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Feud brews over charter school
By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer CRYSTAL RIVER -- As Citrus County's only charter school completes its first three-year contract with the school district and negotiates a new pact, a battle royal has erupted concerning who is really in charge. School administrators, legal counsel and the board representative for the Academy of Environmental Science have been negotiating for several months to finalize the new school charter. But a conflict escalated this week as the school's teacher in charge, Lisa Merritt, accused the school district of violating the existing charter and state law. "In my opinion, the academy has been too cooperative with the CCSB (Citrus County School Board) administration by allowing them more control of the academy than is necessary by Florida law," Merritt wrote in a memo dated Wednesday to her board. "Please protect the academy and its staff by putting a stop to this and keep our contract legal." Merritt voiced concern that she has been left out of the loop on school operational information, ranging from visits by the public that she didn't know about to not being involved in the expulsion of an academy student. Merritt also said that the district has violated the charter agreement by changing the supervisory structure without consulting the academy's board. Superintendent David Hickey on Thursday said he knew nothing about Merritt's memo or concerns. He said he would need to hear details from the academy board before he could comment. "This whole thing has escalated the question of what the district wants to do with the charter school," said Bob Gill, chairman of the academy's board. "It's a question that really wasn't out there before. . . . "The whole concept of a charter school is to be independent, unfettered," he said. "The whole concept is to try new things, do better, but once you start putting the chains on you simply become another Crystal River High School, Citrus High or Lecanto High." Gill said the academy wants to work things out with the school district but that the control questions are troubling. "There appears that there is quite a bit of smoke, but I can't tell you how much fire there is," he said. Many of the concerns were precipitated by a recent change in supervisory rules for the academy. The school was sponsored by the school district. The staff works for the Citrus County schools and the students come from the county's three high schools. But while some school policies apply, Gill noted that the day-to-day operations are left to the academy's board of directors. Originally the academy was to be run by a teaching administrator, but the person chosen for that job left after a short time and Merritt took over as the teacher in charge. The charter contract states that a principal from a feeder school will serve as supervising administrator; until earlier this school year, that person was the Crystal River High School principal. Then longtime Marine Science Station supervisor Pat Purcell retired and Hugh Adkins was selected to take that job on Feb. 1. School officials, who for months have tried to build a closer relationship between the station and the academy, changed the job description. Adkins was to oversee the academy. Then the real issues began to surface. In her memo, Merritt said that Hickey told Adkins and other school officials that Adkins was now the principal at the academy and was in charge of the charter school. Officials then gave Adkins access to academy student records and a key to the facility. In a separate memo to her board also dated Wednesday, Merritt urged the board to avoid adding any language to the new contract to further tie the academy to school district policies. On Thursday, Merritt said she had not meant for her memos to be discussed publicly until her board meets again Wednesday. "All I know is that I have a lot of kids who want to be here next year," she said. "I don't want to jeopardize the school." Gill said the details of just who holds what job are really the crux of the entire debate. He said he did not know how the board would react to Merritt's memos or the opinion she expressed in them. "It's all fairly complex," he said. Since Merritt and the other staff at the academy are school district employees, they are subject to the policies of the district. The charter school contract states that the employees are subject to district's human resources policies without getting more specific, Gill said. "At the time that was fairly innocuous but under the current circumstances, it takes on a whole new meaning," he said. As far as school district policies, the charter school is obligated to follow some but establish some of its own, Gill explained. Student discipline issues track the school district's rules while the charter established its own dress code which fits better with an educational program in which students spend significant time in boats and in swamps. Of the current controversy, he said none of the issues are deal killers. "We're all feeling our way along," Gill said. "When you're blindfolded and you're feeling along, you're going to run into sticker bushes now and then."
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