Committee recommends board reject Clarksville charter school application

CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – The lines were drawn in the school board meeting room last night during the special called study session regarding American Classical Academy Montgomery’s application: on one side, dedicated supporters of the charter school gathered to promote the approval, and on the other, the unyielding opposition was standing fast and firm.

The School Board approved the 20-member Charter Review Team, also referred to as “Charter Review Committee,” on January 17, 2023.

Dr. Jean Luna-Vedder, Director of Schools; Dr. Angela Huff, Chief of Staff; and Elizabeth Vincent, Director of Continuous Improvement all serve on the committee, and collaborated to coordinate the application review process.

Elizabeth Vincent presented the recommendations of the Charter Review Committee to the School Board. The committee was tasked with the researching and analyzing the 538-page long ACAM application and making a recommendation on the approval or denial of the application.

The committee focused on both the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three sections in the application, highlighting the pros and cons of ACAM’s capability as a school. In order for the committee to approve the application, all sections evaluated must either meet or exceed the standard.

Last night, Vincent told the board that the committee reached a verdict: Deny.

Academic Design and Capacity

ACAM partially meets the standard in terms of academic design and capacity. This section includes the applicant’s academic plans, enrollment, marketing, student recruitment, school culture, and student population.

As notated in the presentation, the primary strengths that the applicant had are the following:

• There is a focus on a small school environment.
• Their mission is aligned with some of the central purposes for forming a
charter school as outlined in state law.
• The applicant is very grounded in their mission and philosophy.
• There are more diverse materials presented that the applicant is using for its marketing campaigns, such as materials in different languages.

However, there were a few deficiencies to be addressed.

“First and foremost, we cannot confirm clear alignment between the curricular materials that the applicant plans to use and the Tennessee academic standards,” Vincent told the board last night. “Students are held accountable to standards in Tennessee and not a curriculum, and we want to ensure that those materials are clearly aligned.”

According to Vincent, they asked ACAM about this alignment during their capacity interview, in which the applicant essentially said that those are ongoing conversations and there was a clear understanding and expectation that the adults in that building would be fully aware and trained on the standards so that they can ensure that alignment was in place.

Vincent also said that it was the committee’s understanding that the applicant’s recruitment strategy would take them out of state to find an administrator, meaning that the Administrator of ACAM would most like not be local to Tennessee.

“That learning curve is pretty steep,” Vincent said. “To become intimately familiar with the Tennessee state standards and know them to a level to ensure that curricular alignment…it’s a pretty high expectation.”

This also brought into question the effectivity of their curricular materials in alignment with Tennessee academic standards. Vincent highlighted specifically on the applicant’s chosen math materials.

One of the committee members used a third-party website called edreports.org that reviews curricular materials that may be put in classrooms across the country and determines if they are aligned with college and career ready standards. According to the report, several of the materials created by Singapore math, which was cited in the application, did not meet those standards.

According to the presentation, other Deficiencies included were:

• Their plans for providing RTI supports are not in alignment with state standards. Math block is not long enough for state expectations (Pg. 48).
• Concerns with verbiage in their student handbook.
  • Approach to unexcused absences and that they do not intend for students to receive credit for homework and assignments they miss
    during those times (Pg. 12, Student Handbook Attachment B).
  • Approach to outstanding fee balances preventing students from registering for the next school year may not be legal (Pg. 29).
• Student decorum – “clean and tasteful,” “hair styled traditionally,” “boys’ hair not being lower than the top of the shirt collar in the back,” “religious purposes,” “reasonable uniform alterations,” (Pages 14 and 15, Student Handbook Attachment B)
  • Many terms that are not clear to ensure that the environment would be inclusive to students in what is a very diverse community.
  • This concern has been highlighted by community members specifically in both our survey and on social media, which is significant to the review committee.
• Unclear what the level of parent support is in the community and the level of demand in the community for their model.
  • Survey they highlighted only appears to have gotten response from 25-27 families with children, which does not represent significant
    demand (Pg 110)

CMCSS has also conducted their own survey on their website to gather input from the community about their feelings regarding the charter school application. The reception from the community thus far has been roughly half opposed, and half in support.

