Red River Charter seeks APSB approval -- again

It has become a rite of Spring -- the annual denial of the Red River Charter Academy’s application to the Avoyelles Parish School Board for permission to operate a public charter school in the parish. The board will have an opportunity to say “No” for the fifth time in four years at its May 2 meeting.

Red River Charter Board President Jessica Couvillion said the organization is expecting another rejection but is optimistic that the school will be approved by the state Board of Elementary & Secondary Education (BESE) should it be forced to go that route.

RRCA officials have maintained since they started this effort in 2014 that they would prefer the school operate within the public school district, like LaSAS does, rather than as an independent public charter like Avoyelles Public Charter. The School Board has denied the application to open the school, which would start with grades 6-8 and add a high school grade each year until it is eventually a 6-12 high school.
evaluations

The board has spent $10,000 a year for the past three years and $5,000 this year for an independent evaluator to review RRCA’s application and make a recommendation on whether the board should approve or deny it.
New Millennium recommended denial in 2014. The next year, it recommended approval. The School Board hired TenSquare as its independent evaluator for 2016. TenSquare recommended denying the application. TenSquare was hired to conduct this year’s evaluation, which is set for Tuesday (April 25).

State Superintendent John White sent the issue back to the School Board after the 2016 denial, instructing APSB and RRCA officials to sit down and negotiate an agreement that would keep BESE from having to decide on the matter. The end result was the School Board refusing to reconsider its previous denial.

“We wish we had better relations with the School Board,” Couvillion said. “We want to work with the board members, but we are ready to go back to BESE if we have to.”

In the “negotiations” of late 2016 and early 2017, RRCA had accepted a School Board demand that the school start with 7th grade and not 6th. Couvillion said the proposed school’s board considered submitting an application incorporating the concessions they agreed to during those negotiations, but decided to resubmit the same application it did in 2016.

One reason for that was to provide the board an opportunity to avoid having to pay for another independent evaluation this year. Couvillion said RRCA has received a legal opinion that the law would allow the School Board to use a previous evaluation of the application.

“They do not necessarily have to have a new evaluation,” she added.

She said that in this case, the application is the same and the evaluator is the same.

Others have a different interpretation of the law concerning the application process, noting the statute appears to require the board to hire an independent evaluator for any charter application it receives. The “prior evaluation” option is not included in the statute language.

Couvillion said RRCA officials agreed with the 2014 evaluation “because we knew we weren’t ready.” They withdrew their application before BESE could review it. They worked on the application over the next year and knew they had met all objections when the 2015 evaluation took place. Their confidence appeared to be well-placed when the same evaluator came back with a recommendation to approve the application.

SchoolWorks, the BESE’s independent evaluator, recommended approval in 2015 and 2016. BESE rejected the 2015 application and tied, 5-5 with one abstaining, for a “no action” decision on the 2016 application.

COST NOT REQUIRED
Couvillion said she read a board member’s comments that basically said Red River Charter was forcing the School Board to waste its money on evaluators because it kept asking the board for permission to operate.

“We would prefer the board not spend its money,” Couvillion said. “And they don’t have to. The statute says they must hire an evaluator for any charter application they receive, but there is no penalty for not hiring an evaluator.”

Some school districts don’t advertise or accept charter school applications at all. In those cases, the charter schools apply directly to BESE, the same as they would if the local school board denies their application.

Couvillion said RRCA officials will present arguments in favor of the application, just as they have in past interviews with local and state evaluators. They hope for a positive recommendation to the board and for the board to follow that recommendation.

If the board once again denies the application, RRCA is prepared to once again present its case in Baton Rouge.