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Hope Co-Op's growth credited to failures of public schools

Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 19, 2007 at midnight

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Vita Martinez does not look back fondly on her years in Denver Public Schools.

"I went to Montbello (High School) and it was horrible," Martinez said.

By the time she dropped out in the late 1980s, she was several grades behind in reading.

"The teachers didn't take time to see if I had a learning disability," she recalls.

Sensing the same indifference toward her own four school-age children, Martinez yanked them from Denver schools last fall and enrolled them in the Hope Co-Op Online Learning Academy, a charter school that operates 79 learning centers in the state, mostly in the Denver area.

"I can't afford a private school, so Hope is the next best thing for me," Martinez said.

Hope is at the center of a major fight over online education. It was sharply criticized by state auditors in December for sloppy management practices.

Sen. Sue Windels, D-Arvada, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, will propose legislation this week to bring online schools under closer state regulation.

But behind Hope's burgeoning growth are parents frustrated by traditional schools that failed them and are doing no better with their own children.

"To me, when I was in school, the teachers really focused on kids that were more into their learning," says Rhonda Mays-Wallin, who graduated from Denver's George Washington High School in 1990. "They really didn't have the patience or the tolerance to deal with any kid that wasn't willing to learn."

Those students were simply promoted from grade to grade.

"The teachers, they just kept moving me along," she said. "I was even shocked when I graduated, to be honest with you."

Expectations for minority students were low, Mays-Wallin said.

"I think they felt like black kids didn't want to learn and we didn't want to accomplish and be nothing when we grew up," she said.

Mays-Wallin, an administrative worker at an imaging center, has three children at a Hope center in Denver.

She doesn't feel much loyalty to Denver schools. "It's kind of sad, but I don't," she said.

Denver Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet said he's aware of the problem.

"What we want to do is get kids back into our district, and we certainly understand we should be competitive," Bennet concedes.

Unique academic model

Two years after it opened, Hope enrolls more than 3,800 students.

The school is headquartered in Centennial, but operates under a charter issued by the Vilas school district in southeast Colorado.

Criticism has centered on whether the tiny Vilas district is able to adequately supervise the 79 distant learning centers.

The centers are primarily staffed by "mentors," rather than licensed teachers.

Students follow a curriculum provided by Vilas over the Internet, with one-on-one help from the mentors.

Some of the centers, however, devote more than half the school day to traditional instruction, including class discussion and reading from books.

That model is unique, said Lorenzo Trujillo, a University of Colorado assistant law school dean who chaired a panel that issued recommendations regarding online education last week. A national search turned up nothing like it, Trujillo said.

The Hope centers are managed by individuals or groups who function as subcontractors. The Hispanic group LARASA operates five centers, while the Urban League of Metropolitan Denver operates nine.

Word-of-mouth operation

Some of the centers are in suburban centers. But the largest block of students - 40 percent - attend centers in Denver.

Another 16 percent are enrolled in Aurora, Commerce City, Greeley and Westminster - school districts that share many of the same problems of poverty and low performance as Denver.

Hope last year solicited sponsors for learning centers. But those that opened this year are mostly grass-roots operations, driven by word of mouth, Hope officials say.

Ernest Williams, a retired northeast Denver day-care center operator, said he heard about Hope from a friend at the Park Hill Golf Course. He opened the E. Williams Center last fall in honor of his late wife, Terri Williams.

"She wanted to see the inner- city children with the same basic opportunities as did the children who were in the suburbs," Williams said. "She ached for those children who were in our public schools in oversized classrooms. There were poor teachers."

Williams said all of his five children went to Denver Public Schools.

"I do have a loyalty to them," he says of DPS. "(But) I think they should have been better."

The E. Williams Center meets in a former Baptist school in Park Hill. It enrolls 35 kids, including Vita Martinez's children.

Molly Martinez, 16, a sophomore, said the Hope mentors have more time for her than the teachers at Denver's Career Education Center, which she attended last year.

"In a big school, there's a lot going on," Molly Martinez said. "There are not enough teachers to focus on students."

Vita Martinez said the CEC teachers were quick to call her when Molly was misbehaving. Inquiries about about whether Molly was passing her subjects were met with assurances from teachers that everything was fine.

Turns out Molly was doing poorly.

"They weren't taking the extra step to be sure I knew how she was doing," Vita Martinez said of the teachers.

Terri Roston runs the E. Williams Center. Her background is in early childhood education. She previously worked at Ernest Williams' day-care center.

Among Roston's students are her son, Nathan, and a nephew, Lawrence Tate, 16.

Roston said she knew an alternative was needed for Lawrence, who was ditching classes at East High School.

"I felt I was very loyal to the school system," Roston said. "I was active in PTA. I participated in the school.

"But my loyalty is to my child."

Staff writer David Montero contributed to this report. or 303 954-5209