Still, the institute can't authorize charter schools just anywhere. It only has that power in districts without "exclusive chartering authority," which, in 2011, are rare. Districts can apply to the state education board for the privilege, and it can be revoked if the board finds that a district is treating applicants unfairly. That was the case in 2006, when RFMA applied to become a school located within the boundaries of Adams 50.
In November 2006, the institute's board approved the school. Although boardmembers discussed some of the same concerns that had been expressed by Adams 50 and DPS, only one member, Dean Titterington, voted against it. His objections, though, had more to do with the school's intended focus on Mexican culture, its name and its plan to eschew holidays like Presidents' Day in favor of Mexican holidays.
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Marcos Martinez opened Ricardo Flores Magón Academy in 2007.
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Claudia Mitchell was fired from her job at the academy in 2009.
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But that focus is what attracted several of the school's first teachers.
Briana Johnson had just graduated from the University of Northern Colorado's Cumbres Program, which trains college students to teach non-English-speaking children living in poverty, when she was hired in May 2007 as a kindergarten teacher for RFMA's inaugural year. "What attracted me was that it was college-preparatory school for the Latino community," Johnson says. "I always wanted to work in a high-needs school, and I felt I could connect with them because of me being Latina also.
"But it was a mess."
At her job interview, Johnson says, Martinez asked her to go by her Mexican mother's maiden name, Andrade, and not her Anglo father's last name if she were hired. "He said the kids would connect with me more," she says. "After I agreed to it, I questioned myself. It hurt my dad's feelings a lot, too."
Other incidents in the first few weeks set off additional warning bells for Johnson. She says Martinez opened teacher paychecks before handing them out, explaining that he was checking to see if the amounts were correct. Teachers were expected to clean their own classrooms, and Johnson says the bathrooms were often trashed. One day, she says, Martinez told the kindergarten teachers that he was going to scare the kids into being tidier in the bathrooms by telling them there were cameras in there. (There weren't.) In addition, teachers were told they couldn't take sick days because there were no substitutes, Johnson says, and the school lunches, usually tamales or burritos from a nearby Mexican restaurant, were unhealthy and gave the students stomachaches.
On August 28, 2007, the school began three days of standardized testing to determine student academic levels. Several of Johnson's kindergarteners, many of whom spoke no English and didn't understand the test, were dozing off during the testing. Unsure of what to do, Johnson told Antonio Vigil, the school's director of curriculum, who approached one of the sleeping students. "He pulled the student's chair from under him and made him stand up for the remainder of test," she says. "He said he couldn't have his chair back until he could show he could stay awake. The student was four years old."
Vigil, who no longer works at RFMA, didn't return calls from Westword.
Johnson says she expressed concerns about that incident and others to Martinez and Vigil, and on August 31, they asked her to meet them in the conference room after school. "That's when they fired me," she says. Johnson says they told her it had nothing to do with her teaching ability or work ethic, and even offered to write her letters of recommendation. (They did; the letters, which Johnson provided, are glowing.) Instead, she says, "Marcos told me I wasn't a good fit for the school."
Johnson suspects she was fired because she spoke up. "The reason he wanted to hire young teachers was so he could take advantage of us, not knowing what a school is supposed to look like or how a principal is supposed to treat the teachers," she says. "He thinks he's a god. He thinks he's the king of the world."
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Johnson's experience isn't unique. Five other former teachers, some of whom worked at the school for several years, report similar behavior.
Susana Cabrera was hired in 2007, partly because she'd worked with Vigil, Martinez's second-in-command, at another charter school, KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy in Denver. She, too, was attracted by RFMA's focus on Latino students, but was quickly surprised by what she perceived as a lack of planning and procedures.
"There wasn't anything," she says. "It was just, 'Let's open up a school.'"
From the beginning, she says, the academy "wasn't very welcoming or very warm," a tone she says was set by Martinez and Vigil. "The teacher had to be the power and the authority." The students were called "Magonistas" after the followers of Ricardo Flores Magón, and whenever a teacher said the word "Flores," the students were expected to be quiet. Those who disobeyed were disciplined in front of the rest. "They would yell at kids and come down on them really hard," Cabrera says.
The administrators were hard on teachers, too, and the fact that several were fired that first year led to low morale, Cabrera says. "It made people feel insecure about what they were doing, and it made you feel like you were walking on eggshells," she says.
