mayoral academy – RI Future

On June 10 and 12, RIDE hosted public hearings at the Woonsocket Senior Center on an application to create the RISE Mayoral Academy, serving students in Woonsocket, North Smithfield and Burrillville. RISE is potentially the fifth of this only-in-Rhode Island type of multi-district charter school, after the two Blackstone Valley Prep (BVP) schools, the Achievement First Providence Mayoral Academy (AFPMA), and Hope Academy, opening this fall serving kindergarten and first graders from Providence and North Providence.

RISE’s application proposes that “fifty percent of available seats will be offered to students living in Woonsocket, with the remaining 50% available split between Burrillville and North Smithfield.” Whether this policy is legal is an open question.

One of the central definitional features of a mayoral academy is, to quote the original statue (RIGL 16-77.4-1):

A “mayoral academy” means a charter school … which enrolls students from more than one city or town including both urban and non-urban communities and which offers an equal number of enrollments to students on a lottery basis…

This suggests that each community, or the communities grouped by type, must be offered the same number of student seats in the school, selected by drawing from separate lottery pools if necessary. That is how Blackstone Valley Prep (née Democracy Prep) interpreted and implemented the law from the beginning, with 1/4 of the seats first offered to students from each of the four communities.

This means that, for example, if there were 80 available seats, and 20 applicants from Lincoln, all 20 would be accepted. If there were 200 applicants from Pawtucket, they would go into a lottery for that city’s 20 available seats (plus any seats left unclaimed by other communities).

However, in 2012, Rhode Island Mayoral Academies (RIMA) asked RIDE for clarification of this clause. RIDE’s legal department’s opinion was that this clause is superseded by a phrase in the following subsection:

If the total number of students who are eligible to attend and apply to a mayoral academy is greater than the number of spaces available, the mayoral academy shall conduct a lottery to determine which students shall be admitted.

Because this refers to “lottery” singular, as does RIDE regulation elsewhere, RIDE’s lawyers believed that there could not be multiple per community “lotteries.”

This was used as the legal justification for allowing AFPMA to use a single lottery pool for all four participating communities (Providence, North Providence, Cranston and Warwick), and for Hope Academy to do the same for Providence and North Providence students. Thus AFPMA became a segregated low-income and minority school, despite nominally including the participation of three “non-urban” communities.

Nonetheless, RIDE has also continued to accept applications including enrollment procedures that its legal department believed to be illegal as of 2012 , including the 50/50 split RISE Academy proposes.

In February of 2014, RIDE issued new document: Rhode Island Charter Public Schools: Lottery & Enrollment Guidance, with a truly impressive example of bureaucratic question-ducking. The guidance on mayoral academy enrollment, in its entirety, reads:

State statute requires Mayoral Academies to enroll from “more than one city or town including both urban and non-urban communities and which offers an equal number of enrollments to students on a lottery basis; […]” In order to fulfill statutory obligations, Mayoral Academies must submit for approval to RIDE enrollment procedures describing how the school intends to offer an equal number of enrollments on a lottery basis to students from both urban and non-urban communities.

That is, RIDE’s “guidance” does not explain its interpretation of the law, whether that is still represented by the 2012 opinion, or some subsequent internal revision.

The bottom line is that either BVP and the proposed RISE Academy are running an illegal enrollment lottery, or AFPMA and the Hope Academy are, with RIDE and the Board of Education’s approval. The four schools are working under at least two incompatible interpretations of the charter school statute. They cannot all be correct.

Before the Board of Education approves another mayoral academy, they must first make RIDE do its job and publish clear, complete, public guidance on the legal requirements for mayoral academy enrollment and ensure consistent application across existing mayoral academies

I’m opposed to corporate interests picking winners and losers in public education and that is exactly what happens when charter schools accept private sector grants for operating expenses.

Here’s how the ProJo put it in an article about a $2 million grant the Charter School Growth Fund gave to the Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy. “The national philanthropists include the Walton Family Foundation, which progressives accuse of trying to “privatize” public education by supporting charter school networks.”

It’s more than that. Here’s a list of the Charter School Growth Funds staff and Board of Directors, with a short description of what each person does when they aren’t deciding which public school in Rhode Island gets $2 million and which don’t.

Kevin Hall, president and CEO: Here’s how the Charter School Growth Fund describes him: “Before joining CSGF, Hall served as the Chief Operating Officer of The Broad Foundation for several years where he led various aspects of the Foundation’s grant investment strategy and work. Prior to Broad, he was a co-founder and ran business development for Chancellor Beacon Academies, a manager of charter and private schools across the U.S. Previously, Hall ran a division of infoUSA, and worked at McKinsey & Co., Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Teach For America.”

James C. Rahn: He runs the Kern Family Foundation, which donates to education reform issues and religious leaders. According to its website Kern’s goals for funding religious leaders include “Educate future and existing pastors about how the economy is a moral system in which people exchange their work, and that free enterprise grounded in moral character is the most effective way to promote dignity, lift people out of poverty, and produce human flourishing.”

Greg Penner: Also worked for Goldman Sachs, before going to work for Wal-Mart, where he now serves on the Board of Directors.

Mason Hawkins: He’s one of the richest mutual fund investors in America. Why? Maybe because he runs his mutual fund like it’s a hedge fund.

Michael W. Grebe: He ran Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s campaign fundraising efforts, in addition to helping out with seemingly every other union-bashing, government-shrinking effort in Wisconsin.

Allan Golston: Works for Gates Foundation.

Stacy Schusterman: According to the Wall Street Journal, she inherited her family’s oil fortune and the family foundation also donates heavily to Jewish causes.

John Fisher: Worth more than $2 billion, his parents founded The Gap and he is majority owner of the Oakland A’s. He’s also chairman of the KIPP Foundation, the nation’s largest charter school management company.

Tag: mayoral academy

Time for RIDE to define mayoral academy enrollment

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