Operations Plan and Capacity

ACAM did not meet the standard when it came to operations plan and capacity. The operations section included areas such as human capital, food service, facilities, and transportation.

Although the committee found many deficiencies, they were appreciative of a few strengths the applicant had.

• Some of the members on the ACAM board are local representees.
• They have insurance assurances that are required by the application and by Tennessee state law.
• There are plans to use Tennessee evaluation systems for teachers and administrators.
• Key central staff for ACE have been retained from last year.

However, there were some large, underlying issues.  Besides the concerns with governance structure, the biggest issue stemmed from their facility plans.

“First and foremost, the applicant only highlighted land that they are looking at right now on which they intend to build a school and there were no other contingency locations provided for consideration of the review committee in the event they can secure land quickly enough,” Vincent said. “They’ve only allotted a few months for construction of their facility unless we’re just misunderstanding their timeline. They’ve allotted less than six months to actually construct their school and that may be a misunderstanding in their startup time in the application. But that is certainly a concern for the review committee.”

The applicant also provided an architectural rendering for their facility in the application, Vincent said, and the comittee feels that ACAM may have severely underestimated the costs of construction.

“The greatest concern though, as laid out by the applicant at this point, really has to do with the plans that they have highlighted for their facilities, their enrollment projection, and their transportation plans all sort of taken together,” Vincent told the board. “It’s because they’ve highlighted four possible locations for the school, all of which were located in the same census tract in the Montgomery county area.”

According to the applicant, their projected enrollment is modeled after similar demographics in the district: 40% students of color, 50% students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and 15% students with disabilities.

On page 119 of the application, the applicant says, “ACAM strives to make its Classical Education model available to all families from every race, class, and location, with a focus on those families who live nearest the school.”

“When we look at the demographics on this census tract, it’s clear that the applicant would struggle to enroll students at the targets that they set, particularly students of color.”

Many of those in attendance were shocked, several gasps could be heard as Vincent pulled up the next slide.

“They would also struggle to recruit students from low-income backgrounds from this area,” Vincent explained. “Because when we look at the median income of Clarksville Montgomery County versus this tract income, this tract has an income at a median level that’s about 181% higher than the county as a whole.”

“The current facilities plans that we have to evaluate as a review committee, we do not feel that they can enroll students at the targets that they set…Especially because they indicate that they don’t plan to provide transportation. They indicate that they will consider it and they do have a slight contingency for that, but they don’t indicate that they plan to provide transportation, a service that about 70% of low-income families require in a district in which nearly two-thirds of our students currently rely on transportation to and from school,” Vincent said.

Financial Plan and Capacity

ACAM did not meet the standard when it came to financial plan and capacity.

Vincent started by commending the ACAM on the strengths in their application.

• The applicant was able to communicate their access to additional sources of revenue through the interview, which was helpful to the review committee.
• The applicant provided MOUs for the services they can obtain at some of their quoted prices.

However, according to the Charter Review Committee, the applicant did not provide estimates for critical expenditures that could affect their liquidity. There were no estimates for substitute costs, custodial costs, or furniture costs in year zero.

“The review committee feels that they have overestimated their revenue,” Vincent said. “Particularly, from the state level. Specifically, their revenue assumes full enrollment from the demographic estimates that they provided in their enrollment estimates and as you’ve seen me highlight previously, we’re skeptical that those enrollment estimates will pan out based on the plans that we have available to us in the application right now.”

“We are also concerned about their financial viability and their plans given that they desire to waive Tennessee Fiscal Accounting Standards in section 2.11,” Vincent told the board. “This is not a waiver that many other charter applicants request in our review of other charter applications in years past. And we want to have an understanding if they plan to finance themselves with a loan as a contingency as they indicated, if their plans are sound and viable, we want to have an understanding of why waiving that law would be a necessity.”