Shelby County recommends replacing Jubilee schools
Shelby County Schools is recommending its board approve nine charter schools to open next year, including six that would replace the Jubilee Catholic Schools Network.
The administration presented its recommendations to the school board Thursday to approve nine applications and deny five.
Board members however expressed concern about where the recommended schools would be located, whether they would be in areas with already high concentrations of existing schools.
They also questioned whether New Day Schools Inc., the group looking to replace six of the Jubilee schools that will close at the end of this school year, should be allowed to start with so many schools.
“I think there has to be some consideration that we’re going to make when we have an organization that doesn’t have a track record that comes in and says ‘I want more than three schools,’” board chairwoman Shante Avant said.
The school district originally received 18 applications. The school board denied all 18, sending them back to the drawing board with 30 days for revisions.
Only 14 schools resubmitted their applications, Chief of Strategy and Performance Management Brad Leon said.
New Day Schools originally filed applications to open nine schools under a network called Compass Community Schools. They did not refile applications to open schools in Downtown, South Memphis and Whitehaven.
The district recommended the board approve their six other campuses in neighborhoods like Binghampton and Berclair.
John Smarrelli, chairman of the board for New Day Schools and president of Christian Brothers University, said the Compass network needs six schools to preserve a kindergarten through 12th-grade continuum.
While the charter network is a newly launched enterprise, it will leverage many of the same people already operating the Jubilee schools.
“It’s not starting from ground zero necessarily,” he said. “We’re going to take the expertise we’ve got, start a new project and go forward from there.”
The school district will also recommend approval of an expansion of Freedom Prep charter school network and two schools that would be their network’s first in Memphis, Aster College Prep and Memphis Merit Academy.
The district recommended denial for Aspire Coleman Middle School, Cornerstone Prep Middle School, Green Dot Charter K-8, Blueprint Avodah and the Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering Elementary.
SCS previously denied a Green Dot school that appealed to the State Board of Education. The state board overturned the local decision, and it was allowed to open under the supervision of that board.
Leon said the district is still not impressed enough with Green Dot’s local track record to warrant more schools.
“Like with Aspire and Cornerstone, the overall performance record we thought didn’t justify an additional school at this time,” he said.
The Aspire Coleman Middle School proposal was a proposed solution to a longstanding issue between SCS and the state-run Achievement School District. Aspire, which operates Aspire Coleman Elementary under the ASD, began adding grades six and seven to its elementary school before the state attorney general ruled ASD schools don’t have the authority to add grades.
SCS wanted those students enrolled elsewhere, but agreed to let them stay at Coleman until Aspire could properly apply for a middle school.
The network did so, but the school district is nonetheless recommending denial of the application.
Votes on the 14 charter applications are scheduled for a special-called meeting Wednesday.
If the board approves all nine recommended new schools, it would bring the number of charter schools under SCS to 63.