Charter School Denial Pending

It doesn't look like there's going to be a positive result for those pushing for the Champaign charter school application. Here's a preliminary blurb from today's News-Gazette:

Unit 4 officials on charter-school proposal: 'lack of economic soundness'
But the combination of "operational issues" and the "lack of economic soundness of the application" led the Champaign school district administration to recommend that the board reject the application when it comes up for vote Wednesday.

That's according to the board's agenda, released Monday, a week-and-a-half after the district-imposed deadline for NCA to account for discrepancies in its original application.

"The failure of NCA to satisfactorily respond to the board's inquiries on these various issues warrant denial of the NCA Charter School Proposal," the agenda read.

Unit 4 and NCA officials both deferred comment until Wednesday.

Full article here.

Charter School Documentation Submitted

Following up on the application process for a potential charter school in Champaign. More on the previous meetings and applications at the previous post here: Charter School Questions Remain. Update from today's News-Gazette for the requested documentation and answers from the last school board meeting:

Charter-school proponents turn in answers to Unit 4 board's questions
Backers of a proposed charter school say they hope the 20-plus pages of documentation submitted Wednesday will provide the clarity Champaign school district officials said was missing during a contentious hearing earlier this month.

School board President Chris Kloeppel confirmed to The News-Gazette that the district received the addendum to North Champaign Academy’s application before the end of business Wednesday, the revised deadline Unit 4 set last week.

Among other things, the NCA packet includes a more detailed budget breakdown. It calls for the district to provide $11,876 to cover the cost of each student’s attendance — what’s known as per-capita tuition. With enrollment at the K-5 school now projected to be 128 students, that amounts to $1,520,128...

The next known key date in the process is 13 days away. At 5:30 p.m. May 2, the district will hold a special meeting to provide “a final written decision on approval or denial of the NCA’s February 26 proposal,” Zola informed NCA leaders in an email.

Full article here.

Charter School Arguments

The News-Gazette highlighted a personal story along with local arguments surrounding the achievement gap along racial lines in Champaign. Excerpts from the News-Gazette today:

Proponents ready to argue case for new Champaign charter school
...
At 5:30 p.m. Monday at Unit 4's Administrative Center, founders of the North Champaign Academy will make their formal case for why Unit 4 should support a new charter school, to be housed in a 15,000-square-foot facility at 1400 W. Anthony Drive. The request seeks a $14,845-per-student-per-year investment by the district.

School board President Chris Kloeppel has said a decision is expected within two weeks of Monday's hearing...

Central to local charter school supporters' proposal is six years' worth of standardized testing data, taken straight from the "report cards" compiled by the Illinois State Board of Education from data provided by each district.

NCA founders focused on data from 2011 through 2017, hoping to illustrate a point about the achievement gap in Unit 4:

In 2011, test results showed that black third-graders within Unit 4 comprised 15.2 percent of the lowest-achieving members of their demographic.

By 2017 — following several statewide shifts in assessment standards, types of tests administered and scoring changes — the number of black third-graders within the lowest-achieving category had reached 52.1 percent...

Some community members say the numbers show what was already common knowledge: that the district achievement gap is a significant one, necessitating a bold, new approach.

But Unit 4 officials argue that the issue is more complex than two numbers reveal. They attribute the widening of the gap to a number of factors — including a shift in testing, from the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT), which was used in 2011, to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career Readiness (PARCC) test in 2015. That, they say, caused a downward spiral in test scores and negated the ability for the numbers to be compared at all...

The effect those changes had on students across the district, however, wasn't uniform.

After PARCC was implemented in 2015, 9 percent of white third-graders fell into the Level 1 — or "did not meet expectations" category. For black third-graders, that number was 39.1 percent.

By 2017, 11.8 percent of white third-graders were in Level 1 compared to 52.1 percent of black third-graders.

"The 'apples-to-oranges' argument because the test changed is bogus," said NCA steering committee member Craig Walker. "The percent drop by black students is way larger than the percent drop by white students in the same time period."

Full article here.

Charter School Hearing

There was an update on the Charter school application in the News-Gazette today. Previous posts on the charter school: arguments for and against. Application news and data behind the recent push here. All charter posts here. From the N-G today:

Public hearing slated on charter school proposal
The Unit 4 school board will hold a public hearing about a newly proposed charter school in less than a month.

Under state law, the district had 40 days from the time founders of the North Champaign Academy submitted their application, which happened on Feb. 26, to add this event to the schedule.

“We anticipate the hearing date will be April 9, 2018 and we will formally notify the applicants in writing about this date and of the protocol for this process,” President Chris Kloeppel said at Monday night’s school board meeting. “Within 30 days of the hearing, the board will make a determination.

“We anticipate that decision will be made on April 23, 2018.”

As proposed, the charter school would be located at 1400 W. Anthony Drive, target low-income, low achieving students in Champaign and be funded largely by Unit 4. 

Other Unit 4 updates from the same N-G article:

In other news Monday:

— After agreeing to spend $3.4 million on a building that will house administrative staff and others, the board signed off on a $51,487 communications system for 502 W. Windsor Road. That cost covers a Toshiba IPedge system, including installation and warranty...

— The Windsor location was also part of another bid approved Monday night when the board OK’d a $51,597 bid to outfit several district buildings with network and wireless equipment from information technology company CDW-G. Other buildings that would receive the new equipment include the district’s transportation, administration, curriculum and Columbia centers...

— Summer grounds workers can expect a boost in pay after board members approved raising laborers’ wages from a “no longer competitive” rate of $9 per hour to $13 per hour...

