Category: Charter School Accountability

APPS Urges Board to Hold Hearings on Charter Renewals

During the 17-year reign of the SRC, charter renewals have been approved without any public review.  Charters failing to meet standards in academic, financial and organizational areas were routinely renewed without any opportunity for the public to review the Charter School Office evaluations and make meaningful comments.

We have written two letters to the Board asking for them to create a new process for charter renewal, one that is open to the public and is not simply a rubber-stamp for charters that have failed to educate their students.  We have also raised the issue in our testimony in Board committee meetings.

So far, we have received no answer to either of our letters.

March 19, 2019

Dear President Wilkerson and Members of the Board:

We write to you concerning the numerous charter renewals that have been postponed indefinitely by the School Reform Commission and the Board over the past three years.

The District has allowed several charters to operate past their 5-year terms. In most if not all cases, this is because the charters have refused to accept the remedies for deficiencies, referred to as “conditions”, that the District has recommended.  The Board should discontinue the SRC’s practice of allowing charter operators to use their own refusal to address their schools’ deficiencies as a means of extending their 5-year terms. Several of the schools in question failed to meet academic, organizational, and financial standards.  Because of the dearth of public information on these matters, we can only assume that the District has suspended all efforts to have these operators sign new charters. Thus, the idea of a 5-year term for charters becomes meaningless.

In 2016, Universal Audenried and Universal Vare were recommended for non-renewal by the Charter Schools Office. The SRC renewed Vare last year, but Audenried’s non-renewal remains on hold for three years now.

In 2017, twenty-three charter schools were up for renewal (see list below). The SRC voted to renew eight of them at its May 1 Action Meeting. No resolutions were posted for the fifteen who had refused to sign a new charter; thus, no pubic action was taken on them.

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People for People Applies for Second High School: Frederick Douglass Charter High School

By Lisa Haver

Frederick Douglass Charter High School
700 North Broad Street and 1415 Fairmount Avenue    19130
Francisville
Enrollment:  Year 1, 2019-20— Grades 9-10, 250 students; Year 5— 500 students in grades 9-12
Cost to SDP for 5-year term:  $29,741,677

Members of the People for People (PFP) organization have applied to open an additional high school, Frederick Douglass Charter High School (FDCHS), at two different locations—700 No. Broad Street and 1415 Fairmount Avenue.
The opening narrative of the application enumerates issues that hinder student achievement, including “pervasive poverty…poor housing conditions….single parent households”, then goes on to imply that granting this application would solve those problems: “…FDCHS will be founded to serve as the innovative high school educational arm of People for People, Inc.—a community development corporation devoted to breaking the vicious cycle of poverty in the lives of North Central Philadelphia residents by providing them with positive alternatives to gangs, drugs, welfare, and crime.”  The application states that allowing PFP to open a new charter will help to “break the cycle of intergenerational poverty”. It’s a lofty goal, and one that its existing charter, in operation for 17 years, has not made a dent in. The narrative asserts: “FDCHS will enroll students of all abilities and needs. Our goal is to ensure our students’ academic growth is consistently higher than the national average during the charter term.” That is doubtful in light of the fact that PFP has failed to do so in its existing school.

Concerns cited by the Charter Schools Office at the January 22 hearing include:

  • Application lacks specific detail in many sections
  • Text-messaging program is not coupled with human social workers
  • Insufficient evidence of clear academic approach to subgroups
  • Budgetary concerns
  • Use of two addresses:  1415 Fairmount and 700 N. Broad
  • Neither building is ready for use as a school
  • Three members of Founding Coalition are employed by existing operator or related entities
  • Section on Founding Coalition in application not complete
  • There is no gym in the proposed floor plan
  • Amount of credits required for graduation would be hard for students to complete
  • In general, application failed to present compelling case for new charter

Click here to read the rest of the report

New Charter Application from String Theory Charters: Joan Myers Brown Academy

by Deborah Grill

Location:  3905 Ford Road (former Wordsworth Academy)
Grades:   K-8
Neighborhood:  Wynnefield Heights
Projected enrollment:   600 in year 1 (K-5); 900 (K-8) by year 4
Management Company:  String Theory Schools
Cost to District for 5-year term:  $49, 253, 959

