Multiple failures, lack of accountability should doom charter school
By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times
As the drama unfolds surrounding Graystone Academy Charter School, there are undoubtedly winners and losers in the process of the charter school having its charter revoked.
The biggest losers, of course, are the parents and students — some 272 — who are being told that the school will continue and open “on time.”
It won’t, and it shouldn’t. I’m not trying to be mean, but it is the truth, and Graystone parents literally have days to enroll their kids elsewhere.
Yes, an appeal is going to be filed in Commonwealth Court, arguing that due process was not given to the school. In a statement released by the school late last week, the school’s board of trustees are seeking a stay of the ruling of the Charter Appeal Board, issued last week.
The Graystone folks are arguing that the Coatesville Area School District is out to get them — and wants the roughly $5 million a year it must give the charter school back. While there is probably some truth to that, is says a lot about the mindset of Graystone’s board of trustees and administration that it appears that they were, and there’s no other word, careless about playing by the rules.
But after reading the damning ruling by the CAB, the due process argument — after a more than two years since the Coatesville Area School Board voted to revoke the school’s charter — lacks merit. And frankly, most of the school administration’s explanations for voluminous violations of the school’s charter and state education rules sound a lot like my 12-year-olds when explaining why they didn’t do their homework.
But more evident are the facts as determined by the CAB: multiple violations of the school’s charter, failure to complete audits in a timely fashion, and worst of all: a continued failure to meet the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s standards for student performance.
The ruling says it all in stark terms:
“Graystone, as found and discussed above committed a number of material violations of its charter and, in short, was not true to its charter.”
Some of the highlights:
• Failure to have a school library, despite it being specified in the school charter.
• Reduction of the number of school days from 200 to less than 180 without approval of the CASD school board
• Graystone made Annual Yearly Progress on PSSAs once in school history and failed to make AYP five straight years in reading and math — and scores have been sliding in recent years, despite higher state standards.
• Failure to comply with state Education Department deadlines for filing annual audits, filing them in four straight years four months late, nine months late, 10 months late and seven months late.
There’s more, a lot more, sadly, but you get the idea. Any single one of these items would be grounds to shut Graystone down. Taken in its entirety, it is almost impossible to see a scenario that any responsible judge will allow this failed school to reopen.
For years, Graystone appears to have operated as a rogue enterprise, willfully ignoring any public oversight — and millions and millions of public tax dollars have gone into the school with no accountability.
While, in concept, the idea of charter schools and school choice is appealing, without public oversight and full accountability, we cannot expect the taxpayers to fund them.
While it is too late for Graystone and parents and students of the school, we need to see reform of the rules and structures for charter schools, adding public accountability, oversight, and strict monitoring of student achievement.
Clearly, this is not happening right now.
