At the State Board of Education meeting today, four Delaware charters, two of which have not even opened yet, were all put on formal review. Two were for enrollment, one was for enrollment and academic issues, and the last was for academic and financial issues.
Freire and Delaware Design Lab High School were put on formal review for low enrollment. As per Delaware state code, an approved charter school must have 80% of it’s fall enrollment by April 1st. Freire had a major modification approved to reduce their enrollment cap from 336 to 224 at last month’s State Board meeting. As of April 1st, they were at 78 and today they are at 92. Delaware Design Lab is going through the same growing pains as well. Other charters scheduled to open next year have the following enrollment percentages- Great Oaks: 100%, First State Military: 94% and Delaware Met: 81%. Freire could ask for a one-year extension to open, but they would have to do so by 5/12. Delaware Design Lab already was granted a one-year extension last year, which can only be done once.
Prestige Academy was placed on Formal Review for low enrollment as well as academic reasons. Out of their 225 enrollment cap, they were at 59% as of 4/1 with 186 enrollments, and today they are at 190. Their academic percentage of proficiency also went down 17% between the 2012-2013 year and the 2013-2014 year, from 56% to 39.1%. What muddies the waters on this formal review is the framework for Smarter Balanced won’t be available until January for all schools. For all three of the enrollment formal reviews, Executive Director of the Charter School Office at the Delaware Department of Education Jennifer Nagourney said “Funding drives academic programs.” And the schools funding is based on enrollment figures.
Academy of Dover, also in the hot seat for academic reasons definitely has some major financial issues going on. Like Family Foundations Academy, they are being audited by State Auditor Tom Wagner’s office. This also explains why the financial part of their performance framework has not been updated on the DOE website since last fall. The school’s auditor noticed some financial irregularities and it was sent to Wagner’s office. They couldn’t put anything up while the audit investigation was going on. Nagourney did share there is a litigation matter going on with the school but she was unable to give any details. I asked her specifically if the litigation had anything to do with former Head of School Noel Rodriguez resigning last fall, and stated she wasn’t sure of that. She did state the auditing issues began an the same time Rodriguez resigned. I’m sure there is much more to the story about Academy of Dover than what we are hearing, and I’ve already put some feelers out there.
Academia Antonia Alonso was taken off probation status, Odyssey Charter is complying with their required meeting with the Public Integrity Commission and will meet with them later this month, and Family Foundations Academy submitted their first monthly report to the charter school office as a condition of their probation status given by the State Board of Education last month.
After the meeting, I spoke with Nagourney and David Blowman, the Deputy Secretary of Education, along with Matthew Albright of the News Journal, Avi Wolfman-Arent with Newsworks/WHYY and Larry Nagengast with WDDE for a q and a on these issues. The big question which the DOE was not able to answer was why these enrollment figures are so low. The question was asked if the charter market in Wilmington is saturated. but the fact that two other charters opening next fall makes this a difficult issue. Blowman explained that a change in enrollment deadlines coupled with a first count of funding based on enrollment figures based on a 5/1 count seems to be causing problems this year. When asked by Wolfman-Arent about any “ghost” schools, where an approved charter never opened due to low enrollment, Blowman and Nagourney did not know of any.
And yes, I was shocked to be invited to this impromptu media gathering!
The Season Of Myths 