an
appeal to the state board of education. We were hopeful that if any
fair minded person who hasn't been involved in the school board's
decision looks at the evidence, they'll see that this contract
termination is unjustifiable. This turned out to be true, but has
taken a tremendous length of time, with a final
decision only reaching us on July 15th 2008 after putting in our
appeal in August of 2007. Of course we're happy with the content of
the final decision (if not with the timing) as it finds no merit in the
charges made in the district's termination decision.
During the 2007-08 school year, while the contract termination was
under appeal, we made a determined effort to address the issues
brought up by the school district (even though they were neither
contractual obligations nor did they merit termination). In other
words, we treated what had been brought up in the termination letter
as areas we would like to address, even though they were not part of
our contractual and legal obligations. At the end
of the school year we were able to show substantial progress in all
these areas. Nevertheless, on July 7, 2008 the South Lane School
Board refused to renew our contract. We are currently responding to
their refusal, and we hope to convince them in a meeting on August 18,
2008 of the merits of continuing to support Blue Mountain School.
Blue Mountain School has been following the law, and the terms of our
contract. All parties acknowledge that Blue Mountain has done great
things for our students. We hope that based on this we can reach a
reasonable agreement with the school district this summer. The
alternative, which is renewed legal appeals, is not one that we would
look forward to.
We will be opening in September 2008 regardless. We hope to be
opening in a contractual relationship with the district, and in a
renewed spirit of cooperation. If we are unable to reach such
agreement, we will be opening under appeal (once again) to the Oregon
Department of Education.
The complete story
about our original contract termination is cataloged in wearisome detail here.
If you are interested, everything you need to know is in the 8-13-07
BMS Lawyer to SLSD letter, and in the three parts of the evidence notebook.
This is Therese Nguyen's (parent and board member) email that she used to
ask her coworkers to consider Blue Mountain's petition. I think it
is a nice model.
From Megan MacCullen
(parent) to
South Lane Board members who voted to continue working with Blue Mountain..
From Megan
MacCullen (parent) to
South Lane Board members who voted to terminate Blue Mountain's contract.
The South Lane School Board is meeting on August 13, 3-7, and
then September 10, at 6pm. Anyone
can sign up for a three minute public comment session by arriving by
the beginning of the meeting and signing up on the sheet outside the
meeting room. The meetings are at the district office, 455 Adams St.
Letters to editor at Cottage Grove Sentinel: to submit a letter
to the editor electronically, you have to register at
their website. You can do that by
clicking on the "Contact" puzzle piece on the left hand column, and
then if you click on the "Letter to the editor" link you'll get
instructions on how to register and log into the site.
I assume you can submit a letter to the editor by mail by sending it
to Cottage Grove Sentinel, Letter to editor, PO Box 3, Cottage Grove,
Oregon, 97424.
Letters to editor at Register Guard: electronically to
rgletters@guardnet.com. They must be 250 words or less. By mail to
Mailbag, P.O. Box 10188, Eugene, OR, 97440-2188, or by fax to 338-2828.
Joe Hansen's email (he is the Sentinel reporter who seems to
write about education stuff): joe@cgsentinel.com.
Again, it would be great for Blue Mountain to have copies. So if
you are willing, email
me sadofsky@gmail.com
anything you send by email, and mail to the school a copy of
anything you send by ordinary mail!
Petition
Parents and students have been gathering signatures in Cottage Grove
on a petition to keep Blue Mountain open. If you _aren't_ in Cottage
Grove, we have an electronic version of the petition you can sign if
you are interested. It is an easier thing to do than writing a
letter, and there is space on the petition for a brief comment.
Petition
to support continued existence of Blue Mountain Charter School.
Laura Stine adds: "Members of the School Board and District
Administration want to impose a 19th Century educational model on an
innovative democratic school meeting the needs of students living in
the 21st Century."
The second (April 30, 2008) Proposed Final
Order. This has essentially the same findings of fact as the
first one, but the first Proposed Final Order found that Blue
Mountain had not substantially violated its contract, and yet
upheld the termination in spite of that! This Proposed Final
Order reverses the termination.
