A group of students, parents, prospective teachers and administrators got together under the leadership of Sandra Mitchell Babino in an ambitious attempt to start a new school. It was claimed that by attending the Badosa Arts Academy, students could avoid the shortcomings of the Superior Unified School District.

The first staff members were hired on Aug. 26, the school opened Sept. 3, and by Oct 5 it was unravelling amidst charges and counter charges.

Several ex-employees complained of getting paid only once or twice, and others of not getting paid at all. The ones who actually got paid say that they did not receive pay stubs detailing the deductions for taxes and Medicare, although Sandra Babino said that the money was taken out.

Both sides agree that the financial viability for the school depended on the State of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account Program, which parents can use to attend religious and other private schools using a special debit card in the amount of 80 percent of what the local school district would receive from the state. Parents wanting to enroll their children were assisted with their applications for these debit cards.

However, the cards can be used only under certain conditions. Students can be residents of a Native American Reservation, and several long-established reservation schools benefit from their student’s cards. Kids in Superior would have to qualify on other grounds. The crucial way to qualify in Superior was for the student to have a disability or have attended a failing school.  The school would have to have had a D or F rating to be in that category. ( https://www.azed.gov/esa/eligibility-requirements/)

What the director of the new school, Sandra Babino, apparently did not realize is that the Superior School District was not rated as a whole, and although the High School received a D rating, the elementary school earned a B. Thus, none of the elementary students, who had been withdrawn from the John F. Kennedy Elementary school were qualified to use the card except for students with disabilities of whom there was at least one.

According to a group of aggrieved ex-employees, Babino promised jobs paying $2,600 to $2,800 month, and she actively recruited students, promising their parents that they would have to pay no tuition since state money would be used. An example of one admission application to the school mentions the amount of $5,000 a quarter but makes no mention of possible state money. As to the payroll, Babino counters that her employees knew that the proposed pay was completely contingent upon getting money from the state. She said this in e-mails and texts to employees who complained to her, and in a phone interview. She asserts that the ex-employees were fired for cause and says that Kim Magallanez “Started telling the parents problems that were not there, that they hadn’t got paid and all the teachers were leaving and the school was closing.”

According to her, this caused the parents of students who were actually eligible to pull their students out of the school.  No state money, no pay so the dissident teachers just hurt themselves. And she blamed the parents. “And of course because parents in this town don’t have a mind of their own, … they went by what she said. Instead of them coming to me and asking me if what they were told was true, they automatically believed what an ex-employee had told them who had been fired for giving out confidential information.” (She didn’t specify what information.) The former employees all insist that they did not leave good paying jobs to work for nothing if the state money did not come in. Several of them had students in the school and received invoices for tuition.

The school, meanwhile, sits silent with the large school bus in front. Babino blames the unpaid teachers and the parents, and insists that all would have been well if only the parents of high school and junior high students had remained at the school. According to Stephan Estatico, Superintendent of the Superior School District, 25 students have reentered his schools. They will be able to make up work they have missed since they were out of class so briefly at the beginning of the year. According to Sam Spavlinch, one of the unpaid teachers, parents are being dunned for tuition, even at their work-places for the tuition they were assured they would not have to pay.