Move over bacon! Here comes something meatier! It looks like we have a charter school “district” coming in Wilmington. How very interesting. Word on the street is Prestige Academy has been invited to become a part of the EastSide Charter “district”. We will now have three charter schools in this “district”: EastSide, Family Foundations Academy, and now Prestige Academy. Add in the very big connections between EastSide and Gateway, and we are seeing a budding school district within already existing school districts.
This is NOT a joke. But questions are rising up faster than Buccini-Pollen apartment buildings in Wilmington! Last month, the Board of Directors at Prestige Academy wrote a letter to the Delaware Dept. of Education indicating they would be surrendering their charter at the end of this school year and would not be attempting to renew their charter. They based their decision on low enrollment. So if they wrote this letter and did NOT have their initial Charter School Accountability Committee meeting, how can this even happen? Whether they join or not, they still have to go through the charter renewal process and deal with their very low enrollment. But once again, the word on the street is the DOE will let this go through. Even though they haven’t changed anything on the charter renewal part of their website for the 2016-2017 year for Prestige’s renewal. But still, Secretary Godowsky would have to give his assent to the State Board of Education who would have to vote as a majority. I really shouldn’t predict what they are going to do. They have their own minds.
I have a novel idea. Maybe the enrollment would go up if they changed locations. Being across from a men’s prison for an all boys school with a huge African-American population isn’t the wisest idea. It didn’t work out for Marion T. Charter School either (they went down years ago). But it looks like we could have a Wilmington School District in the future, just not the kind any of us expected (actually, Kavips did when the whole priority schools thing went down). I’m sure some will say “You’ve got this all wrong”. We will see what comes out in the wash! How ironic that the charter school lawsuit against Christina would also coincidentally come out at the same time, which all three schools in the EastSide Empire are a part of…
The Season Of Myths 