Charter School Questions Remain

[UPDATE: The timetable has been adjusted for the charter school applicants to address questions on their proposal by the board. Excerpt from an article in yesterday's News-Gazette:

Charter-school proponents get more time to answer Unit 4 board's questions
...

Pressed by board members during Monday's hearing to provide answers to 116 questions about an application lacking in detail, North Champaign Academy founders frequently deferred, asking for the chance to provide clarification later.

The deadline set at the meeting — of noon today — has been pushed back to Wednesday, Unit 4 Superintendent Susan Zola informed NCA in an email obtained by The News-Gazette.

That's two days fewer than NCA asked for but still came as a relief...

For now, the district's plan is to provide a written decision about the charter school at a special meeting at 5:30 p.m. May 2.

That's later than the original timeline, which called for a ruling on April 23.]

In a packed school board hearing the proponents of a new Charter school were grilled on their application with a litany of questions, many of which proponents said they'd have to follow up on. Here's an excerpt from the News-Gazette website last night:

Unit 4 board grills charter-school proponents about gaps in plan
...
Under state law, Unit 4 must reach a decision within 30 days of Monday.

After Kloeppel finished his questions, other board members asked ones of their own in a similar vein, attempting to understand perceived gaps in the budget or instances in which the proposal failed to align with state law.

Most questions were again answered with a request for a delay, which NCA members said they were doing on behalf of the public, who, by 8 p.m., had not had a chance to comment about the proposal.

When the public did get a chance to speak, comments ranged from uncertainty about the application due to lack of clarity to pleas directed at board members to support a charter school whose founders say is aimed at improving academic progress in low-income and low-achieving students within the Champaign school district.

"Seven of my nine students are African-American," said Joel Wright, a special education teacher at Jefferson Middle School. "I am highly concerned with several of the gaps (in the proposal) — these kids need very intensive support.

"The other thing I wanted to say to the board, regardless of your decision, what you're seeing tonight is that the stakeholders — the black community — feel like they don't have a stake to hold. I think there's serious problems in the application, but I think Unit 4 needs to figure out a way to include these stakeholders. Everyone in this room has the best interests of students in mind. But how to do that will be the challenge ahead."

Full article here with more details on the questioning and remaining questions. In other business Centennial High School got a familiar face as their new principal:

The Unit 4 school board on Monday night named Associate Principal Chuck Neitzel to succeed first-year Principal Brian Riegler, whose resignation takes effect on June 30.

Neitzel has been Centennial’s associate principal since 2012. Before that, he was the school’s assistant principal (2009-12) and dean of students (2008-09)...

Earlier this year, about seven months after replacing Greg Johnson as Centennial principal, Riegler announced he was stepping down in June, citing separation from his family as the motivation.

[Originally published 4/10/2018 at 4:07am]