In a recent letter to North Carolina officials, school system leaders in Wayne County expressed “serious concerns and great dismay” about the potential takeover of a struggling elementary school by the state’s controversial Innovative School District.
“The ISD is without a proven school turnaround record, without a strategic plan to assist our children, and without any accountability to the taxpayers, parents, or children of Wayne County,” Superintendent Michael Dunsmore and Board of Education Chair Patricia Burden wrote in the letter.
Policy Watch received a copy of the letter Tuesday, although the message was e-mailed and hand delivered to the State Board of Education and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, a member of the state board, last week.
It was sent a day before members of the State Board of Education punted a decision on the takeover to next month. The program would allow state leaders to turn over control of the troubled public school to a private school management group, including charter organizations and for-profit companies.
Wayne County leaders said state officials “witnessed our community’s outrage” at a town hall meeting last month, adding that they’d also received a petition with almost 2,000 signatures opposing the takeover from the community and the local NAACP.
Dunsmore and Burden blasted state leaders’ “inconsistent” process for choosing Carver Heights, noting that last year, the ISD excluded schools like Carver Heights which had received Federal School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to boost performance.
Wayne County Public Schools “assumed this same exemption would apply this year,” they wrote. “Inconsistent criteria make it impossible for school systems to effectively plan or make meaningful decisions about low-performing schools, as the criteria are not articulated and ever-changing.”
Leaders in the ISD recommended Carver Heights for the program last month after narrowing a field of the lowest-performing schools in North Carolina down to six.
The Goldsboro school, which serves grades 3-5, had the lowest academic scores among the final six. On its 2016-2017 state report card, Carver Heights earned an “F” grade and did not meet expected growth.
ISD Superintendent LaTeesa Allen
ISD Superintendent LaTeesa Allen said the school was chosen after officials spoke with administrators in all of the remaining schools.
“We are confident in our process and the accountability data used in selecting Carver Heights Elementary for recommendation to the State Board,” Allen said in a statement Tuesday.
“The passion in this community is real,” state Superintendent of Innovation Eric Hall said last week. “But we also have to come to a point where we say only 18.4 percent of our students are proficient in reading and math, where do we go from here?”
Yet school leaders wrote that they’re working on a redistricting process to break up the “heavily segregated nature” of the elementary. According to the state, 90 percent of the school’s students were considered economically disadvantaged, a population that tends to lag behind their more affluent peers.
“The taking of this school, and the restrictions on school assignment in the ISD statutes would prevent and interfere with these efforts for possibly the next five years, to the detriment of our overall student population, the students at Carver Heights Elementary School, and our community as a whole,” Wayne leaders wrote.
Among their other criticisms, Wayne County leaders blasted an Oct. 15 letter from Allen notifying them of her recommendation to take over Carver Heights, accusing Allen of writing “inaccurate or false information and conclusory allegations, unsupported by any evidence or exhibits.”
State lawmakers approved the program two years ago because they said long-beleaguered schools needed a change. But opponents, including the state’s largest teacher advocacy organization, the N.C. Association of Educators, have been bitingly critical, calling the initiative a private “takeover scheme.”
If the takeover is approved by the State Board of Education, Carver Heights would be the second school to join the ISD in as many years. The district began work this year in a Robeson County elementary, handing over operations to a newly-formed group, Achievement for All Children, that has deep ties to the legislature and the state’s school choice movement.
Read the entire letter below.
10-31-18 Forest_NCBOE Letter Exhbits – Redacted Resumes by Billy Ball on Scribd
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