School gets last chance to retain its charter
Covenant Keepers College Preparatory School, an open-enrollment charter school in southwest Little Rock, on Thursday won at least a temporary reprieve from state-ordered, permanent closure at the end of this school year.
The Arkansas Board of Education voted 7-1 to conduct a hearing May 30 concerning the operation of the 160-student middle school before making a final decision on whether to revoke the school’s charter. The publicly funded school, which operates independently of the surrounding Little Rock School District, must have a state
charter to exist.
The Education Board decision to have a hearing comes in the wake of the state Charter Authorizing Panel’s vote last month to revoke the school’s charter, effective June 30, because of concerns regarding governance, finances and academic distress at the school at 5615 Geyer Springs Road.
Decisions by the Charter Authorizing Panel, which is made up of top-level staff at the Arkansas Department of Education, are subject to Board of Education review. The board has the legal authority to either accept a decision by the authorizing panel on a charter school or conduct its own hearing on which to base a final decision.
The Education Board decided to hold a hearing on Covenant Keepers at the same meeting in which it accepted the authorizing panel’s earlier decision — without any further hearing — to put the Rockbridge Montessori Charter School, also in Little Rock, on probation for one year.
Jess Askew III of the Kutak Rock law firm asked the Education Board on Thursday to do the review of the panel’s earlier decision on Covenant Keepers.
“Covenant Keepers serves a high-need community in a part of Little Rock that really has no adequate alternative educational opportunities for these children that it serves who are in high poverty and are an English-language-learner population,” Askew said.
The sixth- through eighthgrade school is one of about a dozen schools statewide that is labeled by the state Department of Education as academically distressed because of four years of low student performance on state math and literacy exams. Askew told the board that the school has shown recent improvement in student achievement, noting that between 2015 and 2016, achievement rose eight points — a 25 percent increase in the percent of students scoring at proficient or better levels.
That was a better rate than that shown in the academically distressed middle schools in the surrounding Little Rock School District, he said. Two of the Little Rock’s seven middle schools — Cloverdale and Henderson — are on the state’s academic-distress list.
Askew said the evidence on which the Charter Authorizing Panel made the decision to revoke Covenant Keepers’ charter “was based on points that were suspect and in some
cases were simply wrong.”
At the April 19 hearing by the panel, its members cited as reasons for revoking the charter the school’s long-standing academic-distress label and its finances — including a report that the school ended last school year with a $110,000 deficit. Similar negative balances would have put other, traditional school districts in the state’s fiscal-distress program, panel members said at the time.
Panel members also highlighted school founder and superintendent Valerie Tatum’s salary of $138,000, which is among the top half of superintendent salaries in the state — despite the small size of the school.
Additionally, panel members were troubled by the fact that Tatum said she had received grant money for the school from the school’s sponsoring nonprofit corporation, City of Fire Community Development Inc. In response to questions about the corporation’s knowledge and involvement in the school, Tatum said she was not on the corporation’s board of directors — even though a listing of corporations by the Arkansas secretary of state’s office showed her and her husband to be corporation officers.
In making his case for the Education Board’s review, Askew said the secretary of state’s listing of corporation officers was outdated. Regardless, he said, nothing in law prevents Tatum from being on the board of the school’s sponsoring corporation. To see the corporation’s current board membership and activity, one must look at the minutes and resolutions of the corporate board.
Askew said the financial shortfalls at the school were a matter of timing, as the reports were produced before revenue for the time period were posted. As to Tatum’s salary, he said there was no evidence shown that the salary created a burden for the school.
Education Board member Diane Zook of Melbourne had asked earlier this year that the Charter Authorizing Panel look into the school’s academic record.
“If that had been the sole focus of the panel,” Askew said Thursday, “we wouldn’t be here. The academic progress was adequate, sufficient. It was these other things that got in the way.” He also said the school did not receive notice that the nonacademic matters would be raised and, as a result, was not fully prepared to respond.
Education Board member Charisse Dean of Little Rock
made the motion to hold a hearing on the school.
Dean said the school reaches students “not normally reached” and that while it is labeled as academically distressed, it has shown progress.
Fitz Hill, another Education Board member from Little Rock, also spoke in support of reviewing the school, questioning where the Covenant Keepers pupils would go if their school is closed. Attending a higher-performing school doesn’t assure that a student will feel loved and connected, he said. Just as important as test scores, he said, is a student’s motivation to go to school.
Education Board member Jay Barth of Little Rock said he was comfortable with the work of the charter panel, which wouldn’t be doing its job if it didn’t look at all aspects of a school’s operation. Barth cast the sole vote of no on conducting a hearing.
Education Board member Ouida Newton of Leola said she visited the school and was impressed with what she saw but also has very deep concerns about its management and finances.
Tatum said after the meeting that the Education Board “has a heart” for Covenant Keepers and its members understand the hard work that has been done at the school.
She also said she has “huge respect” for the Charter Authorizing Panel, saying they have a passion for what they do.
“No harm done,” Tatum said about the course of events. “I’m just thankful for the renewed chance to be able to come back and lay things out so crystal clear. Because, when they talk about academic growth, that is something that we can’t put under the rug. It happened.”
She said the other concerns raised by the panel can be clarified.
The Education Board didn’t address the charter-school agenda item until about 5 p.m. in a meeting that had started at 10 a.m.
About 50 pupils and almost two dozen parents wearing red Covenant Keepers T-shirts attended an earlier part of the meeting in a show of support for the school.
“Kudos to my parents who stood strong today. They were on the ground, ready to shout out loud for southwest Little Rock,” said Tatum, who added that despite the panel’s vote to revoke the charter. the school is receiving calls about new student enrollment.
“There has been a renewed force in southwest Little Rock, and parents with tenacity saying ‘We’re not going anywhere.’”