Paul Laurence Dunbar Academy / Northpointe Academy

FOR-PROFIT MANAGEMENT COMPANY SKIRTS OHIO’S CHARTER SCHOOL CLOSURE LAW: DOCUMENTS SHOW CLOSED TOLEDO SCHOOL RE-OPENED WITH NEW NAME, SAME STAFF; February 15, 2011; Policy Matters Ohio press release 

The Leona Group, a Phoenix-based for-profit charter school management company, has evaded Ohio law by opening a new school to replace a school closed by the state at the end of the 2009-10 school year for poor academic performance.

Paul Laurence Dunbar Academy, a K-8 school located at 3248 Warsaw St. in Toledo and operated by the Leona Group, appeared on the state’s closure list and was required to close by June 2010. But by July 2, 2010, the Leona Group had taken steps to open a new school, Northpointe Academy, at the same address with the same phone number and much of the same staff. Leona operates nine schools in Ohio, according to its web site. (www.leonagroup.com)

“Until Ohio overhauls charter school law and creates an effective oversight system, this kind of abuse will not be resolved,” said Piet van Lier, Policy Matters researcher. A September Policy Matters report, available at www.policymattersohio.org/AuthorizedAbuse, documented other evidence that charter management companies in Ohio are operating with little oversight.

“At their best, charter schools can provide options for students seeking a good education and serve as a proving ground for innovative education models,” said van Lier. “This example, of weak oversight and inappropriate behavior by a for-profit management firm, shows how some charters fail miserably to meet that standard.”

Accompanying this press release are two PDF files containing staff lists for Dunbar and Northpointe, both downloaded from the Leona Group web site. The Dunbar staff list was downloaded in July 2010; the Northpointe list was downloaded in February 2011.

These staff lists show that Andre Fox served as Dunbar principal and continues to serve in that capacity at Northpointe, according to the staff lists; all but four of the teaching staff listed for Northpointe also appeared on the Dunbar list from last year.

As of February 1, 2011, Northpointe Academy enrolled more than 270 students and had collected more than $2 million in state money for the 2010-11 school year, according to state records. The Toledo-based Ohio Council of Community Schools was Dunbar’s sponsor and serves as Northpointe’s sponsor as well. In Ohio, charter school sponsors are responsible for authorizing new schools and monitoring them once they are open.

Beginning in 2008, Ohio law required charter schools to meet certain academic standards on their state report cards or face closure. While this law was a positive step toward improving accountability for Ohio’s charter schools, the case of Dunbar/Northpointe shows that oversight of these publicly funded, privately operated schools remains inadequate.

Staff list for Paul Laurence Dunbar Academy

Staff list for Northpointe Academy

Imani Elementary Charter Academy

TROUBLED IMANI CHARTER SCHOOL COULD CLOSE NEXT WEEK; May 3, 2011; Orlando Sentinel (FL) 

Parents of students at Imani Elementary Charter Academy in Orlando may have to find new classrooms for their children with less than a month left in the school year.

The Orange County School Board is set to vote Tuesday on a recommendation to close the school, which didn't have computers for seven months, racked up more than $400,000 in debt and switched most of its teaching staff, administration and governance midway through the year…

Clara Bailem, whose daughter is among Imani's 73 students, said no one at the school had informed her that closure might be imminent. Although the school has been a major disappointment to her, she said the School Board shouldn't close it in May.

"If they let it go this far, let it go a few more weeks. They should have done it in January, gave the students a chance to settle in" to a new school, she said.

Key textbooks were missing from many classrooms for months and a state grant worth about $160,000 was misallocated. So far, the school has gotten $604,545 in taxpayer money. If it stays open for the rest of the school year, that will increase to $692,082…

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SHUT ORANGE CHARTER SCHOOL NOW, ITS EX-TEACHERS URGE; February 5, 2011; Orlando Sentinel (FL) 

Imani Elementary Charter Academy promised parents a model school when it opened in one of Orange County's poorest neighborhoods in August.

The Pine Hills K-through-5 school said it would have the latest technology, field trips, bus service, before- and after-school care, and two adults in every classroom.

It has none of these things.

The troubled school underscores the limits of Florida's charter-school law, which strips away many of the accountability requirements faced by other public schools. Even when charter schools appear to have broken the law or failed their students, they have multiple chances to improve or appeal, a process that can stretch for months or longer.

Six months into the school year, there are no computers at Imani. Textbooks are still missing from some classes.

The 88 students, most of them poor and African-American, play in a dirt-and-grass courtyard. There is no physical-education teacher.

They make art with shoe boxes their teachers bring from home. And the school is not offering the extra help for English-language learners and special-education students that is required by law, Orange school officials and former teachers say.

On Thursday, students sat down to eat cheese-pizza slices from Papa John's for lunch, as they do most days. They'd had breakfast bars and juice in the morning, paid for by a benefactor.

