Hostile takeover at North Star Charter School

by David Safier
I've held off on telling this story for awhile because some of the details are sketchy. Also, I usually like to be able to say, "The moral of the story is . . ." but in this case, I'm not quite sure what that moral is. The story itself is so compelling, though, that I'll give an incomplete narrative of the events with the idea that I can fill in more details and analysis later.

The information below is based on a long phone conversation with Kurt Huzar and email conversations with his wife Nancy (who has created a website about the incidents), police reports, an eye witness report and a description of the situation by the Department of Education's Charter School Board.

North Star Charter High School in Phoenix had a 3 member board until January of this year, when 2 of the members, Aldine Dickens and Kurt Huzar, voted to remove the third, Donovan Ziegler. Kurt Huzar was President of the School Board and Director of the school.

Then, in late April, Dickens and Ziegler (remember, Ziegler had been removed from the board) decided to schedule a board meeting at the school without consulting Huzar. Without Huzar's OK, the legality of that meeting is questionable, to say the least. Most likely, it could not be considered an official board meeting.

On the day of the scheduled meeting, Dickens and Ziegler came to the school while it was in session and students were present, along with 4 security guards. One of the guards wore a gun onto school grounds, which is a serious violation for someone who is not a police officer. When the guard was called on this, he apparently put the gun in his
car, which was probably still a violation because the car was parked
close to the school.

The guards were hired by Dickens and Ziegler, apparently to allow their "board meeting" to proceed without being disrupted by Huzar. Two of the guards barred the door where Dickens and Ziegler held the meeting. Huzar pushed his way in and voiced his objections to the meeting. By meeting's end, Dickens and Ziegler had voted Huzar out and fired the school's Director of Education and Director of Security.

Somewhere in the midst of this, the police were called, twice. They monitored the situation but did nothing, saying it was a civil, not a criminal matter. However, they did say that no one should change the locks on the school or do anything to the computers.

Huzar told me that Dickens and Ziegler brought a locksmith and a technology expert with them, and they went ahead and changed the school locks and worked on the computers, changing passwords to deny Huzar access. (Huzar says there are videos of their actions, which I haven't seen).

The upshot of all this was, Dickens and Ziegler had control of the school. According to Huzar, while there were somewhere in the area of 175 students enrolled in the school, very few showed up for the rest of the year. He said the school was staffed, basically, by one teacher and a receptionist.

Huzar described North Star Charter as a high school whose population is mainly students who have struggled in school and were in danger of dropping out. He gave me a picture of a school where much of the curriculum is computer based, the students work at their own pace, and there is a flexible schedule so students can attend during morning, afternoon, or evening hours until about 8pm. This kind of setup is not unusual when you're trying to teach students who have difficulty working in traditional school situations.

At the end of the school year, many of the students hadn't completed enough classwork to get credit, and many seniors lacked the coursework necessary to graduate. According to Huzar, none of these problems would have occurred if the school had remained under his directorship.

In June, Huzar regained control of North Star. According to Huzar, he put things back in order, and the school year is starting with students enrolled and attending school. He's stressed but hopeful things will get back to the way they were before the April takeover.

The story has other twists and turns including strange tales about the school bank account with $93,000 in it and the monthly funds the school was supposed to receive from the state, but I won't try to go into those complications here.

As I said at the beginning of the post, I can't tell you the "moral" of this story, because I don't know enough about the school's history or the internal politics that led to these strange events. But I know the students were put in jeopardy by the actual takeover and its consequences, and that's bad. I'm also concerned that the Charter School Board knew about the takeover and allowed things to fester for two months, to the students' detriment. I haven't talked to Dickens, Ziegler or the Charter School Board to get their take on this, so I don't know their view of the events.

The wonderful thing about a blog is, anyone who knows more — or anyone who believes I have the facts wrong — can use the Comments section to add to the record, and I can add more information in later posts. If anyone wants to contact me directly, you can email me at safier@schooltales.net.