Smith Leadership Academy

“Charters chool’s layoffs raise ire.” The Boston Globe (MA), 3/12/2012

Several parents at a Dorchester charter school are calling for the ouster of the executive director and the chairman of the school’s trustees, following a firestorm over the layoffs of the principal and five other employees...

“We don’t want Smith Leadership Academy to close,’’ said Ayesha Moore, whose son is in the eighth grade. “We want the people who are ruining it to leave.’’

But Karmala Sherwood, the academy’s executive director, said the school had to lay off the employees, mostly administrators, to remedy an unexpected budget shortfall of more than $100,000. Fewer students enrolled than anticipated, cutting into per-pupil aid, which averages about $10,000 per student...

But the turmoil at Smith Leadership Academy shows that charter schools are not immune to the same kinds of budgetary problems and academic challenges that can afflict traditional public schools.

Students at Smith Leadership Academy, where math and science are taught in single-gender classes, often score lower than Boston public school students on the MCAS, and the state has labeled the academy for restructuring to fix persistently low scores. For instance, fewer than half the students scored proficient or higher on last spring’s MCAS exams.

In May 2011, a state review revealed a number of problems with instruction, saying that too many teachers failed to challenge students - relying too heavily on lectures and worksheets - and that the school lacks a coherent curriculum.

Spirit of Knowledge Charter School

“Charter school’s founder resigns; Parents tell of many concerns.” Telegram & Gazette (MA), 6/12/11

WORCESTER —  The founder of the city’s newest charter school has submitted her resignation, the second time she has parted ways with a school she created.

Julia Sigalovsky, executive director of the Spirit of Knowledge Charter School, submitted her resignation Friday, effective July 10, according to Richard Langevin, chairman of the school’s board of trustees. The resignation came just before the board was due to meet and discuss her evaluation, he said.

Parents said yesterday that the school had not lived up to its academic promises and that their children had felt bullied by staff. Shawn Yates of Worcester, who with his wife, Tess, leads the school’s Parent Action Team, said he hopes Ms. Sigalovsky’s resignation will be “a positive change.” The couple has not decided whether their daughters will return in the fall and will be looking for changes in how the school communicates and collaborates with families. He said the small class sizes, interactive learning and enrichments promised had not been fulfilled.

Maydee Morales of Worcester pulled her daughter out of the school before April vacation. “She was having anxiety attacks,” Ms. Morales said. “It wasn’t that the work was hard, because they can all do the work.” She said she had expected advanced curriculum and encouragement for her daughter to go to college, and instead found staff members skeptical of her daughter’s ability to get there.

“It was not tough love. They were not encouraging,” Ms. Morales said. “They actually put a lot of kids down.”

She and two other parents are writing a letter to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which granted the school its charter, to inform them of their concerns, which include mistreatment and safety issues...

Possibility Prep Public Charter School

“Possibility Prep charter school staves off imminent shutdown: State toreview appeal by Upper Marlboro boys’ program slated for closure.” The Gazette (MD) 28 Jun 2011 

Possibility Prep Public Charter School officials said Tuesday that they’ve gotten a stay of execution, after lawyers struck a tentative deal to hold off revoking the embattled school’s charter until the Maryland State Department of Education can review an appeal by the school.

Officials and parents had been stunned Monday night after the Prince George’s County Board of Education voted to close the county’s only all-boys middle school at the end of its first year.

The board voted 6-1 to revoke the Upper Marlboro school’s charter agreement, after schools Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. highlighted the issues of enrollment and the science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum, which he called deficient...

Board Member Henry P. Armwood Jr. (Dist. 7) said that while the board supports the concept of a STEM-focused school, such an undertaking cannot afford to suffer from the upheaval Possibility Prep experienced during the first half of the school year. Many parents pulled their students out of the school, and the school’s first principal left in December...

Teresa Gerchman, vice president for educational services at Edison Learning, the school’s management company, said Board Member Rosalind A. Johnson’s (Dist. 1) statement that the county had to provide computer hardware to the school because Edison didn’t was outright false...

Imani Elementary Charter Academy

TROUBLED IMANI CHARTER SCHOOL COULD CLOSE NEXT WEEK; May 3, 2011; Orlando Sentinel (FL) 

Parents of students at Imani Elementary Charter Academy in Orlando may have to find new classrooms for their children with less than a month left in the school year.

The Orange County School Board is set to vote Tuesday on a recommendation to close the school, which didn't have computers for seven months, racked up more than $400,000 in debt and switched most of its teaching staff, administration and governance midway through the year…

Clara Bailem, whose daughter is among Imani's 73 students, said no one at the school had informed her that closure might be imminent. Although the school has been a major disappointment to her, she said the School Board shouldn't close it in May.

"If they let it go this far, let it go a few more weeks. They should have done it in January, gave the students a chance to settle in" to a new school, she said.

