SCHOOL’S OUT
New charter school told by DEP they won’t open for school, but administrators believe they can address concerns in time >>
TRENTON » The state Department of Education has torpedoed the anticipated opening of a charter school that was supposed to prepare city students for college, just weeks before it was set to open its doors.
DOE officials determined the college prep school wasn’t ready to open following a preparedness visit to the charter school earlier this year.
Acting Commissioner Kellie LeDet wrote to Efe Odeleye, one of the founders of Achievers Early College Preparatory Charter School, July 13 informing her of the DOE’s decision to not grant the school final charter approval, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Trentonian.
Officials stated in the letter that the school failed to meet certain legal requirements regarding obtaining a fire inspection certificate and verification to open from the county superintendent.
“The Board of Trustees and founders of the Achievers Early College Preparatory Charter School have failed to meet the necessary statutory and regulatory requirements to gain final approval,” LeDet said in the letter. “Based on these findings, Achievers Early College Preparatory Charter School will not be granted a final charter.”
School officials are working to salvage the opening of the school.
Odeleye, a Philadelphia educator with ties to the Trenton area who previously served as a director of operations fellow at Uncommon Schools and executive director of Freedom Foundation, stressed the school is working around the clock to fix a “few fire doors” in an older building built in the 1920s to obtain the necessary fire inspection certificate cited as outstanding in the DOE’s denial letter.
Classes are scheduled to start at the end of August, so it is a race against the clock for school officials to address the DOE’s concerns.
“That decision is out of our hands,” Odeleye said. “All that’s left for us to do is furnish the certificate and see if it’s sufficient.”
Already faced with daunting opposition to its opening, the denial was a stunning setback for leaders of the charter school, which under former Governor Chris Christie’s administration received initial approval last year to open for the 2018-2019 school year.
The school had a lease agreement in place to rent out the St. Stanislaus School at 500 Smith Avenue in the capital city and detailed budget and plans for how it would add students each year over the next four years, according to application documents obtained by The Trentonian through a public records request.
Odeleye said the school has enrolled 90 sixth-graders this year as part of a staggered proposal to add a grade level each year, comprised of up to 90 students, until the school served grades 6 through 9.
Opposition to the opening of the college prep charter school is stiff as Wilfredo Ortiz, interim special assistant to Trenton Public Schools superintendent Fred McDowell, told The Trentonian the school district wants to see a city-wide “moratorium on the expansion” of charter schools.
“They take a lot of money from the school district,” Ortiz said. “It drains more resources from the district.”
He pointed to this year’s shuttering of International Academy of Trenton Charter School that spent $17 million to renovate the old Times of Trenton building.
School union officials previously voiced opposition to the charter school’s opening because it would take away about nearly 20 percent of Trenton middle school students once it was at capacity. They didn’t respond to requests for comment.
While leaders of the college prep school can challenge the DOE’s decision in court, the letter instructed charter officials to immediately notify students who expected to attend the school this fall so they make arrangements to enroll at another school for the 2018-2019 year.
The main page of the prep charter school’s website makes no mention of the DOE’s decision and still informs visitors the tuitionfree educational institution will open in August of this year.
Odeleye said the school notified all families of enrolled students and scheduled a community meeting to address concerns.
No one, so far, has threatened to dis-enroll their children from the school, she said.
The DOE’s decision to suddenly yank the rug from under charter school officials’ feet was welcome news to Trenton school leaders, who blamed budget shortfalls on charter schools eating away at the district’s budget.
Officials feared another charter school would siphon off millions of dollars from the district which would have been on the hook for covering tuition costs for each student who attended the charter school.
The Trenton school board previously passed a resolution decrying expansion of charter schools in the capital city because of their financial impact on a district that has endured layoffs of hundreds of employees and the shuttering of numerous schools over the years.
Mayor Reed Gusciora, a longstanding “charter school skeptic,” noted repeated failures of at least 10 charter schools in Trenton during his time as a state assemblyman.
“OK, great,” Gusciora said when informed of the Achievers’ inability to secure final state approval. “Just because you say ‘charter’ and ‘Chris Christie’ in the same sentence doesn’t mean it’s going to be a benefit to urban school systems.”
Gusciora criticized the DOE’s initial approval of Achievers’ application as short-sighted and “cruel” especially in light of the state ultimately rejecting the final charter approval.
Gusciora said the decision was “disruptive” because Trenton school district must “reabsorb” students who planned on attending Achievers.
Addressing the anti-charter school sentiments, Odeleye said she hopes to help change minds in Trenton where there has been “too many political and ideological clashes.”
“I think it’s unfortunate what happened with International, but I also think that there are many of us that have committed our life’s work to helping children like us who came from humble roots and humble beginnings who have their eyes on the prize,” she said. “Nobody wants to have families and students displaced and shuffled.”
Big Disruption
The disruption isn’t only to the students who expected to attend the school.
The school had a lease agreement in place, according to a copy of a letter laying out the terms of the lease.
The letter was addressed to Rev. Dennis Apoldite of the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church on the 300 block of South Broad Street.
The lease of the St. Stanislaus School was supposed to run from August 1 of this year through July 31, 2022, with options for two fiveyear lease renewals.
School officials agreed to rent the facility “as is” and incur any costs for renovations or repairs of the building, according to the intent to lease agreement, signed by Odeleye on July 10, 2017.
The founders were expected to pay about $65,856 in rent the first year for the 16,464-square-foot building, or about $4 per square foot.
The price more than doubled over the life of the fouryear agreement to $8.25 per square foot, or $135,828 per year, in the final two years.
Apoldite didn’t immediately return a phone call requesting comment about whether he had been made aware by the charter school’s founders of the DOE’s decision that would prevent the charter school from opening this year.
The charter school’s proposal outlined expected startup costs and salaries for teachers and staff covering the first two years.
The school expected to run on a budget of $1.1 million in its first year as part of an expected per pupil allocation of $10,287 per student and a $200,000 grant from the New School Ventures Fund, a nonprofit that boasts on its website of its work to “reimagine public education.”
The charter school set aside more than $412,000 in salaries in its first year to hire nine teachers, three of them part-time, in subjects math, history, English, science, STEAM, special education, ESL, world language and physical education, the application documents outline.
The teachers are being paid between $50,000 to $60,000 a year. The school planned to pay a principal and director of operations $80,000 in their first years, with $10,000 pay bumps for each the second year.
The director of operations would be funded through grants, the school outlined, while a school business administrator would take home $80,000 each year.
The school also set aside money for a school nurse, social worker and custodian as well as other support staff.
Odeleye said the school is doing everything it can to correct the issue “ASAP” so the school can open.