More than 15,000 Georgia students are expected to be able to attend their chosen charter school this fall, ending more than a month of uncertainty about whether those schools would have the funding and legal clearance to open.
Eleven charter schools, in limbo since the Georgia Charter Schools Commission was overturned by a state Supreme Court ruling, have contracts pending before the state Board of Education. They are expected to be approved Tuesday.
“I’m excited about it,” said Danny Dukes, a foundation member of the group opening Cherokee Charter Academy.
State authorization, as a opposed to local, comes with a cost. Nine of the former commission schools expected to be approved Tuesday will receive state and federal funding for students, but not local dollars. That effectively cuts their budgets in half and results in fewer classes offered.
“We don’t want to deliver a second-class program," Dukes said, explaining he will appeal to state legislators and Charter Schools USA, the academy’s management partner, for help.
Gavin Samms, principal of Fulton Leadership Academy, said his school is losing about $800,000 in the switch. He said the "extras will go first" including the bus provided to families who needed the help. "Given that we had a good year we really felt that the state would want to make sure that we were available for students,” he said. "We are at the point where we are trying to make sure we have a viable program ... Maybe we can’t do a Spanish class or a technology class. Staff may have to do more than one job.’’
The two schools that will receive local funding are The Museum School of Avondale Estates and Ivy Preparatory Academy in Norcross. Both received one-year local contracts that will be voted on by the state school board Tuesday.
Ivy Prep, which had withdrawn its local application earlier this month, decided to move forward as a Gwinnett County public school. State officials said Monday that Gwinnett and DeKalb school districts will work together to arrange funding for DeKalb students at Ivy Prep.
“The girls from other counties were allowed to stay,” said Lou Erste, the state’s charter schools director. “
Charter schools are public schools which operate independently from local school board control. More than 89,000 Georgia kids – slightly more than 5 percent of those in public schools – attended charters last school year. Most are approved by local school boards.
A 12th school, Peachtree Hope Charter School will have to wait until possibly July to be considered by the state board. It had been approved as a local charter school earlier this month, but was recently ordered to go back through the authorization process. The school split with its education management company. The school's officials, however did not notify DeKalb Schools the relationship had ended until the day after they were approved to receive local money.
Odyssey School/Georgia Cyber Academy received state approval for a five-year contract renewal earlier this month.
As state special schools, they all will receive between $2,700 to $4,400 per student. Five of the new special schools also may be eligible to also receive up to $1 million in federal implementation grant funds.
Matt Cardoza, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the approval of the schools will not impact the state’s budget because the students were already being funded at other campuses. “We would have been giving money to the students somewhere,” he said.
Today's approvals ends the uncertainty for the charter schools affected by the state Supreme Court's May ruling. That 4-3 decision concluded the state's charter school commission did not have the authority under the state's constitution to establish local public schools. The court sided with a 2009 complaint by Gwinnett County Public Schools, which argued local school districts had the sole authority to open and fund charter schools with local money.
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The following charter schools are expected to be approved by the state Board of Education: Atlanta Heights Charter School and Heritage Preparatory Academy, both in Atlanta; Cherokee Charter Academy; Coweta Charter Academy; Fulton Leadership Academy in south Fulton; Georgia Connections Academy and Provost Academy, both statewide cyber campuses; Charter Conservatory for Liberal Arts and Technology in Bulloch County; Patuala Charter Academy, which serves students in Baker, Clay, Calhoun, Early and Randolph counties; The Museum School of Avondale Estates; Ivy Preparatory Academy in Norcross
Two other schools, Heron Bay Academy, operating in Henry and Spalding counties, and southwest Atlanta's Chattahoochee Hills Charter school decided not open in August and will apply for charters later. The state's charter school director said the schools had financial difficulty with construction because they had no firm approvals to move forward as local schools.
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