The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has been taking its time to update its rules when it comes to charter schools, rebuffing a recent attempt to force changes to happen right away.
The dustup is occurring in the middle of the period when interested groups can apply to open charter schools within the boundaries of the school district. That application period began Sept. 8 and ends Oct. 20. The board has scheduled its next board meeting for Oct. 16, four days prior to the deadline.
A 104-page charter school policy document was placed on the agenda for the Aug. 7 meeting, but was pulled at the request of Superintendent LaMont Cole for further review. It has yet to reappear on subsequent agendas.
The proposed updates incorporate a number of changes in state law enacted since the policy was last updated in 2019, including greater state scrutiny of local charter school applications and removal of numerical targets for charter schools so that they reflect student poverty levels of the districts authorizing them.
The proposals, however, include other locally driven changes. For instance, Cole, who spent 13 years working for local charter school network, CSAL Inc., is pressing the board to extend for 10 years charter schools that have A or B grades, as opposed to the five- and four-year renewal periods that current district rules allow for. Cole recalled that CSAL received a 10-year renewal years ago, which was crucial in allowing it to obtain loans needed to improve its facilities.
Charter schools are public schools run privately via contracts. East Baton Rouge currently has contracts with 13 charter schools, teaching more than 6,000 students, or about 16% of all district enrollees. In the past two years, East Baton Rouge has closed two low-performing charter schools and replaced the operators of two more.
After the proposal was pulled Aug. 7, a plan was discussed to hold a special workshop to address concerns of certain board members, but the board was unable to get enough members to settle on a date.
At the most recent board meeting Thursday, board members in favor of the charter policy update tried to force the issue.
Board member Nathan Rust made a motion to compel the board to change its agenda Thursday to add the update to the policy.
“I think it’s important that the policy not only comply with the law, which the update does, but that it also be in place so that organizations considering applying here know what rules they will be held to in advance of when they apply,” Rust said.
Agendas for most public meetings in Louisiana are supposed to be nailed down and released publicly 24 hours ahead of the meeting. To add an item to the agenda requires a unanimous vote of board members in attendance. In this case that was eight votes — board member Dadrius Lanus was absent.
The motion ended up failing by a 4-4 margin. Rust was joined in support by board members Mark Bellue, Patrick Martin V and Emily Soulé. Voting no were board members Mike Gaudet, Cliff Lewis, Carla Powell-Lewis and Shashonnie Steward.
Powell-Lewis said she won’t support a vote until the policy is considered by the board when it meets as a committee of the whole, known as “the COW”: “We want all items to go before the COW and then have open discussion,” she said. The next meeting of the committee of the whole is Oct. 2.
Gaudet said he still has issues with part of the policy changing how charter schools are renewed and student transportation requirements.
The board’s inaction on the proposed changes prompted a complaint from Adonica Duggan, president of Baton Rouge Alliance for Students. The Alliance is an influential education-oriented nonprofit that spent nearly $1 million in 2022 to help elect many members currently serving on the board.
In an online post, Duggan said the charter policy update has been in the works for months, but continues to be stalled by board members whom she speculated may be driven by anticharter bias. “The very mention of the term ‘charter’ school leads some members of the board to prioritize politics over service to students and families, which is disappointing,” she said.
Duggan noted many local charters have outpaced district schools in academic growth coming out of the COVID pandemic, “meaning students who enter school behind are making up more ground.”
“Ignoring the role of charters in the overall system is shortsighted and fails to keep the focus on children,” she said.