‘Schools of hope’ charter can open in Apopka

School board vote unanimous despite officials’ concerns

A high-performing charter school operator can open a campus in Apopka with the goal of attracting students now zoned to attend D-rated Wheatley Elementary School, the Orange County School Board has decided.

The vote for the “schools of hope” was unanimous but unenthusiastic. Board members voted yes on the advice of their attorney, who said if they turned down the Mater Academy application, they’d end up in court, lose the fight and then lose money.

“We are not voting to approve a charter,” said board member Karen Castor Dentel on Tuesday. “We are voting to recognize the state authority to put their school of hope here, I guess. If we were to deny it, it doesn’t matter, they will still come.”

A 2017 state law — one the Orange and other Florida school boards unsuccessfully fought in court — allows charter school operators with proven track records to open near “persistently low performing” public schools.

Typically, school boards must approve the applications submitted by charter school operators, which are privately run but publicly funded. But with “schools of hope” charters, the board has no discretion to turn down one that wants to open a campus near a “persistently low performing” school or in an “opportunity zone,” a federal designation for economically stressed communities.

The state’s goal is for “schools of hope” to offer options to parents whose children attend a school where academic performance has lagged for years as measured by state test scores and school grades.

“No child in Florida should be denied a chance at their future because they have the misfortune to end up in the wrong school,” Richard Corcoran, then the speaker of the Florida House and the proposal’s champion, wrote in an opinion piece for the South Florida Sun Sentinel after the law passed. Corcoran is now Florida’s education commissioner.

Though one school board member called it a “treasure of the community,” Wheatley Elementary has earned four Ds and a C since 2016 and been tagged “persistently low performing” by the Florida Department of Education. Its south Apopka neighborhood also is labeled an “opportunity zone.”

Mater Academy, based in Hialeah, is the first hope operator to target Orange County for one of its campuses. Mater has been in

business for more than 20 years and currently runs 27 charter schools in Florida. Most of its schools are in South Florida, but three are in Osceola County.

In paperwork filed with Orange County Public Schools, Mater said its mission is to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds by preparing them “for success in college and life.” The schools said it offers top-notch academics, a “college-going” focus and lots of parental involvement to help children living in poverty find success.

Mater schools have “improved the educational trajectory of thousands of families,” it said.

Mater students in MiamiDade and Osceola counties, for example, have outperformed those in districtrun schools on Florida’s standardized exams. The network has been designated a “high-performing” charter group by the U.S. Department of Education and won a $19 million grant to help it expand, and it is one of five hope operators approved in Florida.

Mater Academy Apopka is scheduled to open in August 2022 and eventually serve students in kindergarten-through-12th grade, though it wouldn’t be open to all grades initially. It doesn’t have a site picked yet, and it could operate from more than one location in an area within a five-mile radius of Wheatley, located on Marvin C. Zanders Avenue.

It expects about 40% of its students would be youngsters now zoned to attend Wheatley. It could enroll up to 750 students in its first year and up to 3,000 eventually, its documents show. Mater would target students in Wheatley’s neighborhood, though the school could be open to children from across the county.

Wheatley opened in 1952 as a school for Black children. During segregation, it was a K-12 campus that served Black students from a large swath of west Orange. Now its K-5 student population is 72% Black and 23% Hispanic. Almost all are from low-income families.

The school got a rebuilt campus in 2014. It is also one of nine OCPS campuses that gets extra attention from the district because of its students’ academic struggles.

Board member Melissa Byrd, whose district includes Wheatley, said the board’s approval of the Mater contract should not be viewed as a criticism of the school.

“There are tremendous things happening at Phillis

Wheatley Elementary,” she said, adding it is making “tremendous progress” under the leadership of a “fantastic” principal.

Wheatley, like all of Florida’s public schools, was last issued a state grade in 2019. Because of the pandemic, the state canceled student testing last spring and then didn’t issue 2020 school report cards, which are based on student performance on state exams.

“The school is a treasure to the community,” Byrd added, and has a “loyal community around it that loves that school.”

Orange school board members also offered no criticism of Mater, only of the state law that they view as usurping local decision-making powers.

John Palmerini, an associate general counsel with OCPS, told the board it had no choice but to approve the agreement with Mater. If it didn’t, the 2017 law would lead to it losing out on other state money and being forced to pay Mater’s attorneys fees and costs after a hearing that was all but guaranteed to be unsuccessful.

“We must approve it,” said Chair Teresa Jacobs. “We’re going to end up in a course of legal action which we have no opportunity to prevail in.”