General Counsel Marquez Leaving SFUSD and More Info on Excelsior MS’ Move (edit this)
Insiders within the administration report that Miguel Marquez, the Chief General Counsel is leaving SFUSD.
Marquez became Chief General Counsel with the departure of David Campos who is working on his supervisorial campaign. Marquez was the author of the controversial memo that censured the Citizen Advisory Committee for Special Education’s newsletter.
Marquez reportedly also advised the BOE to keep the action of “merging” Excelsior Middle School with International Studies Academy and moving Leadership Charter High School to Denman in closed board sessions. without parents’ input. Under a state-funded agency, the Board of Education is under the Brown Act. The Brown Act states that only personnel manners can be discussed and voted on during a closed board meeting.
Details have arose that the new “merged school” will be called International Studies Academy and will be created as 6th-12th school. (In other words, the schools will not be merged, since ISA will retain its name and campus. Excelsior loses its campus, its name and its identify.)
Again, Excelsior Middle School has 240 students and is located at the former Luther Burbank Middle School in the Excelsior. It is at the foot of the Sunnyvale Housing Project.
As noted in an earlier post, parents were informed two days before spring break and six weeks after Round 1 of the student assignments that the school was “merging” with ISA in August.
The District announced that Excelsior Middle School students will get an additional week in Round 2 (till the end of this week) to ask for a reassignment to another school.
According to CA Dept. of Education, the 2006-07 ethnic breakdown of Excelsior Middle School was:
Asian 25 (10.5%)
Pacific Islander 9 (3.8%)
Filipino 18 (7.6%)
Latino 45 (18.9%)
African American 70 (29.4%)
White 7 (2.9%)
Multiple or No Response 61 (25.9%)
Total Enrollment-238
API Score for Excelsior
Schoolwide 606 (2007)
Schoolwide 609 (2008)
African American 562 (Drop of 37 points)
Latino 601 (Increase of 23 Points)
Socioeconomically Disadvantaged 595 (Increase of 12 points)
Comparison with the nearest middle school, Visitacion Valley Middle School, here is the enrollment figures:
Asian American 206 (53.4%)
Pacific Island 25 (6.5%)
Filipino 41 (10.9%)
Latino 40 (10.4%)
African American 52 (13.5%)
White 4 (1.0%)
Multiple or No Response-17 (4.4%)
Total Enrollment-386
Schoolwide 666 (2007)
Schoolwide 661 (2006)
African American 504 (Increase of 15 points)
Asian American 793 (Drop of 14 points)
SEI 670 (No growth or drop)
English Language Learners 706 (Increase of 3 points)
Visitacion Valley Middle School did not have enough Latino students for a separate subgroup API Score.
March 31st, 2008 at 9:38 pm e
If the decision to “merge” Excelsior MS with ISA was made in closed session, in violation of the Brown Act, does that mean that the decision must be reopened in a regular BOE session with proper notice to the public? It seems that having Marquez step down doesn’t undo the fiasco.
March 31st, 2008 at 10:42 pm e
The General Counsel only advises the Board of Education. Ultimately, it is the President of the Board and the other members of the Board who make the decision to “merge” a school or inconvenience a school by moving another one into their space. And the Board appears to have done it with forethought and planning-ergo, the announcement was made while four of the members were in Israel.
There are only two wasy that the BOE would decide to revisit the decision-1) if there was a picket of parents and outcry, that forced them to reconsider the decision and/or 2) there was a lawsuit filed against them on the violations of the Brown Act.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:51 pm e
Somewhere I read that Prop. 39 allows those decisions about locating charter schools to be made behind closed doors. I don’t know anything more, so just tossing this out.
Just a correction — Excelsior MS (sharing a site with June Jordan High School) isn’t adjacent to the Sunnydale projects. It’s about a mile away, across part of McLaren Park and really in a different neighborhood (the Excelsior). Vis Valley Middle School is closer, and Vis Valley Elementary is closest, so maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm e
Acutally, Viz Valley is located at the edge of McLaren Park. On the north and east side of the building is McLaren Park. On the west side of the building is an assisted living facility. The street is south of the building. Sunnyvale is some distance away from Viz Valley to the east of Viz Valley Middle School.
Excelsior is located at the former Luther Burbank Middle School Building-the south side of the building. It is located on a hill-again surrounded by McLaren Park, except for its south side. The south side has homes and a bus stop.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm e
It’s Sunnydale, not Sunnyvale, and not an important point. Just that Vis Valley MS is closer to the Sunnydale projects than Excelsior MS is, and the projects aren’t at the foot of, or adjacent to, Excelsior MS. It does seem likely that a lot of Sunnydale students feed into Excelsior MS, based on its high African-American population.