In February 2011, after a decade of dismal performance, the New Millennium charter school in west Fresno turned to Dr. Ernie Smith for help...As he dug in, Smith said he was unprepared for the sheer level of dysfunction he encountered at New Millennium -- and the hands-off attitude of Fresno Unified...
The State Board of Education approved issuing a notice to Missouri Baptist University (MBU) that its authorization to sponsor charter schools will be reviewed in April...
MBU currently sponsors four charter schools in the St. Louis area with a total enrollment of nearly 4,200 students.
Academic performance at four of the six school buildings under MBU sponsorship ranks in the bottom five percent of all public schools in Missouri. Deficit spending and high administrative costs have raised concerns about the management and oversight of the schools...
MBU started sponsoring charter schools in the summer of 2006. Charters currently sponsored by the university are: Imagine Academy of Careers (grades K-12), Imagine Academy of Academic Success (grades K-8), Imagine Academy of Environmental Science and Math (grades K-8), and Carondelet Leadership Academy (grades K-6). Last December, the sponsor announced the Imagine Academy of Academic Success will close both its campuses at the end of the school year.
A charter school is trying to open in Norton and compete with Norton City Schools for its students and state money, even though the district is rated excellent and generally should be off-limits to charter schools opening within its borders.
The school for grades K-4 calls itself the Academy of Learning and first appeared under that name in Doylestown last fall.
The Academy of Learning appears to have enrolled about a dozen children whose parents withdrew them from the excellent-rated Chippewa school district and told district officials the children would be home-schooled...
The Academy of Learning spent much of the past year looking for a new home when its original sponsor, Liberty Local Schools near Youngstown, severed ties last year because of the charter school’s “dysfunctional organizational structure” and failure to maintain financial records required for a state audit...
On Feb. 7, 2011, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost wrote a letter to Obermiyer and Liberty Superintendent Stan Watson informing them that the condition of records the district provided for an audit of the 2009-10 school year were not adequate and the district was now considered “unauditable.” Missing documents included “bank reconciliations for the entire period” and “bank statements for July and August 2010.”...
On May 26, Yost declared Liberty Local Schools to be in fiscal watch...
Meanwhile, Carlile and Obermiyer had already launched a quest to keep the charter school going in some form...
They approached North Central Educational Service Center in Tiffin, southeast of Toledo, in the spring.
In May, the North Central ESC passed resolutions approving the hire of Carlile and Obermiyer and the sponsorship of a new conversion school to be called Just for Kids in Doylestown...
But before formal contracts were presented to the board for approval, Lahoski discovered the problems that Liberty had with the state auditor. He said neither Carlile nor Obermiyer had said anything about the financial situation at Liberty during their many conversations...
“Liberty informed us that it was non-renewing and terminating the two schools’ contracts. So based upon that, we notified all the relevant offices that funding should cease with the end of the fiscal year and that’s what happened, ” said Joni Hoffman, who directs the state office overseeing charter schools. “That’s when it started to get very confusing...
However, the Portage County ESC issued a notice on Sept. 30 that it intended to suspend its sponsorship for “failure to provide learning opportunities in a manner consistent with law” and because the school had enrolled fewer than 25 students and was using an “unauthorized facility.”
The building issue was discovered by the Chippewa Township fire chief when he responded to a squad call at the J.A.S. Building and discovered a school in operation. But the building hadn’t been approved for a school...
The Academy of Learning has never officially changed its name, so as far as Portage County ESC and the state are concerned, it’s still the LEARN school. Its sponsorship is suspended, which means it can receive no state or federal funding. It has no official students...
Seeking a glimpse into the increasingly secretive world of New Jersey education, the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the state Department of Education seeking the names of "volunteers" who reviewed 50 applications for new charter schools.
The ACLU filed suit on behalf of the Newark-based Education Law Center, a frequent legal opponent of the department. The dispute not only raises issues about public access to government records, but the department's unusual move of adding unidentified third parties to its regulatory process.
The suit and supporting documents are posted on-line here: http://www.aclu-nj.org/downloads/ELCvDOE030411.pdf
In response to an Open Public Records Act request from David Sciarra, the center's executive director, the department in December released the names of its own employees involved in the Christie Administration's push to open more charter schools.
But the department refused to release the names of volunteers and its correspondence with them, materials used in their training or a list of proposed charter schools whose applications were "prioritized for immediate review," according to the suit filed in Superior Court in Mercer County.
The department cited an OPRA exemption for advisory, consultative or deliberative material, according to the suit. Sciarra then asked for the materials under the common law right of access. The department released the list of schools, as well as heavily edited versions of the e-mails, but not the other material.
By not paying the unidentified "volunteers," the department has a potential defense that they are not "employees" under OPRA. But the ACLU suit said the department assigned them "substantive work performed on behalf of the State of New Jersey."…
The fight over the charter approval process follows the revelation that a company founded in May by Christopher Cerf, now the acting state education commissioner, received $500,000 for a report proposing massive changes in Newark schools.
The company, Global Education Advisors, received the money from private donations raised by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, whose prize so far has been $100 million for city schools from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The company's sweeping plan to close some district schools and consolidate others with charter schools followed a Zuckerberg-financed $1 million public outreach campaign, where it was not mentioned…
Meanwhile, tax documents filed by the Newark Charter School Fund showed that it spent more on consultants and internal compensation in 2008-9 than it gave out in direct grants to schools…
TRENTON — The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the state Department of Education today seeking the names of volunteers who reviewed 50 charter school applications and information about the training they received.
