County Education Officials Set to Hear Menifee Prep's Appeal of Charter Denial

Administrators of Temecula Preparatory School who are seeking to start a new charter school in Menifee that would be modeled after Temecula Prep are scheduled to bring their case before the Riverside County Board of Education on Wednesday, according to a news release.

The hearing follows the Menifee Union School District’s August denial of Heritage Classical Charter Schools’ petition to open Menifee Valley Preparatory School. The proceeding is so that faculty of Heritage Classical Charter Schools can present their appeal of MUSD’s denial, a preliminary step in garnering approval from RCOE instead.

Click here to read about Menifee Union’s denial of the petition.

The appeal hearing is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Wednesday in the boardroom on the fourth floor of the Riverside County Office of Education at 3939 Thirteenth Street in Riverside.

Denee Burns, director of development and public relations for Heritage Classical Charter Schools—the umbrella charter for both Temecula Prep and Menifee Valley Prep—said plans are to present RCOE with a comprehensive description of its program, which she said is directly modeled after the successful Temecula Prep.

Pending approval from RCOE, Menifee Valley Prep would be a K-8 public, non-profit, tuition-free charter school that “maintains high levels of excellence in education due to its robust curriculum based on a classical model and founded in virtue,” Burns said.

Menifee Valley Prep has an active following on Facebook, she said, and has received 190 preliminary applications. There are 307 parents who have subscribed to its email distribution list, she added.

Burns noted that several local elected officials have sent letters in support of Menifee Valley Prep. According to Burns, letters were received from: Assemblywoman Marie Waldron, R-Escondido; Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore; Riverside County Third District Supervisor Jeff Stone; Riverside County First District Supervisor Kevin Jeffries; Riverside County Fifth District Supervisor Marion Ashley; and Menifee Mayor Scott Mann.

The headmaster for Heritage Classical Charter Schools, Scott Phillips, stated that he is “humbled and grateful for the opportunity to present our appeal to the RCOE Board of Directors.”

“We have a solid program and a strong core team going into it so I have full confidence that we can make MVPS as successful as Temecula Prep,” Phillips said. “As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ‘Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.’ This is what we hope to achieve with Menifee Valley Preparatory School. We’re overwhelmed and excited by the amount of support that we’ve received from the community of Menifee and local, elected officials.”