By Macy Meinhardt, V&V Staff, CA Local News Fellow
For the former eighth-grade teacher, the memory of walking away from her job at Harriet Tubman Village Charter School is painful, even four years later.
“I left abruptly, at three o’clock,” she said, referring to the final day at the school in April 2021. “I had a conversation with the kids. They cried. I cried.”
Like others interviewed for this story, the former teacher asked not to be identified by name out of fear of retaliation.
She is not alone. Her resignation is part of a trend of leadership problems and toxic work conditions alleged at the La Mesa school for years. Between 2021 and 2024, Voice & Viewpoint identified 80 teachers and staff who either resigned or were let go, an alarming turnover for a school with a current total workforce of 75 employees.
In addition to high teacher turnover, test scores have dropped far below district standards. More recently, parents reported that thousands of dollars went missing from the school’s fundraising committee, and the school has not had a permanent principal since August 2024.
The parents’ perspectives on school concerns are reported in part one of this series, available online.
In March 2023, the school made headlines after an active shooter school drill – involving gunshots and screams audible through staff walkie-talkies – traumatizing some staff and students.
At the staff level, the troubles continue, according to a series of interviews by Voice & Viewpoint with former and current school employees.
One former counselor, who resigned at the school in 2021, believes the “inappropriate behavior” she witnessed in the workplace would never be tolerated at a normal public school, “but it exists here because there are no checks and balances,” she said.
Officials at Harriet Tubman did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.
In an email statement, the director of San Diego Unified Charter School Office, Deidre Walsh, acknowledged the district’s role as the school’s authorizer but maintained that Harriet Tubman operates independently and is responsible for handling concerns regarding workplace issues.
“Each charter school has its own leadership and governing board that are responsible for the operations of the school,” said Walsh.
On paper versus reality
Unlike public schools, which are managed by a regional school district, charter schools are authorized by a district or a county board of education, but are independently operated and can have more flexibility in their governance and curriculum choices.
This means the charter governing board has decision-making authority over the charter school’s academics, finances, governance, and operations, including charter school staff.
According to the California Department of Education, charter schools are provided a method to change from a “rules-based” accountability system to one measured by “pupil outcomes” and “performance-based” results. Charters must fulfill measured outcomes listed in their charter agreement; if found out of compliance, the charter can be revoked or rejected for renewal.
In Harriet Tubman’s agreement with San Diego Unified, the school commits to moral excellence, pledging respect, compassion, high expectations and a belief in everyone’s ability to learn.
However, former and current staff described a stark contrast between the school’s stated values versus reality. They report a toxic work environment, attributed to a culture of division and fear, particularly affecting teachers of color.
Fifteen employees resigned from the school in 2021, based on personnel reports listed in the school board agendas. Aubrey McDonald, a first-grade teacher at the school for seven years, was a part of that number.
McDonald was hired shortly before the 2015 school year started.
“Things were already a mess when I arrived,” she recalled.
Within a year and a half, Tubman’s governance board had fired three different principals: Lidia Scinkski, Jefferey Moore, and Barney Wilson. When McDonald joined the school, Wilson was principal, but he remained in the role for only four months.
The district intervened in response. In a letter sent to Tubman’s governance board in June 2015, the district cited a “systemic failure of the leadership,” and recommended a series of changes to the board’s authority structure and bylaws.
After Wilson was fired, the school had three more stand-in principals before they finally landed on Ryan Woodard in 2017.
“I had five principals within three years of working there,” said McDonald.
However, McDonald and several other former employees interviewed for this story claimed their departures directly resulted from Woodard’s actions during his tenure.
“There was not a lot of accountability, even with Ryan, but also before Ryan, people were not held accountable for things that they should have been held accountable for,” said McDonald.
According to the school’s former counselor, she said the red flags on Woodard emerged soon after she was hired.
During a tour of the school, she said Woodard pointed to a teacher and said, “She’s great, but she’s crazy. Stay away from her.”
As the school year progressed, Woodward would regularly text and call her during off-hours about work-related issues.
“I felt like he kind of made you feel like if you are not on call, 24/7, or if you’re asking to be fairly compensated, then you don’t care about the kids,” the former counselor said.
She also claims that she witnessed routine verbal abuse during administrative meetings.
“He was always demeaning us,” she said. “He was always yelling at us, blaming us for the enrollment numbers, or for why the rest of the staff was leaving.”
Woodard did not respond to interview requests for this story, including to comment on allegations against him.
Over time, this would manifest into fear in the workplace, according to current and former staff members.
“Slowly, I became fearful of these admin meetings,” said the former counselor, “I would always have severe anxiety going into them because it was like, what are we going to get yelled at for, blamed for, and accused of this time?”
She began to document her experiences, archiving text messages from Woodard, emails, letters, and other written accounts she felt crossed professional boundaries. In one instance, in 2021, she wrote how “in the middle of my sentence, Woodard leaned towards me and placed his hand in my face and told me to ‘stop talking’ and proceeded to give his opinion on the situation and then gestured me back when I was allowed to talk again.”
She also documented witnessing verbal abuse directed at other employees. In 2021, the former counselor wrote that Woodard, in response to an employee seeking clarification about a school matter, yelled, “Whose name is at the bottom of your check? Whose signs your check?”
She says that she did not submit a formal complaint after these incidents out of fear of retaliation.
“If you spoke out against certain people, and this happened to me, then you were ignored, or you were put on what we would consider a ‘blacklist’ because that isn’t what Ryan [Woodard] wanted,” said a former human relations manager at Harriet Tubman who requested anonymity to characterize the school’s management.
Retaliation, the formal official said, would be reflected in denied opportunities, such as promotions, and being excluded from certain activities and meetings.
“I remember crying going to work in the car because I just didn’t know how I ended up in a school like this,” said the former counselor, who states that she at one point wanted to end her career as an educator.
Voice & Viewpoint also spoke with an employee who recently resigned in July 2024.
Noticing similar unethical and discriminatory treatment displayed by Woodard and other employees, the former cheer coach made multiple attempts to seek accountability through Harriet Tubman’s school board.
In one letter to the board in 2023, six months before resigning, she wrote: “At Tubman, I do not feel safe; emotionally, mentally, and physically.”
She said she never got a response from the board and is unaware of any action taken to resolve her complaints. Harriet Tubman’s governance board did not respond to an interview request about the matter.
Last August, Woodard resigned. The board appointed Laura Vivar as the interim principal.
A current employee, who also requested anonymity, said that despite Woodard’s departure, there are still large system-wide changes that need to be implemented, specifically in the overhaul of the school governing board and ensuring that the school’s leadership reflects the demographics of the community it serves.
“We still struggle,” the employee shared.
As detailed in part one, some parents agree.
“As badly as we want to be there for them. If the environment was better, we would never have left those kids,” one teacher said.
