Just as the Gwinnett County Board of Education was preparing to offer Ivy Preparatory Academy a one-year charter to keep its doors open the school rescinded its application Thursday night, saying the district would not fully fund it.
Ivy Prep’s head of school, Nina Gilbert, made the decision, citing frustration with the process and negotiations with the Gwinnett school system. The charter school for 600 girls will instead apply to be a state charter special school, which will cut its budget in half.
Gwinnett Schools' per-pupil funding is $7,549. Gilbert said the district was offering her considerably less than that and less than she received as a school authorized by the defunct Georgia Charter Schools Commission.
“It is not our intention to reject your offer to accommodate us,” she said. “Even though we will receive less funding as a state charter special school, we believe the freedom and the autonomy to provide an instructional program that is both innovative and supportive we will have as a state school is the most promising path for our school and our students.”
Gwinnett school officials did not release their funding formula for the charter school, but officials were willing to welcome the campus as a charter school upon the recommendation of staff.
“This has never been about Ivy Prep,” Robert McClure, school board chairman, said at a workshop before the meeting. “The issue has always been a constitutional one.
"I am more than a little surprised and disappointed by what Ms. Gilbert said," McClure said later after Ivy Prep's withdrawal.
“I wish Ivy Prep the best,” said school board member Dan Seckinger. “I admit that when I came in here tonight I was conflicted ... It is difficult to educate kids with the amount of money we get."
Gwinnett schools Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks advised the board to consider Ivy Prep’s petition anyway. McClure agreed, saying they had been working with the school in good faith.
The one-year charter approval was passed unanimously, leaving some in the audience confused. The school can be a Gwinnett County charter if it decides to accept but McClure told the group, “you don’t have to accept it.”
Ivy Prep parent Dee Dee Horton said she supported Gilbert's decision to bow out. "We are doing the same job as any other Gwinnett school; you have to have the same resources."
Ivy Prep was one of 16 schools whose operating contracts were voided when the state Supreme Court dismantled the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, a decision that impacted 16,500 students. Those schools have appealed to local districts and the state for charter approvals to keep their doors open.
The Gwinnett school board originally rejected Ivy Prep's proposal for a single gender campus in 2007. Ivy Prep was approved by the state school board as a state charter special school. It later sought full funding as a commission school and was one of the first to be approved in June 2009.
Three months later, the Gwinnett school district sued Ivy Prep and the state, alleging the commission was illegally opening and funding charter schools with local money. This came after the Georgia Department of Education gave part of Gwinnett's state allocation, nearly $1 million, to Ivy Prep as part of a local matching share of education dollars for students.
The state Supreme Court later found that process to be unconstitutional.
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