El Milagro:
How children led one
school’s cultural evolution
Against all odds
and expectations,
Mueller Charter
School is a community
anchor, assuring its
predominantly Latino
families that there is
a reliable pathway
through which to
shepherd their children
as they navigate the
educational system.
8
Leadership
Many schools have a vision state-
ment or mantra they live by, and we do too.
But we also have a nickname: “El Milagro”
– the miracle.
From 1999 until the Academic Perfor-
mance Index was frozen in 2013, Mueller
Charter School experienced a 330-point
rise in the API, from 520 to 850. How-
ever, the truth – despite the nickname – is
that what has happened at Mueller is not
a miracle. The academic gains, and more
importantly, the dramatic transformation
of an otherwise typical little neighborhood
elementary school in western Chula Vista is
a product of twin elements of our organiza-
tional culture: our collective commitment to
the charter mission and an abiding faith in
what our students teach us about resiliency.
Mueller’s larger purpose as a conversion
charter school has never been ambigu-
ous: We intend to overcome the effects of
poverty on learning. And that matters in
our community, where 85 percent of our
students qualify for free or reduced-price
lunch, and where, from our vantage point
seven miles away from the border with Ti-
juana, families have been migrating for de-
cades in search of prosperity.
Mueller is one of California’s original
charter schools, No. 64, in fact. Housed on a
vintage 1950s-era campus, Mueller was built
when the southern region of San Diego was
in its nascent rise toward suburbia.
Like the sprawling city of Chula Vista
itself, with its constant, inexorable shift
toward the next newest housing develop-
ment, Mueller Charter S chool has evolved
too. Since 2000, we have grown from a K-6
elementary school serving 650 students, to
an independent, K-12 system serving 1,500
students on two campuses. We created
our own middle school in 2006 and then,
in 2014, founded Bayfront Charter High
School, half a mile away.
Against all odds and expectations, Muel-
ler is now a community anchor, assuring our
predominantly Latino families that there is
at least one reliable pathway through which
to shepherd their children as they navigate
the educational system.
Back in the spring of 2001, we revised our
original charter petition to crystallize our
mission: “to create the programs, strategies,
policies, and supports required to boost 90
percent of our children to grade level by the
end of each school year.” At the time, less
By Kevin W. Riley