New Covenant Charter School

NOTE: These battles consume hours and hours of court time and legal costs, all at the public's expense.
JUDGE DENIES SCHOOL'S REQUEST; NEW COVENANT LOSES EFFORT TO STOP CLOSING, BUT SEEKS ANOTHER COURT DATE, July 1, 2010, Times Union (Albany, NY)

ALBANY -- A state judge has denied an injunction to keep New Covenant Charter School from closing on July 31.
Teachers and parents hoped to keep the Arbor Hill charter school open until at least Sept. 24 by requesting the injunction from Supreme Court Justice Joseph Teresi on Wednesday. The group filed suit against the State University of New York and the Board of Regents, which oversee charter schools.
After arguments in the judge's chambers, Teresi denied the request, said attorney Peter Henner, who represented the parents and teachers group...

The attorney said his group was considering "all possible options."

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SUIT FIGHTS CHARTER SCHOOL'S CLOSING; SUPPORTERS ARE SEEKING AN INJUNCTION TO KEEP NEW COVENANT OPEN, June 29, 2010, Times Union (Albany, NY)

ALBANY -- Teachers and parents from New Covenant Charter School filed a lawsuit Monday to try to prevent the school's closing.
The parties will be in state Supreme Court on Wednesday to discuss whether an injunction should be granted renewing the school's charter for another five years. The suit was filed against the board of trustees of the state University of New York and the Board of Regents, both of whom oversee charter schools.
"They held New Covenant to an impossible standard," said Peter Henner, the attorney who filed the lawsuit. "New Covenant has done better than the Albany school district. They've had a tremendous turnaround in the last three years."
The lawsuit is being brought by the New Covenant Charter School Education Faculty Association and its president, Vanessa Volino, a teacher, and four parents: Gloria Nelligan, Bobbi Hyler, Kelly Brady and Maria Sifontes...

Henner said the SUNY board of trustees did not consider the improvement the school had made.
"They are doing as well as could be expected," he said. "They didn't give us credit for the really neat things New Covenant has done."
Sixty-seven percent of students taking the English Language Arts exam passed the test, he said. While that was a higher percentage than in Albany's public schools, he said, SUNY's board did not consider it good enough to allow the school to have its charter renewed. The trustees had set a goal of 75 percent of students passing the exam...

For two years in a row, SUNY's Charter Schools Institute had recommended the school be closed because it had not met academic benchmarks and because of its financial troubles. The Institute had noted that New Covenant's expenses outstripped revenues by $1,700 per student...

Bondholders of the school building stand to lose about $16 million when New Covenant is shuttered if the property remains vacant. Henner declined to confirm or deny whether bondholders are funding the lawsuit.

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SUNY TRUSTEES VOTE TO CLOSE NEW COVENANT CHARTER SCHOOL (Albany), March 23, 2010, SUNY News

New York City - The State University of New York Board of Trustees voted today to close the New Covenant Charter School located in Albany, New York at the end of the current school year.
Today’s decision marks the conclusion of a lengthy review process that included months of analysis by SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute, a community meeting at New Covenant, and two public sessions of the SUNY Trustees’ Charter Schools Committee. New Covenant will continue to operate until the last scheduled day of school, on or about June 21, 2010.
New Covenant Charter School was the second charter school to open in New York State in the fall of 1999. The school has had a difficult history, including an initial charter renewal in 2004 wherein the school was ordered to eliminate instruction in grades 7 and 8 due to low performance; a vote by the school’s own board of trustees to close the school due to fiscal instability in 2007; and two consecutive non-renewal recommendations by SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute. The school currently serves just over 600 students, the large majority of whom are residents of the City School District of Albany...

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NEW COVENANT CHARTER SCHOOL LIKELY CLOSURE - "SYMBOLIC" INDEED, February 24, 2010, The Chalkboard (New York Charter School Association)

The Albany Times Union today reported (here) on yesterday's vote by the SUNY Charter Schools Committee to close New Covenant Charter School at school year's end. This is likely to be reaffirmed and made final by the full SUNY Board next month…
The persistent problems for New Covenant have been lessons learned for SUNY as an authorizer and for charter school operators throughout Albany and statewide. Though SUNY couldn't bring itself for years to hold New Covenant properly accountable for what can only be described as a blind spot, it has held other schools accountable. Back in 1999, the mistakes made in the approval and opening of New Covenant--that is, it opened too quickly and too large--were subequently [sic] corrected. After 2000, SUNY never again allowed for either mistake to be made with charter school proposals. In addition, for years, Edison Schools, Inc. managed New Covenant and several other charters in New York. Today, Edison manages only one school, Harriet Tubman in the Bronx, and has no prospects for more charters in New York any time soon.

