Charter School Approval Unlikely (GA)
June 17, 2010
Questions still plague a petition to open a charter school in Cherokee County with approval at tonight’s school board meeting looking unlikely.
An analysis by county school board attorney Tom Roach and county school district staff released on Wednesday raises questions about Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based Charter Schools USA’s ability to manage the proposed kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.
The concerns include how the company will provide adequate services for students with disabilities as well as its curriculum, local governance and the lease and maintenance of its facility.
According to Roach’s analysis, the petition indicates the school’s operations will remain "firmly" in the grasps of the Florida company and not the Georgia Charter Education Foundation. That, he said, is in contrast to the state government’s local governance requirement for charter schools to operate in Georgia.
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Richard Page, vice president of operations for Charter Schools USA, said Roach and the district staff’s interpretation of the company’s control over the nonprofit foundation is flawed.
The district staff "can’t accept the fact that they don’t have any control over a charter school," Page said, adding charter schools are supposed to be independent of traditional public schools.
Approval of a local school board or the state commission that can override the boards is needed for a charter school as it receives tax revenues.
Page added that local school boards are responsible for approving, renewing or revoking a school’s charter and monitoring its operations, but not as the decision-making authority.
Roach said he also has questions about the petitioner’s facility. The petition notes that the facility, which would be located in the Holly Springs area, would be owned and constructed by a private developer, who would lease it to the charter school.
"I’m concerned that a taxpayer-funded building would be owned by a private company," Roach said, noting that Charter Schools USA often has partnered with Florida-based Red Apple Development, LLC to build its facilities.
Both companies, according to their Web sites, have the same logo and are housed in the same office in Ft. Lauderdale.
Roach said the projected cost of lease payments and maintenance upkeep also are excessive.
In its petition, the foundation projects an annual rent payment of $639,000 and maintenance costs of $94,500 in fiscal year 2012. Those costs were projected to increase by 19 percent by the following fiscal ye ar.
Roach said the Development Authority of Cherokee County in 2009 estimated fair market lease values in Holly Springs should range between $4 per square foot to $12 per square foot.
Over the five projected budget years, the foundation would spend about $14 per square foot and a total of $4.3 million in tax dollars on lease payments and maintenance costs on its roughly 5,000-square-foot facility.
Roach said the projected lease and maintenance payments are "inflated" and "not reasonable in this economic climate."
The petitioners, Roach said, agreed to make changes to the line items in its projected budget, but no revisions have been presented to him.
Page said his company believes the facilities costs are in line with what other charter schools are paying in lease and maintenance costs.
The petition is the second one in as many years filed by the foundation on behalf of Charter Schools USA. The petition last year was unanimously denied by the school board.
The board cited concerns with the company’s education services for students with disabilities, English language learners, the broad definition of character education in the curriculum and lack of specifics in regards to how its curriculum would differ from the school district.
The current petition was submitted on April 30 and contains more community support for the proposal than the original request.
Charter school companies, if denied by a local school board, can apply to the Georgia Charter Schools Commission for approval. The company appealed the board’s decision on its initial petition to th e commission, which denied the request in December.
Other concerns by Roach include a lack of explanation of how the company’s character education curriculum would differ from the school district’s and how the company intends to provide adequate special education services in compliance with the law.
District staff echoed Roach’s concerns about the petition’s projected facility and maintenance costs, its plans to provide services to students with special needs and how its salary and incentives will attract quality, motivated teachers and staff.
The petition’s starting teacher salary is $32,000, which is lower than the district’s starting salary of $42,000.
The company in the petition states it would provide incentive pay to make up the $10,000 difference to each teacher. But with a projected 50 teachers needed, each teacher only would receive an annual bonus of about $1,000, according to the district staff’s analysis.
District staff also had questions about how the foundation would provide services to meet the needs of its special needs students, which it projects to be about 12 percent of the total enrollment.
The district noted its Office of Special Education has faced cuts and would need to hire more staff such as special education facilitators and psychologists to help provide adequate services to the charter school.
The petition proposes an administrative fee of $138,000 would be paid to the district for special education services, which the district staff said "would not even come close" to covering the cost.
The district staff also said the petition doesn’t address the issue of transporting special educati on students.
The petition states the foundation only will commit to transporting students who live within an "attendance zone." But the school district staff said that violates the law requiring transportation be provided to all special needs students who want to attend the school, regardless of where they live.
Page shot back at the district’s analysis and said the petition clearly states that special needs students who require transportation in their individualized education program (IEP) would be offered transportation to and from school. Only regular education students, Page said, will be required to live within the attendance zone.
Page, with frustration in his voice, said he was not surprised at the analysis conducted by district staff and Roach, saying the district continues to "show no interest in having a charter school."
"I think their analysis is misguided, but consistent with their previous actions," he said.