The Fayetteville Observer: Shanahan Law Group represents Moore County charter school fighting closure

By Michael Futch
Staff writer

ABERDEEN – Over the past year, the Academy of Moore County has moved into a $2.2 million building and seen its grades improve.

But come August, the 170 students at the charter school may find themselves back in public classrooms.

The state Board of Education voted March 3 not to renew the academy’s charter, against the recommendation of the state Office of Charter Schools.

The Board of Education’s decision would close the school, effective June 30.

The Academy of Moore County has been plagued by administrative and classroom issues since its establishment in 1997, and its headmaster acknowledges the school’s troubled past.

Allyson Schoen, the school’s director of education, said plenty of work lies ahead.

“These kids,” she said, “they deserve this school. They deserve for it to stay open.”

The students, many of whom are underprivileged, come from Moore, Hoke, Scotland and Richmond counties.

Schoen said the academy has made strides, meeting its adequate yearly progress goals over the 2009-10 school term. She said the state board failed to take into account the school’s progress before deciding it should close.

“I’ve got parents right now in panic mode,” Schoen said. “Their kids are here because, for some reason, their kids have fallen through the cracks. We’re a safety net.”

Academy officials have hired the Shanahan Law Group of Raleigh to fight the state board’s decision. The firm is seeking a motion to stay the state board’s action until the case can be heard.
A hearing on the academy’s motion for preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order is scheduled for 9 a.m. on June 8 at the Office of Administrative Hearing in Raleigh.

A petition filed on behalf of the school contends the state board failed to renew the charter without any basis.

‘Bottom of the barrel’

A year ago, the state placed the school on corrective action plans to address its academic deficiencies.

During the 2007-08 school year, the academy earned a 23.8 percent passing rate, according to the N.C. School Report Cards. That reflects the percentage of students who passed reading and math tests.

“We were at the bottom of the barrel,” Schoen said.

The school’s passing rate rose to 34.9 percent last year. That indicates improvement, but remains lower than more than half the scores from schools around the state.

“You want to show that the kids are growing,” Schoen said. “It may not be grade level, but that’s what we did last year.”

Low test scores aren’t the only problem the school has had.

A year ago, only 63 percent of its classes were taught by highly qualified teachers, according to the N.C. School Report Cards. That compared with 97 percent statewide, as defined by federal law.
“We are 100-percent highly qualified this year,” Schoen said. “First time ever.”

A key provision of the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires all teachers of core academic subjects to be highly qualified.

“We’re just now taking off,” said Schoen, who is 51 and a former teacher in the Moore County school system. “These kids are showing growth, but we have a long way to go.”

In years past, Schoen said, teacher turnover was high, quality of teaching poor and academic performance low. Along the way, she said, the school earned a reputation as “the last resort for many students.”

Suzanne Dunn teaches language arts at the academy. Should the school close, Dunn said she’s not worried about losing her job. She worries about the students who have shown growth in the classroom, and where they will end up.

“They’ll go back into a system,” she said, “that has failed them once.”

‘Low performance’

The State Board of Education cited “low performance” in determining the academy failed to meet its growth components in recent years. Growth shows what a child has learned over the past year.

“The board looked at past performance of the school, and the board made its decision not to renew the charter,” said Vanessa Jeter, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Instruction.

State educators are not saying why they ignored a recommendation from the Office of Charter Schools to renew the academy’s charter for three years.

Jeter said in an e-mail the department has been advised not to comment because of the litigation.
Brad Poplyk, chairman of the academy’s board of trustees, said it is his understanding the state board based its decision on the school’s academic performance over a four-year period. The board’s review did not include “improvements over the last year, two years,” he said.

Jack Moyer, director of the Office of Charter Schools and a former principal of the Academy of Moore County, declined comment because of the pending litigation.

But, according to minutes from an executive summary on the Department of Public Instruction website, the Office of Charter Schools recommended charter renewal “based on the changes that have been implemented and current MAP data.” The school incorporated the Measures of Academic Progress computerized assessment program in math, reading and science to target specific student deficits, the Office of Charter Schools concluded in the summary.

The academy purchased the Envision Math Program for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

“We’ve gone step by step with them,” Poplyk said. “If we didn’t think we had a real chance, we wouldn’t be wasting our time and money. We just moved into a new $2.2 million school. We got these kids out of conditions not conducive to learning. It’s such a better place than it was three or four years ago.”

State’s motives

Schoen said plenty of low-performing schools remain open, and the state Board of Education is helping them turn things around. The state, she said, has an agenda: to close the academy.

Since June 2008, the state Board of Education has taken action to shut down six charter schools.

Those include the Academy of Moore County and Cape Lookout Marine Science High School in Morehead City, whose closures are pending.

Since 1997, when the first charter schools opened in North Carolina, the board has decided to close 16 of the schools.

“You’ve got to give us time to continue,” Schoen said. “We’ve got new technology. We’ve got new computers. We’ve got new textbooks. We have been getting to where we were supposed to be.”