The next year, morale sunk even lower after another teacher, Monica Mendez, returned from three weeks of maternity leave. In an affidavit filed as part of Mitchell's lawsuit, Mendez wrote that she asked the school for a fourth week of leave to give her time to heal from a C-section. The school refused the request, however, and threatened to fire her if she didn't return immediately, she wrote. Once she was back at school, Mendez claims, Martinez and Vigil didn't allow her time to pump her breast milk, explaining that she was a "tough woman" and they didn't want to "enable" her. "It was clear to me that Marcos and Antonio believed that mothers with infant children were 'too weak' to teach at the school," Mendez wrote in her statement.
In May of that year, Mendez was informed that her contract wouldn't be renewed, and she filed an EEOC complaint. She declined to speak to Westword due to a settlement agreement with RFMA that cost the school $45,000.
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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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Another teacher who began working there in the fall of 2008 says she was fired for being tardy on a single day at the end of the school year. She says she explained to Martinez that she'd been stuck in traffic resulting from an accident on the highway, and she even brought photos of the wreck to prove it. But she says Martinez insisted her tardiness was because she and several other teachers had gone out for drinks the night before with Mendez, who'd just been fired. When the teacher tried to say that wasn't the reason, she says Martinez got angrier. "He said, 'That's it! This is your last day!'"
Cabrera herself was fired the next year after she declined to continue tutoring students until 6 p.m. She says she told Martinez that the students were so tired that the tutoring wasn't helping. "He took that as very unprofessional and very rude," Cabrera says, "and his explanation to me when he fired me was, 'If I say black, you say white. We just don't understand each other anymore, and we should cut our losses.'"
Tennis instructor Victoria Veniegas says she was fired over a dispute about student grades. Veniegas had given several children C's, "figuring they could work up to something better." But Martinez and Vigil called her into the office and implied that the grades should be higher, she says. "I told them, 'I'm not changing my grades,'" Veniegas says. "They told me, 'Well, then, your services are no longer needed here.'"
Parents also had complaints. Sarah Griego claims her son was kicked out of the school when, two weeks before the end of the year, she told Martinez he'd been accepted at another charter and wouldn't be returning the following year. Griego, a former parent-teacher organization member who volunteered at the school several days a week, says she saw too many unnerving things to keep her son there, including administrators screaming at children and affording the students little to no recess time and a limited number of bathroom breaks. "Marcos is a tyrant," Griego says. "If you do not agree with Marcos, if you're not on the same page, he has no interest in speaking with you.... It's 'my way or the highway.'"
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In addition to teachers' stories, Westword uncovered other complaints and criticisms.
Also in the Charter School Institute's file on the school:
* A memorandum of understanding chastising RFMA for not telling the institute that it planned to change the location of its school, a requirement listed in its charter;
* A letter ordering RFMA to display the American flag, which it must do by law, after an institute representative visited the school and found none;
* An e-mail to RFMA's board of directors detailing complaints the institute heard from a former staffer, including that the individual special-education plans for students were copied and pasted rather than tailored to each student, that low-performing students were "counseled out" of the school so they wouldn't drag down CSAP scores, and that Martinez checked CSAP answers and coached students on the test;
* A letter asking the board to look into allegations from a parent that Martinez is unprofessional and "that the children at the school are suffering psychologically due to verbal abuse and harsh punishments directed at students";
* A 2011 report from the Colorado Department of Education noting that although the school has taken some steps to address staff burnout, such as starting an internship program so prospective teachers can get a feel for what it's like to work there, most remain "for a span of less than a month to two years"; that the students "receive limited exposure to American history"; and that the use of Che Guevara, whose picture "is present in many classrooms and the office of the Head of School," as a role model "is inappropriate."
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Martinez acknowledges that the environment at Ricardo Flores Magón Academy, which is officially registered as a non-profit organization, is different than at other schools, but he denies that the culture is harsh, preferring to call it "focused."
"To work here is almost like you are on a mission," he says. "I like to tell people working here is not necessarily a career. You're looking at working here more as a vocation. There's a lot we do here because we believe in the mission, and the people that work here understand that when you come here, you full-out give everything you've got for these kids. And it's worked."
