Five Delaware charter schools will go through their charter renewal process next Fall. The Delaware Department of Education’s Charter School Office had what I am sure was a huge task of sending out reports to the schools. Academia Antonia Alonso, Early College High School, First State Montessori Academy, Sussex Academy, and Thomas Edison Charter School are all up for renewal. With any charter school renewal, the DOE goes through everything: Academics, Financial, and Organizational. No stone is left unturned. With five charters and all three Delaware counties represented in these renewals, the public hearings will be everywhere. But it looks like the Charter School Office has planned ahead and scheduled different public hearings on different days. Last year, there was only one charter school (Academy of Dover) that went through the renewal process. There would have been two but Prestige Academy opted to close their doors at the end of this school year.
In reviewing the below renewal reports and the charter schools responses to those reports, I didn’t have any alarm bells going off. I do have concerns about the demographics of two of these schools, First State Montessori Academy and Sussex Academy. At least one of these schools has some financial issues that seem to have flown under the radar for a long time now. Hopefully more will come out during this process. And one of them, I strongly suspect but can’t prove…yet, has a secret going all the way back to the origin of their school…
Here are all the schools renewal reports from the Charter School Office, their responses, and the timeline issued by the Charter School Office for this mammoth process:
Academia Antonia Alonso:
Early College High School
First State Montessori Academy
Sussex Academy
Thomas Edison Charter School
Charter School Renewal Timeline:
The Season Of Myths 