Celebrated principal fired from charter
by Pat Kossan - Dec. 17, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

A nationally recognized charter-school principal who raised academic achievement at a small Phoenix high school and crusaded to help her immigrant students pay for college has lost her job.

Yvonne Watterson was fired last week as principal at Gateway Early College High School on the campus of Gateway Community College.

Susie Pulido, a college spokeswoman, said she could not comment on the decision by Gateway Community College President Eugene Giovannini.
"The success of our high school is certainly our priority and we'll continue business as usual," she said.

Teacher Lisa Smith was named acting principal.

The Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board, which must approve all hiring and firing, will take up Watterson's dismissal in January.

Watterson took over Gateway Early College High School in 2003, revamping the 200-student charter high school. Twenty percent more of the school's students passed the 2008 AIMS reading and math exam than passed in 2006. Watterson brought the early-college program to the school.

"I'm shocked," Watterson said. "Students need a source of stability in their lives, and for many of my students, that source of constancy was the little school I created."

Jose Leyba, a retired administrator for both the Maricopa County Community College District and the Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation, said Watterson had high expectations for students.

Leyba, who sits on the Gateway Early College High School Advisory Council, said the district's administration needs to stop and investigate the termination.

"It's very hard to find quality, great instructional leaders as principals," he said. "The students on the campus are the ones who are going to suffer."

In November 2006, Arizona voters passed a ballot measure denying in-state tuition to students who could not prove they were in the country legally. Suddenly, Watterson's school faced a bill of $86,000 to pay out-of-state tuition for college courses for 38 advanced high-school students who couldn't prove their citizenship.

Watterson pleaded for help, and people and corporations began donating money.

In January, she shared Phoenix's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Living the Dream Award with Rufus Glasper, chancellor of the Maricopa County Community College District.

In March, the New York Times ran a story about her crusade under the headline: "Principal Sees Injustice, and Picks a Fight With It."

Watterson suspects her activism could be to blame.

"Since I wasn't given a reason and because no one from the college administration ever helped me proactively with the plight of undocumented minors, it did cross my mind that it did have some bearing," she said. "But I'm still at a loss."

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