Key textbooks were missing from many classrooms for months and a state grant worth about $160,000 was misallocated. So far, the school has gotten $604,545 in taxpayer money. If it stays open for the rest of the school year, that will increase to $692,082…

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SHUT ORANGE CHARTER SCHOOL NOW, ITS EX-TEACHERS URGE; February 5, 2011; Orlando Sentinel (FL) 

Imani Elementary Charter Academy promised parents a model school when it opened in one of Orange County's poorest neighborhoods in August.

The Pine Hills K-through-5 school said it would have the latest technology, field trips, bus service, before- and after-school care, and two adults in every classroom.

It has none of these things.

The troubled school underscores the limits of Florida's charter-school law, which strips away many of the accountability requirements faced by other public schools. Even when charter schools appear to have broken the law or failed their students, they have multiple chances to improve or appeal, a process that can stretch for months or longer.

Six months into the school year, there are no computers at Imani. Textbooks are still missing from some classes.

The 88 students, most of them poor and African-American, play in a dirt-and-grass courtyard. There is no physical-education teacher.

They make art with shoe boxes their teachers bring from home. And the school is not offering the extra help for English-language learners and special-education students that is required by law, Orange school officials and former teachers say.

On Thursday, students sat down to eat cheese-pizza slices from Papa John's for lunch, as they do most days. They'd had breakfast bars and juice in the morning, paid for by a benefactor.

Orange County Public Schools stopped providing food there because Imani didn't have a valid health permit until Friday and still owes thousands of dollars for previous meals.

The state also cut off the school's grant funding because it misappropriated $160,000 earmarked for computers, school-district officials said…

At the end of last week, Orange County Public Schools sent Imani a notice that it had 90 days to clear up a litany of legal, educational and managerial problems or face closure.

According to the letter, the school must document and provide a repayment plan for the $160,000 meant for computers that was misappropriated from a state charter-school-planning grant, more than $90,000 in payroll taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service, and unpaid bills of more than $22,000 for rental facilities and food service.

It also must provide missing documents, including fingerprinting, background checks and proof of state training for all board members; proof of employment contracts and more.

 Finally, the school must provide proof of a viable instructional program. That includes copies of teacher certifications; a list of textbooks and other curriculum materials; evidence of compliance with class-size rules; and a master schedule that includes physical education, reading interventions for low performers, special-education services and accommodations for English learners…

Imani's registered agent and president is Barry E. Daly, husband of Principal Daly.

Florida's charter-school law prohibits owners and governing-board members from hiring or advocating the hiring of their family members. Barry Daly would not comment about his role in the school…

As the school was preparing to reopen, former staffers said they were called back in to interview with two new advisers, Ardonnis and Richelle Lumpkin. They also were asked to fill out a survey listing their minimum salary requirements.

Lumpkin is principal of two South Florida charter schools and runs several education-related companies. He also has a record with several misdemeanor convictions, including third-degree theft to deprive in the early 1990s and two DUIs…

Academia Avance

"Critics assail director of L.A. charter." Los Angeles Times (CA), 9/25/2007 

A Highland Park charter school is facing allegations of financial impropriety, gross mismanagement and academic shortcomings from a group of former employees and parents who formerly enrolled their children at the school…

The story of an embattled charter school facing the school board and the court of public opinion has emerged several times in the last year. Nearly all such schools have survived, whether the issue was low test scores, admission practices, questionable accounting or an unorthodox curriculum. Charters are independently run schools that are free from some regulations that govern traditional schools.

Chicago Preparatory Charter School

CHARTER SCHOOL FAILS THE TEST, SHUTS DOORS, January 17, 1999, Chicago Sun-Times (IL)

Chicago Preparatory Charter School was conceived with lofty goals, by an official with Mayor Daley's Office of Substance Abuse Policy, for a needy student population - recovering drug and alcohol abusers.

And yet, marijuana smoking was common in washrooms, students were allowed "therapeutic" cigarette breaks, and reading scores were the worst in the city, former students and Chicago public school officials say.

After 1 1/2 years, Chicago Prep has become the first city charter school to shut its doors. Left in its wake are unpaid bills, dozens of displaced students and angry parents. As students scramble to find new high schools in midyear, some of their parents question whether Chicago's experiment in charter schools needs more supervision. Others wonder how the school could have ever hired a former Chicago public school principal who had been fired for alleged ghost payrolling...

As one of 11 city charter schools operating this school year, Chicago Prep received $290,000 in taxpayer funds and functioned free of most state and union rules in exchange for a "charter" promising certain results. However, the school still has not produced an audit due Nov. 1 under its charter, never paid into the teacher pension fund as required by law, has not paid its teachers since November, and never secured its planned location, said Greg Richmond, the Chicago Board of Education's charter school point man.

Record keeping for some programs ranged from a "confusing mess" to "non-existent," Richmond said...

Even Chicago Prep board member and spokesman Jim Fair did not know the amount of the school's debt, but said the school hopes to reopen this fall. Fair said he was unaware that the principal, Judith Riggins, had been fired from the Chicago Board of Education in 1995 following allegations that, while principal of Fuller Elementary, she placed her son on the payroll even though he did no work.

