Schools Chief Admits Gateway Has Operated Improperly

Admitting that Gateway Community School has operated improperly since 1990, Ventura County Schools Supt. Charles Weis said Tuesday that administrators will bring Gateway into compliance with state law and will avoid paying back up to $8 million in education funding.

“Changes happened in 1990 and our program didn’t change to keep up with that,” Weis said during a report to the county board of education.

Since 1990, the state has required that the Camarillo school offer students classroom study for about four hours a day, five days a week. Students can take independent study only when the student, parent and teacher deem it the best option, said Wendy Larner, county board president.

According to the state Department of Education, all students at Gateway have been enrolled in independent study classes. Independent study means that the students need not go to school every day; some at Gateway were required to be there only two hours a week, Larner said.

Weis said that classroom study will be offered as early as September.

Gateway has taken state funds earmarked for such classes and used them to provide non-academic courses on such topics as parenthood and pregnancy, Larner said. The school educates truants, teen-age mothers, juveniles on probation and expelled students.

Susie Lange, a spokeswoman with the state Department of Education, said the state is reviewing the issue. State officials have notified Weis by letter that “should this review conclude that the Ventura County Office of Education has received state funds to which it was not entitled by law, we will work with your office to seek mutually agreeable repayment terms.”

Although the letter does not disclose the amount of state funds in question, Weis said it could be up to $8 million. Larner said the school may have misappropriated the funds by not telling the state that it offered no daily classes.

Weis has notified the state that the school did not willfully violate the law and that it will correct the problem. “We are optimistic that there will be no repayment because it was an obscure part of the law,” Weis said.

In a related matter, Weis denied 19 of 23 recent allegations that his office has improperly used state funds intended to educate troubled youths at Gateway and in court schools.

Weis said his own internal investigation found no evidence to support charges that county schools did not provide adequate bilingual education for Spanish-speaking students and that the system shifted money targeted for the court schools to Gateway. The allegations were brought by former teachers in the court schools, which educate youths incarcerated in Juvenile Hall and at Gateway.

Weis told board members that the only charges found to be true are that the schools failed to treat drug and alcohol addiction and failed to eliminate a waiting list for entrance to Gateway.

Weis also admitted that staffing of the court schools is inadequate in some cases. He has directed his staff to address all the problems that came up in the 90-page investigative report. Weis said it is time to move on with making those changes.

“We have learned there are some areas for improvement as a result of this, and we will take action to do that,” Weis said.

Larner said that she would withhold her comments on Weis’ investigation until state agencies and the federal Office for Civil Rights complete their investigations. “I do think they were exaggerated allegations, but I do think there were some problems,” Larner said.

Christina Lima is a Times staff writer and Catherine Saillant is a correspondent.