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MORROW — Inability to fully fund a school infrastructure through nonprofit dollars is partly to blame for the impending dissolution of the nationally recognized Elite Scholars Academy Charter School.
That is according to state Rep. Mike Glanton (D-Jonesboro).
Glanton, chairman and founding member of the Elite Scholars’ governance board, explained the decision to dissolve the grades six to 12 start-up charter school this summer.
He confirmed the board voted not to pursue its five-year charter renewal with the Clayton County Board of Education and the Georgia Department of Education Charter Schools Division for Charter Renewal.
“This was a difficult but ultimately necessary decision,” he said. “Recent changes in the law which, beginning in 2013, required all charter contracts to be held by a Georgia nonprofit organization, provided the ESA board of directors with a choice between becoming more autonomous from the Clayton County Public Schools system or giving up its charter.”
Glanton said the board spent the past couple of years researching viable funding options to close the funding deficit in the school’s annual operating budget, but none was realized.
“In the end, the funding shortfall and the inability to demonstrate the required state mandated ‘complete’ autonomy was overwhelming and insurmountable,” he said. “However, the success of Elite Scholars Academy has resulted from its strong partnership with the Clayton County Public Schools system over the years.”
Elite Scholars is persistently the highest performing program in the district. It was named a 2012 Georgia School of Excellence, and was designated a 2014 National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.
Glanton said the charter school received operational support from the district throughout those successes. He said the district provided human resources, payroll and other back office support as well as facilities, food, technology and transportation services.
The latest in that support is construction that began this month on a new school building worth $22.17 million along Fielder Road in Rex.
“The fact that Elite Scholars Academy has always been such a hybrid charter-traditional school throughout its history helps explain its success – since the leadership of the school could maintain a laser-like focus on instructional practices and student achievement rather than worry itself about the business operations of the school,” said Glanton.
He said there was nothing to be gained by becoming more autonomous — restructuring the school to provide on its own all of its support services — given the school’s successful partnership with the district.
“Thus, the decision by the Elite Scholars Academy board of directors not to seek renewal of its charter contract with the district and the State Board of Education will ensure the continued success of Elite Scholars Academy,” he said.
Clayton News has reached out to officials with the district and its Board of Education to learn about potential next steps for those students and parents affected by the charter non-renewal.
This is disappointing. The education laws proposed under Governor Deal have been deplorable. A top performing school with high demand shouldn't be face closing under any circumstances.
The charter school movement in general is a joke. It's just a part of the larger movement to incorporate public schools, push more standardized testing, and disenfranchise teachers and students. Improving public education cannot be done by eroding it.
This is disappointing. The education laws proposed under Governor Deal have been deplorable. A top performing school with high demand shouldn't be face closing under any circumstances.
The change in 2013 to the funding was because Fulton County School Board did not renew the charter for Fulton Science Academy in N Fulton. My kids went to the elementary school that was closed along with FSA at the time. The people who wanted FSA closed were Democrats. Is Deal great for schools? Nope. But we need to remember that it's both parties that fail to support our schools.
The change in 2013 to the funding was because Fulton County School Board did not renew the charter for Fulton Science Academy in N Fulton. My kids went to the elementary school that was closed along with FSA at the time. The people who wanted FSA closed were Democrats. Is Deal great for schools? Nope. But we need to remember that it's both parties that fail to support our schools.
I agree, many Democrats are almost as bad as the Republicans when it comes to not supporting public schools. Arne Duncan and Rahm Emanuel are notorious examples of this.
Clayton County Public Schools enrollment will likely grow next fall — filling up with students from two local charter school programs.
Elite Scholars Academy’s governance board informed the district this winter that the school would not seek its five-year charter renewal. Officials said the sixth through 12th grade school was unable to demonstrate its autonomy away from the district.
The students that remain will account for part of the enrollment spike.
District officials added that the board of directors for Unidos Dual Language Charter School has not indicated plans to renew the school’s five-year charter. The pre-K-eighth grade school, whose first students are now in high school, has not publicized an official reason for its potential dissolution, although supporters have expressed a want for its conversion to a public magnet program.
Both charters expire in June. As such, the Board of Education has announced plans to absorb the two programs into the school district as regular education programs — that is, programs with components of what would be their former charters.
Unidos Dual Language has been housed in the old and aging Hendrix Drive Elementary in Forest Park since it opened a decade ago, while Elite Scholars has operated temporarily out of the old Morrow Middle since it was established in 2009.
Elite Scholars was slated to move into brand new facilities built with SPLOST for Education dollars. Construction on those facilities began this winter on the $22.17 million schoolhouse on Fielder Road in Rex.
And though there will be no charter school pupils to fill it, officials said, soon-to-be former Elite Scholars students will be allowed to continue attending classes in the facility — the district’s 11th high school.
Therein lies the paradox for some charter school supporters.
Clayton County Board of Education member Jessie Goree spoke during the board’s Feb. 29 work session about the seeming lack of parity among the county’s public education programs.
