BESE postpones vote on Red River Charter application to December

The process for considering Red River Charter Academy’s appeal to the state Board of Elementary & Secondary Education for permission to operate an independent public middle school in Avoyelles Parish has been postponed by two months, RRCA President Jessica Couvillion said.

For the past several years, the Avoyelles Parish School Board has denied the proposed charter school’s request to open as a 6-8 middle school within the local school district. As allowed by state law, RRCA has appealed to BESE to be granted a charter by the state as an independent public school.

In the past, the third-party evaluator would conduct its review in August and submit a recommendation to BESE to approve or reject the application at its October meeting. This year the third-party evaluator interview and recommendation will be in October, Couvillion said.

For the past three years, the evaluator has recommended approving the charter. It is expected to recommend approval again this year.

Although BESE was always supposed to vote at its October meeting, the vote was deferred to later meetings in the past.

WITHDREW APPLICATION

RRCA withdrew its application prior to last October’s BESE meeting. School officials said they were postponing their efforts until after the federal court declared the school district to be unitary.

That was supposed to have happened during the summer, but U.S. District Judge Dee Drell has not yet issued the ruling ending the decades-old desegregation case.

Couvillion said she was told BESE wanted to delay any vote on RRCA’s appeal to December to ensure all of the board members could be present.

Coincidentally -- or maybe not -- the delay also ensures the School Board races on the Nov. 6 ballot and any runoffs on Dec. 8 will have been decided before BESE would have to vote.Several of the board races have candidates who have either voiced support for RRCA or are believed to support allowing the charter to open.

If that scuttlebutt is accurate, and the board that would take office Jan. 1 would be a majority pro-charter, it is likely BESE would postpone a vote or RRCA would withdraw its application to give the School Board an opportunity to approve it as a locally-approved charter.

If the board remains a majority anti-charter, BESE members would have to decide once again whether to uphold the local board’s denial or follow its independent evaluator’s recommendation to approve.

The last time BESE voted two years ago, it tied 5-5 with BESE President Gary Jones abstaining because he is APSB’s desegregation consultant. Approval of a charter takes six votes on the 11-member board.

School Board members have presented two main arguments against approving a third charter school in the parish.

First has been a concern about it’s potential impact on desegregation and that it would derail the district’s drive to unitary status.

RRCA officials have noted that had the school been approved by the board or BESE in the past few years, it could not have opened without Drell ruling it would not adversely affect desegregation in the public schools.

They have said board members and BESE members presumed to do Drell’s job instead of sticking solely with their responsibilities in ruling on the charter application based on the facts and criteria spelled out in the state law and charter application procedures.

FINANCIAL IMPACT

Another reason given for rejecting RRCA’s application is the potential financial impact it would have on the public school district.

With three grades of two sections each in grades 6-8, RRCA would open with about 150 students. That would take almost $1 million in state Minimum Foundation Program funds from the school district as allocations of more than $6,000 per student would go directly to the charter school.

The school would add one high school grade each year, with about 50 students per grade level, siphoning even more MFP funds from the other schools.

APSD officials have raised the prospect of having to close one of the other schools if RRCA opens.

RRCA officials say it is unlikely the district would have to close a school due to a new charter opening.

They point out that Red River will draw mostly secondary school students. The district has four grade 7-8 secondary schools -- Avoyelles, Bunkie and Marksville are traditional high schools and LaSAS is a charter school.

The school will only affect elementary schools if it includes 6th grade in its make-up, which at last report it plans to do.

At one point, RRCA officials had agreed to start at 7th grade, but noted it would have to have three sections of each grade if it was to be a 7-12 charter school. That was a concession made when the board was reconsidering its denial of the charter application.

RRCA officials have noted they expect the school to attract students from parochial schools and some who have been illegally attending schools in neighboring parishes.

MFP funds for those students would be “new” to the district and not taken from what the district was already receiving. Their main response to the argument concerning the loss of per-pupil MFP funds to the district is that the district does not have the responsibility and financial burden for educating those students attending RRCA.

APSD officials counter that argument by noting schools could be faced with having classes with 28-30+ students or classes of 14-15 due to the impact of RRCA on enrollment.

Given that option, schools could have almost the same costs in personnel with fewer state funds to pay those costs.

The alternative would be to reduce teachers and increase the pupil-teacher ratio in other schools. If that happened, student performance could decline.

Supporters of RRCA claim it would provide parents with one more option to educate their children. They note that if it is successful, its methods could be used in the other schools. If it is not, its charter would be revoked and it would close.

‘BRAIN DRAIN’

Opponents of another charter school claim it would be a “brain drain” on the other high schools, taking the brightest and best-behaved students out of the traditional schools. The result would be a decline in performance at the three non-charter high schools.

RRCA states it will strive for a 50-50 racial makeup and will determine enrollment through a blind lottery, which they say will guard against “cherry picking” students to get the best and the brightest from among its applicants for enrollment.

The issue of charter schools has been emotional on both sides.

While those camps don’t agree on much in this case, it seems most agree that a final decision on the fate of Red River Charter will most likely be made before the start of the 2019-20 school year, when RRCA hopes to open its doors.