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CHARTER SCHOOL'S SUCCESS MAY NOT BE ENOUGH; NEW COVENANT HASN'T MET ACADEMIC TERMS, THOUGH TEST SCORES ARE MUCH BETTER, December 18, 2009, Times Union

ALBANY -- Years of academic improvement may not be enough to save the New Covenant Charter School.
Despite rapidly rising test scores, the school has not met all the academic terms of its last-ditch reprieve, according to a preliminary report from the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute. That could result in the institute recommending to the SUNY Board of Trustees that the school be closed when they vote next month.
School officials this week pointed to a marked improvement in student scores on the state's standardized English and math exams since Victory Schools Inc. took over the troubled institution in 2006…
When the institute recommended the school's closure last year, it cited a poor financial outlook. The school also carries a tremendous debt load of about $16 million on its building and equipment and has a pending lawsuit from previous operator, Edison Schools, seeking almost $3 million in unpaid management fees…
New Covenant was one of the state's first three publicly funded, privately run charter schools. It consistently has failed to meet required benchmarks for state standardized tests and has struggled to keep students…

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CHARTER SCHOOL'S PROBLEMS YIELD CAUTIONARY TALE, August 18, 2000, New York Times

When Gov. George E. Pataki visited the newly opened New Covenant Charter School in Albany last September, he lavished it with praise, proclaiming it a model of the kind of educational change he intended when he pushed a charter school bill through the State Legislature nine months earlier.
In the months after Mr. Pataki's visit, however, New Covenant descended into apparent chaos. Its fourth-graders scored among the lowest in the state on standardized English tests; the for-profit company overseeing the school's academic program resigned; two principals came and went, as did one-fourth of the school's 500 students.
Aaron Dare, founder of the school and president of the local Urban League chapter, whom Mr. Pataki hailed during his visit as ''a visionary,'' quit the New Covenant board after two state inquiries accused him and the school of multiple violations of state education law, including misappropriation of tax dollars.
Now, with three weeks to go before the scheduled start of the new school year, state regulators have threatened to revoke the school's charter, and it is uncertain when, or even if, New Covenant will open again...
That such a spectacular failure could occur practically in Mr. Pataki's backyard, at a school in which he took a close interest, speaks of the difficulties -- in oversight, administration and academic achievement -- in starting a charter school.
Some critics contend, however, that New Covenant's failures were not simply bad luck but rather a direct result of an unnecessary rush last year by Mr. Pataki, a vocal champion of charter schools, and his political appointees to open new schools without time for adequate planning and training. New Covenant received its initial approval a mere three months before it opened...

Last week, the board asked state authorities to allow Edison Schools in Manhattan, the country's largest for-profit operator of public schools, to replace Advantage Schools, an education company based in Boston, as manager of New Covenant's academic programs in the coming year...

Steven F. Wilson, the chief executive of Advantage Schools, said inadequate facilities were among the primary problems with the school. ''We knew our program couldn't successfully operate'' in the portable classrooms, Mr. Wilson said. In its application, the school's sponsors, including Mr. Dare, said that a new, permanent site would be ready in mid-February of this year.
By then, however, the Urban League was having financial difficulties that were beginning to weigh on New Covenant's operations. The school leased its temporary space from a for-profit subsidiary of the Urban League known as the Commons, and last year, the Commons was also in financial trouble. It had made a $2 million loan to a financial company for which it was constructing an office building, but in December, that company collapsed and was unable to pay back the loan. At the same time, an Albany construction company that had performed work on the trailers being used by the school was demanding payment.
According to an inquiry conducted for the SUNY trustees by Richard J. Bartlett, a lawyer in Glens Falls, N.Y., $89,000 in state education money that was supposed to be paid to Advantage was instead forwarded to the Albany construction company by Mr. Dare in December, on behalf of the Commons. Mr. Bartlett said the act violated Mr. Dare's financial responsibilities to the school.
Mr. Bartlett wrote in his report that while Mr. Dare's actions did not ''rise to the level of criminal conduct,'' Mr. Dare should resign from the school's board. Mr. Dare said yesterday that his departure was not related to Mr. Bartlett's report...
Edison has pledged more than $3 million toward the construction of a $10 million building for the school...