The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two charter schools face possible closure
Officials cite below-par academic record, other problems; parents rally.
Two south Fulton County charter schools with nearly 800 students may be forced to close soon due to subpar academic performance, suboptimal record-keeping and other concerns raised by the school district that oversees them.
Officials at Fulton County Schools have concluded that The RISE Schools failed to comply with multiple terms of their three-year charters, which expire this summer. The officials are advising the Fulton school board, which is meeting today, to deny the schools’ request to renew the charters.
Parents are rallying ahead of that vote in a last-ditch effort to save RISE Grammar and RISE Prep. The vast majority at both schools are Black or Hispanic. More than two-thirds of Grammar’s elementary school students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, as do nearly half of the middle school students at Prep.
More than 1,200 people have signed an online petition to keep them open.
“I would hope we would be given the grace that we’ve been asking for,” said Juan Pullen, 51, who has two daughters at RISE Prep. The school faltered academically because students had a hard time readjusting to the classroom after attending online during the pandemic, he said.
Charter schools are publicly funded but independently operated. In Georgia, they operate under the authority of the state or, as in this case, of a school district.
For the past two years, the RISE schools failed to meet academic targets in their charters, which require them to produce everhigher scores on state-standardized tests — the Georgia Milestones — or outscore the county average, or at least the average of a few nearby schools.
Lara Sterling, chairwoman of the RISE board, noted that the Georgia Department of Education got the federal government to waive the use of test scores to hold traditional schools accountable during the pandemic.
“So we want equity,” she said.
“If you’re granting a waiver and not holding schools accountable for scores during the past two years, then judge us on scores from 2022-23 forward, not 2021.”
Sterling said the RISE schools had been “on an upward trajectory” in 2019, before the pandemic disruptions.
RISE Grammar’s score on the College and Career Ready Performance Index, a federally required school report card based on the Milestones scores, rose 11 points that year (the CCRPI is on a 100point scale). The school still failed to beat Fulton’s CCRPI average score, but did outperform three of the six nearby schools, one more than in 2018.
Prep’s trajectory was up, too, but just barely: by a tenth of a point, far less than the district average or most of the county middle schools nearby.
Prep started strong when it opened in 2015, district officials noted in 2019, when RISE officials sought to renew their then-expiring original charters. But performance lagged as the school grew.
Fulton granted a renewal, but instead of the usual five-year charters, RISE got just three years.
Sterling said that when RISE pursued a $14 million loan to improve its property, district officials argued against the debt due to the tentative nature of the three-year charters.
RISE took the loan anyway, and relations with the county soured. Fulton staff wrote that RISE failed to enter grades in a timely manner, potentially affecting the district’s funding. They added that the charter schools struggled with “basic” special education procedures and compliance, potentially exposing the district to liability.
Academic performance plays a key role in the current recommendation for non-renewal. Both RISE schools landed on the state Education Department’s latest “Targeted Support and Improvement” list because their special education students performed in the bottom 5% statewide on the CCRPI. That is forbidden in their charters.
Scores on internal tests given in Fulton, called iready, indicate that students enter RISE Grammar on grade level then fall behind in subsequent years.
Pullen said he and many other parents were unaware until recently that the schools might be closed. He said there hadn’t been much communication between them and district leaders.
Several Fulton school board members expressed dismay that parents were unaware of the academic concerns. Fulton Superintendent Mike Looney said his staff isn’t directly involved in governing the district’s charter schools, but said district leaders must communicate better with parents when their school is in trouble.
That didn’t change his position on the RISE charters, though. “We need to have the intestinal fortitude and courage to call it,” he said, “and to hold ourselves and all of our schools, charter schools or traditional schools, accountable for student outcomes.”
Now, it’s up to the Fulton board to decide the schools’ fate.