Five new charter schools in Cleveland avoid review by Mayor Frank Jackson's education panel

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Mayor Frank Jackson?s new panel to provide quality control of schools in Cleveland had no say in plans to open five new charter schools in the city this fall.

All will start without any review by the newly formed Transformation Alliance ? a committee of city, community and school leaders from district and charter schools ? because of limitations on its powers.

Even though they acknowledge the limits, city and Cleveland school officials say the Transformation Alliance should have been able to make non-binding recommendations to the Ohio Department of Education on at least two of the schools because ODE is helping to create them.

That should have happened ?in the spirit of things,? said Cleveland schools Chief Executive Officer Eric Gordon.

But an ODE spokesman says the Alliance did not have the authority to review the schools.

Of the five, four are new versions of Hope Academies run by White Hat Management. The fifth is a spinoff from one of the academies.

Jackson had sought approval from the Ohio legislature last year, as part of his broader Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools, to have the Alliance accept or deny any applications to open a charter school in the city. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run.

Legislators would not agree to Jackson?s request and instead gave the Alliance power to review just the organizations that ?sponsor? or authorize the charter schools ? and only when a sponsor?s license to sponsor schools is up for state renewal. Sponsors set goals and standards for the schools, then monitor their financial and academic progress.

Two of the nine sponsors operating in Cleveland never need to seek renewal because they have permanent licenses, while others are not up for renewal for a few years.

Gordon said he knows it will take several years for most of the sponsors to come up for review.

?It will take some time to catch up,? he said.

The Alliance could have reviewed a sponsor this summer, when Educational Resource Consultants of Ohio, the Cincinnati-based sponsor of eight schools in the city, was up for renewal. But because the group did not apply to sponsor any new schools in Cleveland there was no need for a review.

The Buckeye Community Hope Foundation, a Columbus nonprofit organization that already sponsors 13 schools in Cleveland, is not due for review this year and will sponsor two of the new charters in Cleveland ? Chapelside Cleveland Academy and Lincoln Park Academy ? serving grades kindergarten through eight.

Those will go in the buildings that previously housed Hope Academy Chapelside and Hope Academy Lincoln Park.

Started in 1991 to provide low-income housing, the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation now sponsors 39 schools across Ohio, including several well-rated Constellation charter schools and two successful Horizon science academies.

St. Aloysius Orphanage, which sponsors 12 schools in Cleveland and 26 around the state, was also not subject to review as a sponsor this year. It will sponsor the East Preparatory Academy, which will be near White Hat?s former Hope Academy East and run by some of that school?s former board members.

More than half of St. Aloysius? schools in Ohio are rated the equivalent of a D or F by the state.

Gordon cringed when told St. Aloysius would open a new school. He said he hopes St. Aloysius has learned from its struggles at other schools and will improve.

The other two new charter schools in Cleveland are sponsored by the Ohio Department of Education itself. East Academy and West Park Academy will go in the former homes of Hope Academy East and Hope Academy West. Both schools are approved for all grades, including high school, and for 300 or more students each.

As the sponsor of those schools, ODE has more control over them than any of the others. Though these are the schools Gordon had wanted the Alliance to review, ODE spokesman John Charlton noted that the legislation does not call for that review: It gives the Alliance review power only over sponsors, not schools.

Charlton noted that ODE?s charter sponsorship arm is never subject to review by the Transformation Alliance. And these two schools have another twist: ODE had approved both of them last year for other locations, but they never opened. Those sponsorship approvals just shifted to the new charters opening in the Hope Academy east and west sites.

Gordon said that since it is the first year for the Alliance, it and ODE need to work through the mechanics of handling Alliance reviews.

?These are the kind of technical details we need to work through,? Gordon said. ?I know that State Superintendent (Richard) Ross is very supportive of the Cleveland Plan and I know he will work closely with the Alliance to ensure only quality charter schools and authorizers are supported in Cleveland going forward.?

Source: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/07/new_charters_in_cleveland.html

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev GTA 5 elisabeth hasselbeck manslaughter West Elm Tootsie zulily