String Theory Charter Management Company (STS) has applied to open a new charter school, the Joan Myers Brown Academy (JMBA), a K-8 school focusing on the performing arts in the Wynnefield Heights Section of Philadelphia.  The school would be located in the former Wordsworth Academy building at 3905 Ford Road and would recruit students from the 19131, 19151 and 19139 zip codes. String Theory expects to enroll 600 students in year one in grades K-5 and 900 students by year 4 with the addition of grades 6-8.  String Theory already operates the District’s largest charter–Philadelphia Performing Arts charter, a K-12 school located on 3 different campuses in 2 separate neighborhoods, in buildings owned by DeMedici Corporation and DeMedici Corporation II, companies that are described in a 2017 financial statement as “legally separate, tax-exempt component units of the School.”

The application for the  for the new charter school states  that “JMB Academy, as a K-8 String Theory Charter School, is dedicated to Growing the Next Generation of Creative Leaders. This new charter will build upon the successes of the foundational models of Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School and the Philadelphia Charter School for the Arts and Sciences at H.R. Edmunds.”  The application also says, “In order to maximize the availability of quality education options in West Philadelphia, it is our belief that it is essential to have a local enrollment preference and due to the high demand of our school model believe there will be more than enough interest to meet enrollment estimates.”

Some of the concerns presented by the Charter Schools Office Staff at the January 22 hearing include:

  • Materials omitted in Science and Social Studies curriculum
  • No curriculum for the Arts or Technology despite the presentation as a school focusing on the Arts and STEM
  • Inadequate details regarding geographic enrollment
  • Inconsistent relations between String Theory Schools CMO and the proposed charter school
  • Budget/salary/authority/health insurance details contain inconsistencies
  • Inconsistencies on services to students with Special Needs and English Language Learners
  • Insufficient information on renovation readiness
  • Flawed analysis of the community and its needs
  • Lack of inclusion of the 14 public and charter schools in the targeted zip codes
  • Inconsistencies in staffing plan

Click here to read the rest of the report

New Charter Application from American Paradigm: Tacony Academy Charter at St. Vincent

by Diane Payne

Tacony Academy Charter School at St. Vincent
7201 Milner Street         19136
Area: Tacony
Management Company:  American Paradigm Schools
Proposed enrollment: 900 students at scale
Proposed cost to SDP for 5-year term:   $39,837,160.

APPS members have attended all hearings and  reviewed all applications and attachments on this year’s new charter applications, as we have done in years past. APPS is a member of the Our City Our Schools Coalition (OCOS). Both APPS and OCOS are advocating for a moratorium on the creation of new charters and the expanding of existing ones. The District cannot afford and does not need any more charters.  Charter Schools represent the largest single item in the District’s budget–⅓ of the budget goes to fund charters. This causes direct harm to public school students as fewer resources are available to fix toxic buildings and hire more support staff. The Board has read and heard the legal opinions of several local attorneys, including Susan DeJarnett from the Beasley School of Law at Temple University, on the expense of charters, the many problems with the PA Charter Law, and the responsibility of the District to weight the financial health of the District when making decisions on charter expansion.  APPS members have cited the opinion of David Lapp, who represented the Education Law Center and is now with Research for Action, in his testimonies; links to the opinions of both attorneys have been made available to the Board.

This report is on one of the three applications submitted this year:  Tacony Academy Charter School at St. Vincent. There are several reasons the Board should reject this application, most importantly: negative financial impact on existing public school students, poor academic success over time in existing American Paradigm schools, and pressing financial questions and concerns that affect District stakeholders and all taxpayers.

American Paradigm Schools (APS) operates 4 charters in Philadelphia:  First Philadelphia Preparatory Charter (K-12) in Bridesburg, Tacony Academy Charter in the lower Northeast (K-12), Memphis Street Academy at Jones in Kensington (5-8), and Lindley Academy Charter in Logan (K-8).

To read the rest of the report click here.