More Top Picks Best Heated Recliners With Massage
player ready...Parents and teachers jammed Bowman Leadership Academy’s junior-senior cafeteria Saturday morning to hear the school board’s plan to keep the charter schools intact in the wake of Ball State University’s decision to revoke the schools’ charter for “internal structuring issues.”
School board President Keisha White said the board has been “tugging and pulling” over various issues with Ball State for a while, but they would need to pull out all the stops given the university’s announcement.
White, a board member since the school’s inception, went through the issues point by point with those in attendance.
One of the biggest bones of contention is tied to the school’s decision to end its contract with education manager American Quality Schools, replacing the company with the Leona Group LLC. The move saved $500,000 and allowed the board to give its teachers a 2 percent raise, their first in at least three years, White said.
However, because American Quality Schools was in charge of the school’s 2014-15 audit, the move resulted in the academy being put at the bottom of American Quality Schools’ work list — something over which the academy has no control, White said.
An independent consultant hired by the university conducted a school observation in early October. White said she’d been asking for the report for months, but it was delivered just five minutes before she received an email announcing the schools were having their charter revoked.
“(The school board members) were the last to know,” White said.
The consultant’s report said there were mandatory documents missing from the academy’s files, something White said she could disprove immediately simply by reviewing a program into which the reports are filed.
Further, the report cited the eight-member school board’s lack of term limits as an issue. White said she found the accusation insulting given that board members are professionals and some are retired educators. She said it discounts the school they’ve built.
“That’s personal,” White said.
The schools were working on the changes requested by the Indiana Department of Education, board member Ann Fisher said. All of them were public and none of them were drastic, Fisher said.
“To say we were ‘noncompliant’ is an out-and-out lie,” she said.
With regard to the school’s plan for self-management, White questioned Ball State officials’ statement about “self-managed” schools representing some of the best the university has in its charter program.
“Can someone tell me what the issue is? It’s not about academics,” White said. “If you can find somewhere in this document that we are not the best charter in the city, I’ll buy your next Powerball ticket.
“They wanted to create hysteria so we’d give up, but we’re not. We have too much invested.”
Academy Principal Sarita Stevens said Charter of the Dunes School reopened when it found a new charter backer, so the idea that the schools have to close is not necessarily true.
“No, we don’t have to close,” Stevens said. “Ball State’s rules might say we have to, but Indiana State doesn’t give that authority.”
White told the parents they needed to start calling and writing letters to Ball State prior to the reinstatement appeals hearing. Parents indicated they were ready to do all that and more.
“If you know any Ball State alumni, give them a call, and put it on social media,” the Rev. Levon Whitaker said. “This action is a slap in the face to any person who’s chosen academic environment for their children. Does anyone have a problem with our governing structure? If you don’t, why do they?”
A year ago, Ball State granted the academy a one-year provisional renewal for this school year. Parents had voiced complaints about the operation of the school following a controversy over the firing of a popular basketball coach and athletic director.
Several of the school’s administrative leaders were also fired in 2014, including Gwen Adell, who led the school from when it opened in 2003. She’s now a consultant for Ball State, according to Ball State Charter Director Bob Marra.
“I hit the panic button, but after being here, I can go home confident that we’ll get another charter,” said Antoinette Troupe, who has a son at the school. “That academics have nothing to do with this is a travesty.”
More Top Picks Eero 7
Tawanna Staples, meanwhile, thinks neither Ball State nor the academy’s board are considering the children.
“They’ve all made this personal. They need to stop throwing the rock at each other and work it out,” she said. “But the school won’t close.”
A parents meeting to organize the fight to stop the closure is scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday at Bowman Leadership Academy’s elementary school library, 975 W. 6th Ave.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune. Post-Tribune reporter Carole Carlson contributed.