Orange County Public Schools stopped providing food there because Imani didn't have a valid health permit until Friday and still owes thousands of dollars for previous meals.

The state also cut off the school's grant funding because it misappropriated $160,000 earmarked for computers, school-district officials said…

At the end of last week, Orange County Public Schools sent Imani a notice that it had 90 days to clear up a litany of legal, educational and managerial problems or face closure.

According to the letter, the school must document and provide a repayment plan for the $160,000 meant for computers that was misappropriated from a state charter-school-planning grant, more than $90,000 in payroll taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service, and unpaid bills of more than $22,000 for rental facilities and food service.

It also must provide missing documents, including fingerprinting, background checks and proof of state training for all board members; proof of employment contracts and more.

 Finally, the school must provide proof of a viable instructional program. That includes copies of teacher certifications; a list of textbooks and other curriculum materials; evidence of compliance with class-size rules; and a master schedule that includes physical education, reading interventions for low performers, special-education services and accommodations for English learners…

Imani's registered agent and president is Barry E. Daly, husband of Principal Daly.

Florida's charter-school law prohibits owners and governing-board members from hiring or advocating the hiring of their family members. Barry Daly would not comment about his role in the school…

As the school was preparing to reopen, former staffers said they were called back in to interview with two new advisers, Ardonnis and Richelle Lumpkin. They also were asked to fill out a survey listing their minimum salary requirements.

Lumpkin is principal of two South Florida charter schools and runs several education-related companies. He also has a record with several misdemeanor convictions, including third-degree theft to deprive in the early 1990s and two DUIs…

Imagine Prep High School

TEACHER AT IMAGINE PREP CHARTER IN ARIZONA FIRED FOR BUMPER STICKERS; February 2011; BlogforArizona.com

I've written a lot about Imagine charter schools in Arizona and across the country. Their CEO is an amazingly rich guy, also very conservative, also deeply Christian, who keeps a tight rein on the schools. Imagine Schools has been the subject of all kinds of negative press across the country (and almost no attention in Arizona) for slighting education, bankrupting individual schools by charging huge management fees and exorbitant rent on buildings, and on and on. The one thing you rarely hear about Imagine Schools is that they are superior educationally.

A Channel 12 Phoenix news story covers the firing of Tarah Ausburn, a high school English teacher at Imagine Prep high school in the Phoenix area (I think in Surprise) with nine years experience who was let go for the bumper stickers on her car…

Missouri charter schools

MOST MO. CHARTERS FALL SHORT OF STATE STANDARDS, REPORT FINDS; Published Online: February 14, 2011; The Associated Press 

Most charter schools in Missouri aren't meeting state proficiency standards and lack both adequate state funding and monitoring, a national watchdog group has concluded in a new report commissioned by Kansas City's Kauffman Foundation.

The report suggests that some charter schools with exceptionally poor performance should be closed, though the state has no authority to do that.

The Kansas City Star reported Monday that charter school enrollment in the city is at 8,800, compared with about 4,000 when charter schools first opened in 2000 as an alternative to public schools that were turning out poor test scores and low graduation rates.

The Kauffman Foundation plans to open Kansas City's 28th charter school in the fall. It will join sponsors such as the University of Central Missouri, Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley and University of Missouri-Kansas City, whose performance with charter schools needs to be more closely monitored by the state, the report suggested…

"Very few Missouri charters currently reach state proficiency standards," the report said. "There are clusters of strong performances, especially in Kansas City where charters represent six of the state's top 11 public schools in communication art and six of the top 12 in math."

Legislation has been introduced in Jefferson City to expand the number of charter schools and increase both funding and accountability…

Sponsors have closed a few schools in Kansas City and St. Louis in the past decade for low performance, fiscal and management problems, but the state doesn't keep a list of schools currently in danger of closing.

"We were really pleased to see the report," said Chris Nicastro, state commissioner of education. "I think some of the things in the report confirm what we have known, such as that there is a need for greater oversight and accountability."

Achievement First East New York Middle School

10-YEAR-OLD AUTISTIC BOY, BRANDON STRONG, PUNISHED FOR BEHAVIOR CAUSED BY HIS CONDITION; February 15, 2011; NY Daily News 

An East New York boy diagnosed with autism has gotten dozens of detentions this school year for behaviors caused by his condition, his parents say.

Brandon Strong, 10, who attends fifth grade at Achievement First East New York Middle School, has been held after school and at lunch for fidgeting, talking to himself and failing to look teachers in the eye.

The boy's parents say his ongoing disciplinary problems at the Richmond St. charter school are out of his control - and the punishments he's receiving are ruining his life…

The talkative kid with glasses hasn't always had such a tough time in class. Brandon was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder when he was 3 years old, after preschool teachers noticed he had trouble sitting still. Two years later he was diagnosed with autism but he worked hard with his family to succeed in mainstream classes…

Achievement First East New York Middle School Principal David Harding said the boy and his parents have overstated his trouble in school.