Although Riggins said she had merely paid her son for work several months after he did it, a state hearing officer ruled there was "no valid documentation" that the son had ever performed the work. The hearing officer found Riggins had twice submitted falsified records - including once under subpoena - that stated the work had been done at a time when her son had actually been away at college. The hearing officer called Fuller's record keeping "substandard" and Riggin's offense "irremediable."

Since Chicago Prep's closure, Riggins has become director of Chicago College Preparatory High School, 2314 E. 83rd St., school material indicates. She did not return phone calls for comment. Last year, Chicago Prep's high school reading scores tied for worst in the city. On a typical day, a third of its students failed to show up, board records reveal...

[Nicole] Montalvo said her daughter was among at least three students without substance problems who were recruited and told the school was expanding beyond recovering substance abusers. Montalvo said Riggins promised a "gifted" setting in which Destini would advance at her own pace in small classes. Instead, Destini said she took a chemistry class in a school with no science lab, did jumping jacks and skipped rope in the cafeteria for physical education and never saw a gym, library or student computer. Such amenities were expected in a different location that never materialized, one teacher said.

In a recent letter to other charter schools, Richmond said he "lost all confidence in the school's educational program." He wrote that "very rarely did I observe adults instructing students. Classrooms had numerous students napping, listening to music through headphones or reading the paper. . . . Students would enter and leave classrooms at will."...

Urban Brightest Community Academy

SPONSOR REVOKES CHARTER FOR FORT WAYNE, IND., SCHOOL, July 20, 2004, The Indianapolis Star

A charter school plagued by low enrollment and financial problems will be shut down this month -- the first time one of the alternative public schools has been ordered closed in Indiana.

Urban Brightest Community Academy in Fort Wayne lost the support of its sponsor, Ball State University, on Monday. A hearing panel upheld the decision of acting university President Beverley Pitts to revoke the elementary school's charter.

"The violations were so broad and so deep, we didn't feel it was in the best interests of those enrolled in the school to begin the next school year," said Marty Dezelan, Ball State's director of charter schools…

The Fort Wayne school enrolled 93 students in Grades K-5 last school year but had about 30 withdraw during the year. Only 42 intended to enroll again; 35 others applied.

In addition to low enrollment, the school had problems with management, curriculum and money, university officials said.

It will close with $649,000 in unpaid bills and debt -- including a $300,000 loan from a state fund supported by taxpayers and available to all charters…

Dezelan said Urban Brightest officials did not address Ball State's concerns after an April 2003 visit or take up the university's offer to help.

The school did not teach the curriculum it had described, nor did it give adequate training to teachers.

It also did not submit reports to the Indiana Department of Education on time and did not offer proper services to special education students, he added…

Harlem Day Charter School

“School Braces for Hard Truth.” Wall Street Journal 30 Jun 2011 

In a ceremony this week, Harlem Day Charter School celebrated its 13 fifth-graders who are moving on to middle school. They represent roughly one-third of the class.

The other two-thirds will have to repeat fifth grade.

That hard truth is one of many that the teachers, students and parents of Harlem Day have been confronting in recent months as the school prepares to become the city's first attempt at a takeover of a failing charter school.

Only five of 32 teachers will be returning in September. About 100 of all 247 students in the elementary school are being held back. And administrators are having tough conversations with parents about the true state of their children's academic progress. Parents are being told that students, who for years were passed from grade to grade, lack basic skills.

At Harlem Day, no students were held back last year, despite recent state tests that showed only 20% of students were on grade level in English and 25% were in math.

"The students of Harlem Day have not had a culture of consistent excellence for nearly a decade, and they are long overdue," said Katie Duffy, chief of staff at Democracy Prep Public Schools, which will take over Harlem Day in August. The school will be renamed Harlem Prep...

"It's going to be a shock to many of the parents," said Mona Davids, president of the New York Charter Parents Association. Harlem Day was more "laid-back," she said, while Democracy Prep is "more rigid, with more structure." She predicts there will be student attrition once school starts and parents realize the school's fundamental model has changed.

Harlem Day was founded 10 years ago by businessman Ben Lambert, who along with other business leaders poured millions of dollars into the school.

Mr. Lambert said in a previous interview that it was difficult to find effective leadership for the school, and despite millions spent on outside consultants, the school never found its footing.

Test results were always dismal, with students performing worse than counterparts with the same demographics—largely poor and minority—in the same neighborhood...

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A $2 BILLION DECISION: THE CASE FOR REFORMING NEW YORK’S CHARTER SCHOOL LAW, April 2010, New York State United Teachers report

…The chairman of the board of the Harlem Day Charter School has selected his brother – founder and board president of the Brooklyn Charter School – and his son-in-law to serve on the school’s board. An external visit report from the Charter School Institute found poor instructional leadership; disciplinary problems; failure to use the school’s curriculum; and failure to use data to improve instruction. This school of 18 teachers and 250 students paid $180,000 in salary to the school’s executive director and the Harlem Day board paid out some $360,000 in consulting fees to unidentified consultants – more than $1,000 per student…