Embattled Santa Fe charter school Academy for Technology and the Classics seems to have hit another stumbling block today after a controversial item was kept off the agenda.
ATC Parent Kathleen King asked ATC Parent Teacher Student Council president Shari Griswold in early September to put an item on tonight's PTSC agenda for discussion—the request that the current PTSC executive committee (including Griswold) resign. Griswold tells SFR that she told King it couldn't be fit into the agenda; the item doesn't appear on the agenda posted online.
"Our terms are up in the spring, and we do have a couple of positions open now and that was explained to her," Griswold says. "There's no mandate to have a midterm election."
A separate body, the ATC Governing Council, did resign in June after the May resignation of former ATC leader Ed Woodd. Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said at that time that she expected the executive committee to resign too, says ATC parent and former ATC office manager Tammy Espinosa.
"My impression is [the executive committee thinks] they've exposed all these things about our school and they've done no wrong," Espinosa says. "They look at themselves as the watchdogs for the school when they don't know what's going on."
Griswold says there was no recommendation in an SFPS investigative report on ATC for the executive committee to resign. But the report also didn't recommend that all of the Governing Council and office staff who did resign do so.
"I don't see how any of that has to do with the PTSC," Griswold says. "The governing council resigned because they voted to suspend the charter, and once you suspend the charter there is no such thing as a governing council."
Espinosa says the executive committee thinks Woodd was sabotaged. Woodd caused a stir by hiring math teacher Jay Quintana, who had been accused of molesting a Robertson High School teen, after failing to do a background check. The SFPS investigation of ATC found it was mismanageing other functions besides human resources, including finances.
"My personal opinion is [the executive committee] would be in heaven if they were able to get Ed Woodd back," Espinosa says.
Griswold doesn't state an opinion on Woodd but counters that if anyone is clinging to the past, it's Espinosa.
"Ed Wood is gone and we're doing our work—he has nothing to do with the school at this point...people who aren't happy with the work we're doing are not looking at work we're doing this year—they're still focused on the events of last spring," Griswold says.
King declined to comment before tonight's meeting. The meeting will be held at 6 pm tonight at the ATC campus, 74 A Van Nu Po Road.
