The Georgia Board of Education has ordered the swift closure of a charter school in Macon after turmoil between the school’s former board members and its founders undermined performance.
Bibb County Superintendent Curtis Lee Jones Jr. recommended revoking the charter after a visit last fall when, he told the state board members at a hearing Thursday, “we did not observe a lot of what I would call good schooling going on.”
At the last official count last spring, the school had more than 500 students, but enrollment is less than 200 now. The county system will have to absorb them. It’s a cautionary tale in a growing educational sector. Charter schools get public money and freedom from many rules but must meet academic, financial and operational goals in their contracts.
This school failed for a variety of reasons, including internal conflict.
David Rutter Faunce, a former consultant for the school, testified for the state that his firm, Prestige Charter School Solutions, briefly hired foundersCharles Rutland because of his familiarity with the school.
Mark Cramer, a partner in the firm, said the company became concerned with how things were going.
There was no consistency in what was being taught to students in different classes of the same grade, he said. He described a poor learning environment: “It was pretty chaotic, loud, uncontrolled, students running in the hallways,” he said, adding that he saw girls fighting.
Rutland’s wife, Monya, was recently named chairwoman of the school’s new board. She presented her own witnesses, including Glenn Hileman, CEO of HighMark School Development, which finances charter school buildings. He testified to problematic board leadership and said board members refused to take training to learn their roles.
Georgia Ellis Gary, the head of school, acknowledged there was “very little learning” going on at the school. She blamed “apathetic” teachers and said she fired 90 percent of them.
“There were a lot of bad adults in that school,” she said, adding that things are better now.
Last spring, the Georgia Department of Education documented an out of control environment, with the majority of students seen to be "off-task and disengaged without re-direction. … Students were observed obstructing class, including one student throwing a chair at another student."
But Monya Rutland said changes have been made since then, “changes that are sustainable and can be verified.”
The changes came too late for state board member Brian Burdette, though. “I don’t know how many second chances they had to do this and they didn’t do it,” he said. The rest of the board agreed, voting unanimously to terminate the charter effective Aug. 31.
The Georgia Charter Schools Association, the state’s largest organization for these schools, supported the state decision, saying on Friday that the school was “plagued by chaos” and wasn’t living up to the promises made in its charter. The state education board did its job by holding the school accountable, the group said in a statement.
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