School Board rejects both initial charter school applications for Clarksville-Montgomery County

CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Both applications the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System received this year from organizations looking to open charter schools were rejected Tuesday night by a unanimous vote from the School Board.

The board heard from the district’s Charter School Review Committee at the April 12 meeting, and the committee recommended then that the board deny both applications.

The vote Tuesday was 6-0 to reject both. Board member Herbert Nelson was absent. The organizations proposing the charter schools now have 30 days to submit an amended application for reconsideration.

The review process

Elizabeth Vincent, the district’s director of continuous improvement, presented the committee’s recommendation to the board on the proposed American Classical Academy Montgomery and the Oxton Academy Charter High School, after two months of review.

She went over the state laws and guidelines about how to districts are to evaluate charter applications, how those schools should be governed and what role the public school system has in monitoring the schools once they’re established.

Engaging the public was also part of the state’s guidelines, and the district created surveys and publicized the applications.

Vincent said that from the surveys, on which the district received about 20 responses on each application, the public was evenly split in terms of support or concerns.

The state law also recommends that schools should only be granted charters if they meet or exceed all rubric standards in three summary sections: academics, operations and financial management. The review committee found that both applicants only partially met the standard in academics, but failed to meet standards in operations and financial management.

American Classical Academy Montgomery

While Vincent said the committee appreciated the American Classical Academy Montgomery’s emphasis on creating a small-school feeling and resources for individualized support, Vincent said there were concerns about the school’s compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

One item in particular was a clause in the student handbook that required students to be “independently toileting,” which could be a violation of IDEA.

But Mike Harner, the chief of staff at Hillsdale College, ACAM’s charter sponsor, told Clarksville Now, “Students with disabilities or specific needs will have plans developed as appropriate under IDEA or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.”

He added that this part of their application is still under development.

Vincent further told the board, “Overall, there’s also just not a level of experience or expertise that the review committee could detect in their current leadership team or in their board, specifically for working with students with disabilities.”

Vincent also said there were no letters of support from local residents in the application, which is part of the guidelines laid out by the state.

She said ACAM told the committee they were collecting additional letters, however, the letters they received were questionable.

“Around five out of 12 (letters received) were identical or nearly identical, which the review committee could not rightfully say indicated a broad indication of support,” Vincent told the board.

When asked about the duplicate letters, Harner told Clarksville Now that they had submitted several letters.

“In our review, we’ve submitted letters with the CMCSS committee from community leaders from many backgrounds, ranging from Congressman Mark Green to professors from Austin Peay State University to local business owners. Most importantly, however, we have many letters of support from local parents who desire to see an option like ACAM in their community,” Harner said in an email response.

Other challenges noted by the committee were ACAM’s lack of consideration to military families, the 19 waivers from Tennessee education laws that ACAM applied for, contingency plans for local growth, their proposed governance structure and budget concerns with relation to start-up costs.

Oxton Academy Charter High School

For Oxton Academy, Vincent said the committee felt like the model of directly targeting students at risk for dropping out would serve many students in the district.

“Ultimately, in the interview, the applicant showed a passion and a drive for working with at-risk students, which they identified as their focus and their mission, and that passion and that drive was evident in their interview,” Vincent said.

Strengths in Oxton’s application included how leaders built community support over a year, with the inclusion of the Chamber of Commerce and businesses like Hankook in its vision for collaborating with the community’s needs.

However, Vincent said the committee felt the number of options the school hoped to provide its students for pathways to career-technical training and the staffing it proposed did not align.

Additionally, when it came to the school’s financial proposal, Vincent said there were concerns about the budget and how the school plans to sustain itself long-term.

“The review committee ultimately noticed that with the organization’s very conservative budget particularly in facilities and renovations costs with little contingency for an increased cost, that that might not be enough to sustain them,” Vincent said.

“The projections of revenue were tied to current market conditions, and were very conservative,” Marcel Monnar, president of One to One Learning, Oxton’s charter sponsor, told Clarksville Now.

“Those revenue sources are variable each year, so it made sense to simply use the state’s current funding formulas to effectively fund the school and treat any additional revenue as added value when they would be granted,” Monnar continued.

Other concerns Vincent mentioned included a conservative facilities plan, the school’s plan for nutrition and transportation that largely relied on pulling from the district’s existing resources and other budget items that were not included in start-up costs.

Both organizations have 30 days to resubmit an amended application, after which the review committee has a 60-day window to reevaluate and return to the School Board with new recommendations.