New Charter School Rejected

An application to open a new charter school in Temecula was rejected.

The voted unanimously to reject the charter application for the Center for Innovation on Tuesday.

The center currently runs as a program within Julien Charter School, though the teachers and founder of the program, Sue Miller Hurst, want to break away and form a separate school.

"We want to align the vision (of the program) all the way through (the school)," Miller Hurst said after the meeting Tuesday.

Miller Hurst got the report recommending the rejection last week, she said. "When I received this report, I was shocked," she told the Board of Trustees during the meeting. "It felt condescending. I felt it was mocking me. It was full of inaccuracies."

To read the report, click on the PDF file attached to this story.

The report cites as a central reason for the rejection Miller Hurst's role in the failure of a charter school in Bonsall.

She had nothing to do with the failure, Miller Hurst told the board. "They (the school's board) created the financial issues that defeated that charter," she said.

Last month, parents and teachers crowded the board room to . The board room was equally crowded Tuesday, though the mood was more hostile.

Audience members groaned and grumbled loudly as the board and staff members discussed the charter. At one point, an audience member ranted at the board, causing a school official to briefly stop the meeting to ask him to stop.

One board member said he saw no point in granting a charter to a program that was already running successfully. "My biggest concern is that they already exist," Trustee Vince O'Neal said. "Why would this district want to destroy a school that exists in another district?"

After the trustees rejected the charter, the room filled with angry chatter as the audience filed out of the room. One man shouted, "Shame on all of you," as he walked away.

The audience gathered outside the board room to talk about the decision.

"I'm super upset. I have two children in the school," said Alissa Barrera, a mother of a fourth grader and a kindergartener. "We're going to do whatever it takes to stay in the program."

The rejection comes in the wake of the failure of another charter, .

after being open for only a few months, leaving the district with the financial burden of educating the students for the rest of the year.

The recent debacle clouded the board's judgement, Miller Hurst said. "I think they might be gun-shy," she said. "I feel like they wrote this as though I were the other director (of Context)."

Many of the teachers in the crowd said they plan to leave Julien Charter School after the year ends because the director, Jennifer Cauzza, creates a "toxic environment."