Charter school is rejected by HISD
Trustees vote against adding the struggling academy to district
Houston ISD trustees opted not to save an underperforming charter school, voting Thursday against making the C.O.R.E. Academy an in-district charter school.
The Texas Education Agency told the southeast Houston charter, which serves about 475 students in elementary school through high school, that it could either close or be absorbed by Houston ISD after receiving poor academic ratings from the state in each of its three years of existence.
While traditional public schools are given five years to improve, charter schools have only three, according to state law.
C.O.R.E. Academy officials told the board on Thursday that preliminary data showed the school had finally improved its accountability rankings this year, although the ratings won’t be published until Tuesday.
“C.O.R.E. would not enter HISD as a failing school but
rather one that would add value to HISD’s portfolio of schools,” said Shun Johnson, C.O.R.E. Academy’s business manager. “We ask for your vote of confidence, we ask you to help us keep our doors open to these promising students we welcomed four years ago.”
State takeover possible
The school was last out of 878 elementary schools and 317 middle schools in the Houston area on the Children at Risk rankings, which measure academic performance in the context of poverty levels.
About 93 percent of C.O.R.E. Academy’s students qualified as economically disadvantaged and 84 percent were deemed “at risk,” according to 2016-17 data. Children can be considered at-risk if they have a history of poor academic performance or meet certain social criteria, such as being homeless or pregnant.
The TEA this week notified Houston ISD that the district faces takeover itself or campus closures if by 2018 it fails to improve 15 low-performing schools. Some HISD trustees worried that absorbing the charter school would add another campus to its list of struggling schools that could trigger a state takeover.
C.O.R.E. Academy has floundered academically amid extraordinary teacher turnover. According to state data, about 4 in 5 C.O.R.E. Academy teachers each year had no classroom experience. The average C.O.R.E. Academy teacher earned about $38,000, at least $10,000 less than was made by entry-level teachers at Houston-area traditional public schools.
At the same time, Johnson and principal-founder David Fuller each earned about $180,000 in 2016-17. By comparison, Houston ISD principals earned $80,000 to $130,000 this year, and superintendents of traditional public school districts serving less than 1,000 students averaged about $100,000 a year.
Fuller told the Chronicle earlier this month that he and Johnson took in salaries of $143,750 this year and back compensation of $36,000, the result of board members not having paid them their full salaries in prior years.
‘I love this school’
Despite the C.O.R.E. Academy’s shortcomings, students and parents said Thursday night that the school helped them succeed when they otherwise would have been lost on a larger campus.
Shawntae Wilson, whose two students attended C.O.R.E., said the school’s caring teachers helped reignite her children’s love of learning.
“I really love this school. The main reason why is because my kids leave in the morning and they’re excited, and in evening when they come home they’re excited,” Wilson said. “They’ll come home talking about assignments and what they learned in school.”
Vote was 4-3
Savannah Nicole Parrish, who would have been a rising senior at C.O.R.E. Academy, said she came to the school a year behind but will now graduate on time thanks to help from the school’s teachers and administrators.
“I didn’t have the confidence in myself, but C.O.R.E. believed in me and taught me how to believe in myself,” Parrish said. “They saw the potential in me I never knew that I had. It showed me my potential and changed my life forever.”
Trustees Jolanda Jones and Rhonda Skillern-Jones said the testimony from teachers, parents and students made them change their votes in favor of keeping the school open. They and Board President Wanda Adams voted to keep the school open while Trustees Anna Eastman, Diana Davila, Anne Sung and Holly Flynn Vilaseca voted against it. Trustee Mike Lunceford was absent.