"The Strong family unfortunately is not partnering with us to get Brandon into college, and I think that is more of a hindrance in his development," said Harding.

Indiana charter schools (poor performance)

ISTEP RESULTS: CHARTER SCHOOLS FAILING TO MEASURE UP? February 14, 2011; Chesterton Tribune (Northwest Indiana) 

As Indiana forges ahead with a plan that could make it the most charter school friendly state in the country, some school officials are pointing to testing results that they say show that charter schools don’t always make the grade.

Duneland Superintendent Dirk Baer cited a statewide ranking of ISTEP scores that found that some of the lowest results among third graders statewide were from charter schools.

“What are we really accomplishing by siphoning off the funding for public schools if that’s their performance level?” Baer said. “To me it makes no logic.”

Indiana State Teachers Association President Nate Schnellenberger offered different statistics: Of the top 100 performing schools on ISTEP in all grade levels, only one was a charter school. And of the 50 worst ISTEP scores, 31 came from charter schools.

“The idea that charter schools are some panacea ... simply is not true,” he said.

Independently, the Chesterton Tribune reviewed charter school ISTEP scores from the latest round of testing last spring. Among the various grade levels, 60 to 75 percent of charter schools’ results were below state average in both the English/language arts and math portions of ISTEP test…

A proposal moving forward in the Indiana Legislature would set the stage for an “unfettered expansion” of charter schools in Indiana, Schnellenberger said. The bill, HB 1002, would allow more sponsors of charter schools, including mayors of second class cities and certain private colleges and universities…

Schnellenberger said ISTA’s position is that at a time when funding for existing public schools is diminishing, focusing on charter schools is the wrong way to go.

“To me, it’s more about privatizing public education than anything else,” he said.

Academia Avance

"Critics assail director of L.A. charter." Los Angeles Times (CA), 9/25/2007 

A Highland Park charter school is facing allegations of financial impropriety, gross mismanagement and academic shortcomings from a group of former employees and parents who formerly enrolled their children at the school…

The story of an embattled charter school facing the school board and the court of public opinion has emerged several times in the last year. Nearly all such schools have survived, whether the issue was low test scores, admission practices, questionable accounting or an unorthodox curriculum. Charters are independently run schools that are free from some regulations that govern traditional schools.

Most of Academia Avance's critics are closely associated with the school's founding. They include a former principal, former teachers, former office workers and parents.

They describe a poorly organized school that churned through staff and a director who was never short on plans to increase revenue but was perpetually short on resources for students.

"It was an amazing opportunity for an inner-city area and an incredible idea, but it was run very poorly," said former English teacher Tiffany Miller. "We had no school supplies. There was no working air-conditioning or heating. There were broken windows. Very little supervision."…

Of the school's five initial teachers, Miller and one other finished the year before quitting, she said. Much of the school year involved a procession of substitutes and short-term hires. The substitutes allegedly included the school's founder and director, Ricardo Mireles, office staff and parent volunteers…

Marietta Charter School

CHARTER SCHOOL FUTURE BLEAK; February 11, 2011; Marietta Daily Journal (GA)

ATLANTA - Thursday's non-action by the Georgia Board of Education likely means Marietta Charter School will close when its charter expires June 30.

Marietta Charter School officials had hoped the state board would overturn a Dec. 16 decision by the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, which denied the school's request for a new independent charter that would keep its doors open. But the state board on Thursday elected not to take any action…

Last summer, Superintendent Dr. Emily Lembeck recommended that the Marietta school board deny renewing the school's charter due to wide-ranging problems with enrollment, finances, student achievement and curriculum. The school, which opened in August 2006, is managed by Imagine Schools of Arlington, Va.

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MARIETTA CHARTER SCHOOL TO GO PRIVATE; April 14, 2011; Marietta Daily Journal (GA) 

MARIETTA — In an unusual move, leaders of Marietta Charter School have announced that the school will stay open next year as a tuition free private school, though under a different name.

The school, which has about 200 students in grades kindergarten through fifth, will be known as Wright Prep Academy as of July 1, principal Christy Tureta said.

The school is managed by Imagine Schools, Inc., a for-profit company based in Arlington, Va., and has operated under a charter from Marietta City Schools since 2006. Imagine Schools Inc. will pay the full, $1.7 million operating cost for the 2011-12 school year, Tureta said.

Last summer, the Marietta school board refused to renew the charter for five more years, based on Su-perintendent Dr. Emily Lembeck’s findings that the school had wide-ranging problems with enrollment, finances, student achievement and curriculum.

Appeals to the state board of education and the state charter schools commission were unsuccessful, and the school was to close as of June 30. But the doors will stay open, Tureta said…

Going private gives the school time to seek a new charter from the Georgia Charter Schools Commission for the 2012-13 school year, Tureta said…