Utopian Academy for the Arts, a Clayton charter school that was once the bane of the county's school district, plans to expand in 2020.
And this time it has the blessing of the south metro community’s board of education.
The charter school of sixth- through eighth-graders will begin offering classes for kindergartners and first-graders in August 2020 after winning unanimous approval for the additional students from the Clayton County Board of Education earlier this month. The board’s support is a complete reversal from its relationship with the school earlier in the decade when leaders blocked its launch.
“We are thriving because we are not fighting,” Utopian executive director Artesius Miller, the school’s founder, said recently. “For the last five years, Utopian has been able to soar.”
That includes getting support from the district’s superintendent, Morcease Beasley, and Board of Education Chairwoman Jessie Goree, who was one of the few elected leaders who supported the school when it began in 2009.
“I bought into his vision as far as what he wanted to do,” Goree said of Miller. “It was quite an undertaking given that my board (at the time) voted against it.”
Opponents of charter schools are wary. Ed Johnson, an advocate for improving public schools without charter programs, said charter schools are re-segregating education — most Utopian students are black — and that Clayton can ill afford any missteps given its loss of accreditation in 2008.
“I am disappointed that (Beasley) is promoting the expansion of any charter school in Clayton County,” Johnson said.
Clayton lost its accreditation after bitter disagreements among the district's board and school leadership paralyzed the system. It won back its status in 2009, but was put on probation for two years. In 2013, it was accredited on advisement before finally getting full accreditation in 2016.
Miller said critics don’t understand the challenges Clayton has had to overcome. The county has some of the highest poverty rates in metro Atlanta, and when the economy collapsed in 2008, Clayton was one of the hardest hit because so many residents had sub-prime mortgages. About a third of the students who come to Utopian are “grade levels behind,” he said.
Offering an alternative to parents worried that the district was failing was a controversial option that resulted in a court battle with the county and a constitutional amendment, backed by former Gov. Nathan Deal, that made it easier for charter schools to be started.
"We weren't given an opportunity because of philosophical differences," Miller said of the school's earliest days, which included having the Riverdale fire marshal block access to its location on the first day of classes in 2014 because the school did not have a business license. "That's changed because of Dr. Beasley."
The school’s current enrollment is around 315 students, and it will add another 125 when the kindergartners and first-graders arrive. Boys and girls are separated in most classes, a move Miller said was undertaken because he believes the genders learn differently in many circumstances. The plan is to eventually offer a full kindergarten-through-fifth-grade program.
Carol Burris, executive director of the National Network for Public Education Foundation, said residents need to be aware that charter programs have a high level of failure. About 57 percent of the Georgia charter schools that received federal funding grants between 2009 and 2014 have shut down.
“Charter schools have become an industry,” she said.
But Beasley has faith in Utopian.
“I don’t think another choice at the K-5 level would hurt anyone,” he said.
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