A monthslong debate over the fate of two south Fulton County charter schools came to an end on Thursday when the Georgia Board of Education approved plans for the RISE school under a three-year state charter.
RISE — which comprised two schools, RISE Grammar for grades K-5 and RISE Prep for grades 6-8 — first ran into existential trouble in February, when the Fulton County school board unanimously refused to renew its charter, citing concerns over its academic and operational performance. Parents rallied to save the schools prior to the vote, organizing an online petition that has garnered nearly 1,500 signatures. Shaheen Solomon, vice president of the board of RISE charter schools, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Fulton County’s operational concerns were “unfounded and unsubstantiated.”
Following Fulton County’s decision, RISE applied for a state charter, which the State Charter Schools Commission (SCSC) granted in May. As a result of Thursday’s vote, RISE will operate as a K-8 school under a single state charter. Together, RISE Grammar and RISE Prep serve about 800 students, most of whom are Black or Hispanic.
At a Wednesday meeting ahead of the vote, board members pressed interim SCSC Executive Director Morgan Felts on why the state approved RISE’s charter despite the school district’s concerns. The state and local commissions, Felts explained, use different criteria to assess academic performance: Fulton County compares charter schools to all other schools in the district, whereas the state compares them to nearby institutions.
“In this case, a student attending RISE would probably not attend a north Fulton County school, so we are not going to compare it with that,” she said. For the past two years, the RISE schools did not meet Fulton County’s required academic targets, but did meet the state’s standards for a three-year charter, Felts said.
Both parents and the state commission attributed recent academic slides at RISE Grammar and Prep to the COVID-19 pandemic. The chairwoman of the RISE board, Lara Sterling, said that the schools had been “on an upward trajectory” in 2019.
The state commission was further impressed by local support for the school, such as the number of families enrolled and on the waiting list, Felts said.
“The parents have been phenomenal,” Solomon said. “They’ve been the main catalyst in getting us to this next level.”
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