The ACLU is acting on behalf of the Education Law Center, a organization based in Newark that advocates for equal and adequate public education. The lawsuit was filed in Superior Court in Mercer County.
The lawsuit claims the department violated the Open Public Records Act by illegally withholding the identities of the unpaid volunteers, who help to determine which schools receive a charter and public funding.
Volunteers evaluate and score the applications, which outline plans for operating a semi-autonomous public school, according to the complaint.
In November, the law center filed a request for public information with the Department of Education seeking the names of those who reviewed the applications for charter schools hoping to open in September 2012.
The department provided the names of employees but redacted the names of volunteers and denied access to its training materials.
KALAMAZOO -- The sign outside Kalamazoo Advantage Academy reads: "Enrolling for fall," along with a phone number.
But inside the two-story building at the corner of Burdick and South streets, the heart of Kalamazoo's downtown, staffers and students are bitterly mulling the shutdown of the decade-old charter school, which serves about 270 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
Although summer school is in session for about 40 students, Advantage will not reopen this fall. Grand Valley State University has declined to renew the school's charter, and there's no other sponsor to be found.
GVSU maintains Advantage has long been a failing school, with faltering enrollment and low test scores, and says it is being a responsible charter authorizer in pulling the plug, now that its 10-year contract has expired.
But dig a little deeper and a more complicated story emerges, one that raises questions about GVSU's practices and procedures…
Advantage had its own data analysis done by Sharif Shakrani, co-director of MSU's Center for Education Policy. An expert in educational data, Shakrani is a former director of the design and analysis division of the National Center for Education Statistics and a deputy executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board.
Shakrani's report said Advantage performed "significantly lower" than similar schools in 2005-06. But in the past two school years, he says, the Advantage students have shown much stronger results. His report highlights the strong academic growth among students who have been at Advantage for more than a year, and concludes the school is doing an "admirable job" with a very high-risk population.
"I'd keep (the school) open," Shakrani said this week. "My analysis indicates they're making significant progress. ... Usually you would close a school when it's regressing, but this school is getting better, not worse."
Ed Richardson, head of GVSU's Charter School Office, said his office has "carefully reviewed" the analysis by Shakrani.
"Nothing in them makes us think that our decision not to renew the contract was incorrect," Richardson said in an e-mailed statement.
Policy questions
In two other areas of contention by Advantage, GVSU's Charter School Office seems to have different policies and practices than other charter-school offices in Michigan.
For instance, after putting Advantage on notice in November 2006, GVSU did not establish specific academic goals or targets for the school to work on to keep their charter…
But he said the Advantage situation points out what he sees as the biggest problem in the charter-school movement: The failure to establish clear goals and then hold a school accountable for meeting those goals.
From his standpoint, Advantage wasn't held accountable for years. Now GVSU may be forcing accountablity -- but without clear goals, it gives the appearance of acting arbitrarily.
"I want these closures to work well," Miron said. "If they don't work well, what does that say to other authorizers who need to do the same thing?"
Outsiders also express surprise that GVSU's Charter School Office could let Advantage's contract expire without a vote by the GVSU Board of Trustees.
The other five charter school authorizers said such a decision would have to go before their board…
"Contracts have a beginning date and an end date for good reason," McLogan said. "Possession of a charter agreement is not an entitlement to perpetual operation."
Others say that philosophy can lead to disrupting the lives of charter-school students and employees with little or no explanation.
Because of the state's cap on the number of charter contracts, schools that lose their contracts have limited ability to find another authorizer, which means nonrenewal of a charter becomes, in effect, an order to close. And why would anybody would want to risk starting a charter school if authorizers can just walk away at the end of a three- or five- or seven-year contract?...
McLogan says GVSU dropped the contract because they don't want to continue sponsorship of a school they see as failing.
Huth says she wonders if there might be another motive. She speculates GVSU might want to grant charters to more middle-class academies, which tend to be larger than urban charters and have much better test scores.
She notes that GVSU receives about $225 per student from its schools as an administrative fee -- the GVSU Charter School Office generated more than $3 million in revenues last year among its 30 academies -- which means larger schools offer much more profit…
St. Paul, Minn. — Dozens of charter schools in Minnesota are looking for new homes. Not physical homes, but homes with an 'authorizer.'
Having an authorizer, or sponsor, had been an almost mundane requirement for charter schools -- until this year, when the state started implementing a new law designed to make authorizers more accountable.
Since the law took effect, several authorizers have decided to get out of the charter business.
Authorizers don't run charter schools, but by law, charter schools have always needed an authorizer to open. Prompted in part by reports of fiscal mismanagement by some charter school administrators, the new law makes authorizers more accountable for the financial and academic performance of their schools.
Advocates widely praised the changes when passed, but many say they've since been surprised that the law has led many authorizers to end their relationships with charter schools…
The larger surprise for some advocates has been how many authorizers aren't even applying. More than a third of the state's 45 current authorizers say they're getting out.
Those departing authorizers include colleges and traditional public school districts that have been sponsors for years, including Hamline University, Century College and the Stillwater, Hopkins, Brooklyn Center, and Le Sueur-Henderson school districts. That has some advocates wondering what Minnesota's charter school system will look like after those organizations - some who have been involved with charter schools since the early days - are gone…
At this point, 35 charter schools (out of 147 statewide) must find new authorizers for next year, a number that could increase depending on who does or doesn't get the new state approval…
