Board moving to close Bartlett charter school
More than 100 Shelby County Schools students may have to find a new school before the fall semester if the board votes next week to shut down their charter school.
The school, Gateway University, is operating in Bartlett, outside Shelby County Schools boundaries. That was a concern when the school opened last August, but is now against the law, district Chief of Strategy and Performance Management Brad Leon said.
If the school is violating state law, he said, it needs to close. The only entity that can close a school is the district that oversees it, which in this case is SCS. The school had 112 students last academic year, all in the ninth grade.
The school board reviewed its op-
tions in a work session Tuesday night before a possible vote next week. If the board does not close the school, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson said, the state could withhold funding from the district.
“I think at the end of the day, if the board does not act, I think the state would then be placed in the position to have to act,” Hopson said. “They could easily penalize us in that process.”
The administration is recommending the board shut down the school.
Leon said both the state Department of Education and SCS reached out to Gateway to notify them they were out of compliance with the law.
Leon said his office’s communications included a May 31 deadline for the school to secure a new location. After that, Gateway was notified, it would come before the school board. The board’s June business meeting is next week.
“I guess it’s possible sometime between now and next week they could get a facility,” Leon said.
A spokesperson responding to an email sent to Gateway founder and CEO Sosepriala Dede said the school is “in the final stages of executing a facility contract within the boundaries of Shelby County Schools” and is “very excited about the upcoming school year.”
The statement did not say where the new facility is located or when a deal would be completed.
School leaders have had the last two years to find a suitable location. The school board approved Gateway as a charter in 2016 for a fall 2017 opening.
The state Department of Education received a transition plan from Gateway, spokeswoman Sara Gast said, that detailed the process the school planned to go through to find a new building. That process started last August, according to the document, and included forming a facilities committee, conducting site visits and narrowing a search list to a few possibilities.
Everything up until “finalize lease” is listed as completed.
The state gave the school — and SCS — a July 1 deadline to remedy the problem. Dede said last year the school had a hard time securing a suitable facility for a school within SCS boundaries, let alone its intended location of Downtown Memphis. The school currently operates out of 6165 Stage Road.
Board member Stephanie Love said she has other concerns about the school. Love said she received calls from parents saying it took two hours for the bus to come pick up their children to take them to Bartlett.
Love said she sat at a bus stop with the children to find out for herself how long they had to wait.
“I did sit there and it did take two hours for the bus to come pick those babies up in the morning, and they didn’t make it to school until after 9 o’clock,” she said.
Gateway changed its transportation provider after issues with buses not arriving on time to school, according to a statement from the school’s CEO.
If the board closes the school, which it would do by revoking its charter, or the contract it has with the district, Leon said communication would go out to parents, who would have just over a month to choose another school for their children.
The district would help inform them of their choices, he said.
“If we revoke in July, they have no time,” he said of the urgency of a board vote next week.
Still, he said, the charter could appeal if the board shuts them down. The state Board of Education would have 60 days — well after the school year starts — to hold a hearing.
Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law in March that prohibits charters from opening up outside the boundaries of the school district that authorizes them. It was the situation with Gateway that first illuminated the hole in the existing charter law.
“The law was obviously drawn up for this scenario,” Hopson said, but added he didn’t think its implications had been fully considered.
The attorney general issued an opinion in September, at the request of Education Commissioner Candice McQueen, that a charter school did not have the authority to open beyond the boundaries of the school district that authorized it to open.