School board finds Vallejo charter network fixed issues that threatened status

VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Unified School District Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to release Griffin Technology Academies from a compliance agreement that required the charter school network to correct safety, maintenance and financial issues after district officials reported that it had sufficiently addressed their concerns.

The vote ended a compliance agreement that required Griffin’s four charter schools to address 19 conditions related to student health and safety, facilities maintenance and financial management that the district alleged were violations of the school’s charter and California law.

“This has been a very long process and journey for all sides,” school board Trustee John Fox said. “All the things that have been reported to us this past year are positive – from the horrible place that was a few years ago there has been a lot of change and transition in the right direction.”

Problems at Griffin first came to the district's attention in early 2021 because it was submitting inconsistent or late financial reports. Later that year, district officials inspected Griffin facilities in response to parent complaints and found dilapidated conditions at the schools, including mold growth in classrooms and insufficient protections against the spread of COVID-19 such as inoperable hygiene stations.

Vallejo charter schools operate independently from the public school district but the district has a supervisory role to assure that all students in the district receive an education that complies with California education codes.

In April 2022, after the district sent repeated notices to Griffin about their concerns, the board voted to begin the process to revoke Griffin’s charter status.

Griffin board chair Debbie Lamb said at the time that she lamented the manner in which the district approached the issue by sending repeated notices during the pandemic rather than engaging more collaboratively.

In June 2022 Griffin submitted a 179-page response to the district saying that it had addressed a majority of issues raised by the district.

In a meeting to review the charter’s progress that was described in the document, district Superintendent William Spalding said that one of the most egregious concerns was that the charter’s management had failed to respond immediately when mold was discovered in the classrooms. Griffin representatives said that changes in management plus issues related to COVID-19 had delayed their initial response to some of the issues but now improved procedures are in place.

The school district determined that although Griffin had made some progress, there were still a number of outstanding issues. The district and the charter network agreed to pause the charter revocation process and enter into a compliance agreement that would allow the charter additional time to remedy the remaining concerns.

The compliance agreement allowed Griffin a year to address 19 outstanding conditions. According to Spalding, key issues were facilities repairs and fully staffing the maintenance department to prevent buildings from falling into disrepair again as well as an overhaul of the schools fiscal procedures and to conduct training for the board and senior level administration on California open meeting law.

Spalding said that although district officials had not found any specific misappropriation of funds, they had found a number of vulnerabilities in Griffin’s accounting practices that could allow money intended for student education to be misused.

In the two-and-a-half years since the district first notified Griffin about its reporting deficiencies, the charter network has been through three superintendents. The most recent departure was Robert Martinez, who was hired in July 2021 but resigned less than a year later. Board members suggested that many of the problems in addressing the district’s more serious concerns stemmed from Martinez’s poor leadership.

However, in the process of creating a transition team to replace Martinez, the district alleged that the charter board violated California’s Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law, which requires local legislative bodies to make decisions in public.

Superintendent Nick Driver, who was selected by the transition team, worked with the district on addressing the 19 conditions throughout the past year. At Wednesday’s meeting, he thanked the school board, Spalding and district staff for putting in time to support the schools in meeting the terms of the agreement.

In an interview with the Vallejo Sun, Driver said that Assistant Superintendent Mitchell Romao inspected the facilities every other month, walked through the campus classroom by classroom, and methodically pointed out deficiencies. But towards the end, Driver said that Romao began to point out successes and remarked on how transformed the campus was.

“It has not been an easy journey but it has been a successful one,” Driver said at Wednesday's meeting. “You’ve held our feet to the fire. You’ve held us accountable and we have become a better set of schools.”