Goree acknowledged that voters approved building a new school for Elite Scholars during a previous SPLOST. She said she agreed with moving forward on the project even though the charter school will have been dissolved well before construction is completed.
“We voted to build the charter school and the charter school should have been built four years ago,” she said. “We have an obligation to build a school.”
Nonetheless, she raised concerns about the elder charter school, Unidos Dual Language, and its degraded, decades-old conditions. The school’s main campus in Forest Park still uses some classroom trailers that students access outdoors.
JONESBORO — Students stood with administrators and school board members atop a mound of Georgia clay, and they shoveled the heavy dirt.
“Today, we are not just breaking ground or building a building, we are building a foundation for the futures of our children,” said state Rep. Mike Glanton, speaking during the official groundbreaking of Clayton County’s 11th public high school.
Grading has begun at the 33.7-acre site at 7923 Fielder Road — the future home of a SPLOST-funded, $22.17 million schoolhouse to be built by summer 2017 and furnished by winter 2018.
Atlanta-based Cooper Carry designed the school, which will be split by commons areas into a middle school wing and a high school wing.
The facilities were promised to families enrolled at Elite Scholars Academy, a nationally recognized six-12th grade, start-up charter school established in July 2009. But underclassmen in the program will not be graduating from a charter school.
The school’s high school freshmen will likely graduate from a more traditional magnet school program operated, not by an independent governing body, but by the Clayton County Board of Education.
Glanton is the chairman and a founding member of the governance board of Elite Scholars, which announced this winter it would not renew its five-year charter. Its extended charter expires this summer.
In January, he explained that decision to Clayton News.
“Recent changes in the law which, beginning in 2013, required all charter contracts to be held by a Georgia nonprofit organization, provided the ESA board of directors with a choice between becoming more autonomous from the Clayton County Public Schools system or giving up its charter,” said Glanton.
The ESA board, he said, spent a couple of years researching viable funding options to close the funding deficit in the school’s annual operating budget. But none was realized.
“In the end, the funding shortfall and the inability to demonstrate the required state mandated ‘complete’ autonomy was overwhelming and insurmountable,” said Glanton. “However, the success of Elite Scholars Academy has resulted from its strong partnership with the Clayton County Public Schools system over the years.”
Glanton spoke during Monday’s groundbreaking about the positive outcome that nonetheless came out of the charter school’s partnership with the public school district.
“I’m very happy,” he said. “I’m very excited.We’re still in the business of educating students at the highest level.”
ESA students will be able to enroll at the new school — the district’s yet-to-be named 11th high school — when it opens in January 2018.
Clayton County Board of Education member Mary Baker restated the board’s intent, which was made official through a unanimous vote at its January meeting.
“I’m so proud to have this,” she said. “We’re trying to keep the school the same as much as we can.”
Baker noted the school would operate as a magnet program similar to existing programs throughout the district.
M.E. Stilwell School of the Arts, for example, was a magnet program at Mount Zion High before it opened in January 2015 in new facilities adjacent to the Clayton County Performing Arts Center.
Elite Scholars will continue in a new building as a Clayton ran magnet school, it seems. Hope it still keeps the amount of success it has seen. Clayton has been doing a good job with it's magnet schools so far. ( Rex Mill just got STEM certified for example)
The charter school movement in general is a joke. It's just a part of the larger movement to incorporate public schools, push more standardized testing, and disenfranchise teachers and students. Improving public education cannot be done by eroding it.
I really don't understand how anyone can blanketly dismiss charter schools as basically some conspiracy to hurt students. There are definately a significant number of students in Atlanta that are definately getting a better education than they would otherwise--this includes schools that are both predominantly poor and minority. And there are definately (otherwise very *liberal*) public school teachers that choose to put their own children in charters. No, I do not think charters are a blanket solution for bad schools--but there may not be a blanket answer--at least not a completely school based one.
I really don't understand how anyone can blanketly dismiss charter schools as basically some conspiracy to hurt students. There are definately a significant number of students in Atlanta that are definately getting a better education than they would otherwise--this includes schools that are both predominantly poor and minority. And there are definately (otherwise very *liberal*) public school teachers that choose to put their own children in charters. No, I do not think charters are a blanket solution for bad schools--but there may not be a blanket answer--at least not a completely school based one.
Charter schools have become a front for increased standardized testing, reduced teacher support, legalized forced transfers of some struggling students, etc. They were sold to us as "school choice," when in fact they are anything but.
Charter schools have become a front for increased standardized testing, reduced teacher support, legalized forced transfers of some struggling students, etc. They were sold to us as "school choice," when in fact they are anything but.
Everything gets sold as some sort of panacea at some point---there is no such thing --especially in education. But, some charters have been effective at educating many poor and minority students, many of whom would be doing much worse otherwise. I don't doubt that some will attempt to use the success of some charters to support some questionable arguments (which those folks would be making with or without existence of charters), but to blanketly deny the success of some charters is equally myopic.
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