Revoke Santiago’s Charter? Let’s Not

Maybe I’m slow, but I’m not connecting the dots in the Orange Unified School District. Sweeping in with a vengeance befitting Olympian gods, district officials want to revoke the 10-year-old charter of Santiago Middle School in the wake of a teacher-student sex scandal that broke earlier this month.

Let me hasten to say I strongly disapprove of teachers having sex with students and sending them salacious e-mails, as is alleged of 28-year-old Sarah Bench-Salorio. She’s charged with having sex with two of her male students in relationships that lasted, respectively, 16 months and four months. One boy was 12 when his alleged relationship began, the other, 13.

If true, teacher gets an F in behavior. She may also get a prison sentence.

The district is aghast. Not to mention embarrassed. Not to mention worried about protecting its legal hindquarters.

So in classic bureaucratic overreaction, it has moved quickly to revoke Santiago’s charter, arguing that its administrators fumbled the ball when alerted to danger signs about Bench-Salorio.

I’m not here to argue the district’s bill of particulars against Santiago’s administration. But even if the administration was asleep at the switch -- and I don’t know if it was -- I don’t get the connection to revoking the charter. It makes sense only if Santiago were a runaway freight train, acting recklessly because of its autonomy.

If so, we haven’t seen the evidence. In 1999, Santiago won California Distinguished School status. Last week, parents showed up at a trustees’ meeting to show support.

A school district report claims that Santiago “has violated its charter, the state law and the trust of the district staff.” In essence, the report blames Santiago administrators for not heeding warning signals about Bench-Salorio.

The report strikes me as grossly overwrought. Santiago hasn’t chronically misappropriated money. Or devised a crackpot curriculum. Or run some kind of perverse sex ring out of the teacher’s lounge.

What happened could happen at any school, to any administrator. Even if everything the district alleges is true, it’s describing a lapse in administrative judgment. That might warrant sanctions, but why strip an entire school of its uniqueness over it?

Santiago wouldn’t close. Losing its charter simply means it would be rewrapped into the district fold. Hardly a death sentence, but still unnecessary.

I won’t belabor my cynicism, but the district’s high-minded report noted that the school district “may be subject to liability for failure to prevent further injuries by expeditious revocation of the charter.”

That’s lawyer talk for “cover your butt.”

Celinda York is a lawyer and mother of a Santiago seventh-grader. In a letter to Principal Mary Henry, she wrote, “Parents are willing to go to bat to retain Santiago’s charter.”

York isn’t convinced the district is legally required to revoke the charter. Nor does she think it should. “This is a phenomenal school,” she told me last week. Santiago is her son’s third school in the district. “The moment we walked through the door it was clear this school was head and shoulders above the other schools in the district,” York said. “It’s an extremely well-run school.”

York isn’t convinced any Santiago administrators did anything to warrant disciplinary action. At most, she said, they should adopt procedures to heighten awareness “that this kind of thing is out there” and how to prevent it.

School districts hate scandals and like to appear decisive in quelling them.

Out-of-control school? Threat to children’s well-being?

Where? I sure don’t see it at Santiago.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.