2009 was a tough year for the Cesar Chavez Network of charter schools. First their founders, Lawrence and Annette Hernandez, came under fire for how much they were being paid. A few months later, one of the networks schools in Colorado Springs was forced to close for financial reasons. In September, Lawrence Hernandez caused a scene at the Pueblo Mall when he fired the administrator of the GOAL Academy, and locked the school’s doors. In November an audit of the networks CSAP testing showed they gave extreme amounts of extra time to a majority of their students, but the company conducting the audit claims it was not cheating because the extra time did not give the students and advantage. Currently, a financial and organizational audit is being conducted of the network to see if anything illegal has occurred. Now, one more event is changing things up within the organization.

Thursday, two of the schools in the network were shaken yet again as the board president for Cesar Chavez Academy and Deloris Huerta Preparatory High resigned his position.

Dennis Feuerstein has been a board member for the network for nearly all of it's 10 year existence. For about eight of those years he was board president. Feuerstein has come under intense scrutiny and fire from community members since the firing of the Hernandez couple. Concerns of misconduct and conflicts of interest have been raised by community members and the media. In order to remove the schools from the quagmire of negative press surrounding him, Feuerstein stepped down from his position and will leave the board effective February 12.

The resignation, however, does not mean Feuerstein plans to stop working for the school. He says he will continue to drum up financial support for the school network through private investors. Feuerstein says, his decision was partially to keep any conflicts of interest from corrupting the work he is doing in this way.

This puts board Vice President Donielle Gonzales in the drivers seat, a responsibility she admits she never wanted. Gonzales first joined the board in 2003 and has served as its secretary, treasurer, VP and now President.

After a special meeting was called on September 25, 2009 to decide whether or not to fire the Lawrence and Annette Hernandez and another administrator, several parents called for the resignations of Feuerstein, Gonzales, and board secretary Alex Aragon. Gonzales chalked the requests up to a misunderstanding of actions the board felt it had to take.

She says, any parents who want to come to the board meetings are welcome to, and that they are looking at changing the time the meetings are held from 11:30 in the morning to sometime later in the day.

In the meantime, both CCA and DHPH boards continue to have vacant seats. Those seats may be filled shortly as the board has recently received several letters of interest for the positions. Still, boardmembers say, those applications will be scrutinized so that the best people for the positions will get them.

It appears that the network board is following through on promises made to District 60 in regards to changes and their ability to maintain an open dialogue between the boards. This bodes well for the charter schools and if things continue along the current path, the results of the pending audit, if negative, may be blunted because of this.

Regardless, Cesar Chavez Academy is up for its charter renewal with District 60 next year. Thursday morning it was made clear that the renewal process has changed, and that they will have to apply to the district as if they were a new charter. They will also be expected to change a few things in regards to how the CCA boards are set up, by including term limits and even adding a Pueblo City Schools appointed board member.