ATLANTA-Atlanta Community Schools fueled a longstanding controversy when it decided on Thursday to defy a directive from the Michigan Department of Education to sign an agreement to provide necessary special education services, which an investigation by the state claimed the school had previously failed to do, and submit proof of compliance with state regulations. According to a letter from the DOE, the school will be penalized with deductions in state or federal funding, or both, from its monthly state aid checks.
Board President Janette Sarkozi disagreed with the state's allegation that students were not getting necessary services, despite refusing the automatic renewal of its contract with Alpena-Montmorency-Atlanta Educational Service District, and defended the credentials of the school's psychiatrist and social worker contracted from Munson Home Services, which the state deemed inadequate.
"That's a clinical psychologist, which is way above an educational psychologist, so he's very well-qualified as an educational psychologist," she said. "In fact, he is used as the second opinion for Traverse Bay Intermediate School District."
Atlanta resident Chad Brown expressed concern with the school's decision to defy the state, criticized its lack of results, and said the school failed to adequately explain why it refused to renew the contract when it seemed to suit Alpena, Alcona, and Hillman just fine. He and other parents compiled a list of 10 concerns about the school board and superintendent's recent decisions, and he said his son was not receiving an adequate education.
"If our school was operating at 100 percent level and above and beyond all state averages, I'd say, 'Okay, I trust you. Make this happen,' but it's not," he said. "On top of our normal students failing ... it was three months until my son got speech therapy, and they still have a speech psychologist and a school social worker that don't even have the qualifying credentials set by the state."
After its contract with AMA expired on June 30, the school filed a lawsuit against AMA when the ISD's special education staff didn't show up for duty on the first day of school in August. Sarkozi alleged that state law required AMA to provide services with or without a contract.
"What we did is we made a motion as a board to cancel the automatic renewal on last year's contract ... and then the contract expired" she said. "We were actively seeking to negotiate a different contract throughout that time, so when they decided they weren't coming here ... we expected to be able to sign an agreement that both sides could agree to. We did not know they were not coming until day one of the school year."
AMA ESD Superintendent Brian Wilmot called Sarkozi's statement about attempting to negotiate "a lie."
"The only communication we received in June from them is a letter informing our board that they had taken action not to automatically renew the annual authorization with us. They gave us no reason why, not one word as to anything they were dissatisfied with, or anything at all giving us any impression they had any issues," he said. "It wasn't until our board of education made a trip out to Atlanta in August that we finally heard what could be considered some dissatisfactions."
He agreed with the part of the school's non-renewal letter from June 7 that said the absence of a contract would not absolve AMA or the school from their responsibilities to provide special education services, but said that after the contract expired, the majority of the responsibility laid with the school.
"Two of the most preeminent school law firms in the state have offered opinions on that, including Atlanta's own attorneys, and now the state of Michigan has said that three times to them, and they've defied the state three times," he said.
While she declined to go into specifics due to the ongoing lawsuit, Superintendent Teresea Stauffer said she had issues with the contract a year before because under her administration, the school had taken on "a different structure."
"Because I was the first superintendent in this school that didn't have another principal, another special ed director, another layer of people in between, I see firsthand what happens with our kids. None of the other school districts have that same situation ... so they're not hands-on with their kids," she said. "They don't see the issues."
Brown wondered why, if Stauffer was so concerned with the AMA contract, she had only attended six of the 34 AMA superintendents meetings since 2008, as opposed to the 29 or more attended by superintendents from the other districts. Wilmot asked a similar question and said Stauffer and the board's criticisms of the contract were extremely inconsistent because they were a smokescreen for wanting AMA's millage money.
"Unfortunately, and I say that sincerely, Atlanta chooses not to participate in those meetings," he said. "Since Superintendent Stauffer did not attend my special education director subgroup, we sent her a copy of it ... with a note that said, 'If you have any questions or concerns, please give me a call.' Never heard one word from her about any concerns or anything that she didn't like in the document."
One thing Wilmot, Brown, Stauffer, and Sarkozi all agreed upon was that students should come before politics.
"That's why we're standing firm ... We're teaching our kids how important school is, and their education is, and they're getting it, and they're paying attention, and they're focused, and that's really the exciting part of what's going on in Atlanta," said Sarkozi. "The rest of it is all a distraction from our mission, and it's very disturbing."
Wilmot said the school would do right by students to recognize its failures so it can correct them.
"The board of education in Atlanta and the superintendent in Atlanta have put this issue ahead of the best interests of their students," he said. "Regardless of what Superintendent Stauffer or Board President Sarkozi say, the services the kids are getting are not up to par and are not meeting the needs of the kids, based on what the parents of those kids are saying to us at AMA, calling us nearly every day for the last couple months."
Andrew Westrope can be reached via e-mail at awestrope@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5693.