New Charter School Asks for School Board Approval

A new school focused on keeping the children of migrant farmworkers in school and on a path to college or a career wants to open in Watsonville in August.

Pajaro Preparatory Academy submitted its charter petition to the Pajaro Valley Unified School District on Feb. 22 and Wednesday night presented its plan to the board of trustees.

“Our vision is providing our students with the chance, the option, the hope to go to college, and that’s really what's in our hearts motivating us," said Mitch Barlas, a teacher and school leader who founded Connected Schools, the organization that proposes the new school.

Pajaro Prep would join six other charter schools in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. In February, the school board extended the charter for the newest charter program, , for five more years, despite concerns that charter schools draw students—and funding—away from mainstream public schools.

Pajaro Preparatory Academy would serve students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade, beginning with two 27-student classes of kindergartners and first-graders in August. Barlas said the school would take a holistic approach to learning to include social and emotional instruction, creativity and skills training.

The charter school would use a dual-language model of instruction, using students' dominant language to reach literacy, Barlas said. The model has been successful in other areas, including New York state and the Southwest.

Barlas said they want to help students who are struggling—"the kids that are underachieving, that have something blocking them, that need extra, specialized services.”

The school would operate a long school day—8 a.m. to 4 p.m.—even for kindergartners, and have a longer school year, with 190 classroom days. It also plans to provide comprehensive services to families, such as food service, transportation and a collaborative parent-children learning environment.

A handful of educators and parents spoke in favor of the new program.

Ann Lopez, a lifelong educator, author of The Farmworkers' Journey, said the program “has tremendous potential" for children of laborers.

“Right now, the way the system’s set up, they really don’t have a chance and they fall through the cracks and repeat their parents’ lifestyle," she said, explaining that farmerworkers tell their kids to be educated so they can get out of field work.

Chris Edwards, a recent UC Santa Cruz graduate interested in education in Santa Cruz County and working with the Pajaro Preparatory Academy, read a letter from Arturo Sandoval, a migrant strawberry picker and father of three young children.

Sandoval and his family live in the Buena Vista migrant camp. He wrote that he thinks the school's curriculum would be good for his children, because they would learn in both English and Spanish, and start thinking about college from a young age.

“I want my kids to have more than we have now," Sandoval wrote in Spanish. "I want them to go to college and have a good job and a good family and a good life.”

Barlas said his organization has launched a capital campaign to raise funds for a school building and other start-up costs. The school is looking at two sites: one downtown and one at the county fairgrounds.

The board of trustees will consider the proposal, which came in a 3-inch-thick binder, and make a decision later in the spring.