 — Staff at Franklin Middle School will be the beneficiaries of $85,214 worth of professional development and resources from Northern Illinois University after the board approved the financial agreement.

The district plans to use funding from a five year $9.6 million magnet grant to pay for the services NIU would provide, including multi-day training at a STEAM retreat in July as well as planning and observation visits for Franklin teachers.

Full article here.

Unit 4 Applications Submitted and Reopened

First a follow up on this post about the charter school application which has now been submitted:

Group formally submits proposal for new charter school
If a group of community leaders gets its wish, a charter school not far from the North Prospect retail district will open its doors to no fewer than 40 low-income students as soon as August

Monday night, backers of what’s being called North Champaign Academy submitted to Unit 4 board members a formal application for the new school. It would be located in the 1400 block of Moreland Boulevard and aim to better educate low-income students.

Additionally people interested in Unit 4's assortment of capital projects have an opportunity to serve on the oversight committee. From the same N-G article:

— Unit 4 reopened applications for the Referendum Oversight Committee, which board President Chris Kloeppel said was a response to community feedback.

The board is “looking for individuals to serve in that capacity,” he said.

 More information on the Referendum Oversight Committee here:

As the District moves forward with six capital projects following the passage of the $183.4 million referendum on November 8, 2016, the Board of Education authorized the creation of a Referendum Oversight Committee comprised of interested community members.

Champaign Charter School Rationale

Following up on a previous post, here. Nathaniel Banks had a guest commentary in the paper today that highlighted a local push for a charter school that will be brought before the Champaign Unit 4 school board. He points to disturbing data in the News-Gazette here:

One need only to look at the latest academic achievement data for black children in grades 3-8. The state has five levels of test achievement. Students in categories 1-3 indicate who are not on track for post-graduation success. Categories 4-5 mean that they are.

Comparing the overall district report card with the state’s shows the state and Champaign’s scores in English language arts and mathematics are comparable. Across Illinois, based on English language arts, between 30 and 40 percent of students in grades 3-8 are on track for college or career readiness. Across the state, that number for black students is 19.4 percent. In the Champaign schools, that number for black students is 10 percent.

Clearly stated, only 10 out of every 100 black children in grades 3-8 in the Champaign schools are on track for success in either college or a career. Fifty-two percent of the black children in the third grade can be found scoring at the lowest of the five levels of achievement.

In the Champaign schools, when it comes to successfully educating black children, “the emperor has no clothes.”

Over the years, many attempts have been made to mitigate this reality, with only moderate success. Grades K-3 are especially critical for education success. District numbers show that in 2011, the percentage of black children in the lowest category for literacy statewide was 10.8 percent and in Unit 4, 15.1 percent. By 2017, those numbers have increased dramatically to 35 percent statewide and 52.1 percent in Champaign schools.

These numbers should alarm the community, but they don’t. They should outrage the community, but they don’t. For the few in the community who are outraged, one would think that their only answer is to double-down and do more of the same without substantially changing the culture producing these results.

He points to a charter school as the solution to this issue:

Based on legislation, the state process for approving charters begins with the local school board. After receiving an application, the board must hold a hearing within 45 days on the proposed charter school and board of education vote 30 days after that.

The North Champaign Academy Charter Steering Committee, of which I am a part, is preparing a charter school application to be submitted during Black History Month 2018. One question that the 3,500 black families in Champaign providing $35 million in tax dollars to the district through the per capita tuition charge of $11,236 might ask is, are their children getting their money’s worth?

The data from the school report card clearly indicate that they are not.

Parkland Costs and Unit 4 Charter School

Parkland Costs Didn't Go Up?

The full article explains how they're not giving the state, which they say has "abandoned us," any credit. Which sounds harsh, but may be accurate:

No tuition, fee hikes next year
For the first time in 26 years, Parkland College students won’t be paying more in tuition and fees next year.

The governing board of the Champaign- based community college voted unanimously Wednesday to freeze tuition and fees for in-district students at $164 per credit hour. Tuition and fees for out-of-district, out-of-state and international students also will remain the same as this year.

It’s the first time since 1992-93 school year — when tuition and fees were $33 a credit hour — that there won’t be an increase.

Unit 4 Charter School Request

A proposal Unit 4 rejected back in 2001 may get a second look due to concerning and years long tracking of racial disparity data. From today's News-Gazette:

Black-focused charter school to be requested
A six-year decline in academic achievement for black Unit 4 students in grades 3-8 has some community members poised to ask the district to create a charter school on Champaign’s north end.

The school, which would be called North Champaign Academy and serve grades K-5, has been offered as a solution to the rising numbers of black students in Unit 4 who are performing at levels below state expectations for their grade. Organizers shared the highlights of their vision with The News-Gazette ahead of Monday night’s school board meeting, when they plan to make a formal request to the school board.

Some of the troubling statistics cited from the Illinois State Board of Education and the Census Bureau:

The numbers that concern the charter school backers come from 2011-17: — In 2011, black thirdgraders comprised 15.2 percent of Unit 4’s lowestachieving students in the reading category.

— By 2017, that number was 52.1 percent...

 “The percentage of poor people in the black community has remained constant throughout the years — and that’s part of the impetus for trying to change that paradigm,” Banks said.

In Champaign County, black residents are twice as likely as white to live in poverty. Data from the 2015 U.S. Census Bureau population estimates showed that 41.5 percent of African-Americans had incomes below the poverty level, while the rate for whites was 17.2 percent.