How AZ Imagine Schools deal with the school board issue

by David Safier
This is one of a series of posts, Peeking into Charter Schools. If you have information you wish to contribute, you can post comments or email me: safier@schooltales.net.

I just posted about an email from Imagine Schools' CEO which says, basically: We own the schools. The school boards either should do what we say or resign.

How do Arizona Imagine Schools deal with that problem? Do the individual schools' boards (a) assert their authority, or (b) give in to the dictates of the higher level directors?

The answer is, none of the above. The schools apparently don't have their own local boards.

I called the front offices of three Imagine Schools: Imagine at Camelback, West Gilbert Charter and Bell Canyon Charter. All of them said they have PTOs and the West Gilbert charter said it has a site council, but none has a board made up of local parents and community members.

Going back to the 990 forms they file with the IRS as non profits, I found that Camelback and West Gilbert have the same 4 people listed as "Current Officers, Directors, Trustees and Key Employees." They fulfill the same function at a number of other Imagine schools. Bell Canyon has 5 people listed (one is also on the list of the other 2 schools), and this group also serves in the same capacity at other Imagine Schools.

So the closest thing to a "board" for the schools is a group of people that oversees a number of schools with no direct relationship with the individual school or the community. Within the schools, there are groups of parents who can make suggestions but have no real power.

I guess Arizona is a dream state for charter owners like Dennis Bakke who don't want the locals interfering with the way the corporation runs the schools it "owns" — even though a for profit corporation can't "own" a non profit school. That may be one reason why Arizona, unlike other states, has heard so few complaints about the schools.