State board set to give another pass to failing charter schools
03/09/2015
State Board of Education (SBOE) staff are recommending giving two failing charter schools passes to remain open at its upcoming meeting Thursday.
Options Charter School Noblesville and Hoosier Academies, both sponsored by Ball State University, have received F grades for four straight years. The staff’s recommendation cites the schools’ “enrollment of students with special challenges” and serving “a high mobility student population” as reasons to allow the failing charter schools to remain open.
With Options and Hoosier Academies remaining open, they would also significantly benefit from funding changes under the House GOP budget. Hoosier Academies (both its physical school and virtual school) would receive a total of $18,899,717 in the next school year, while Options would receive a nearly 5 percent increase totaling $1,343,482 in the 2015-16 school year and another 8 percent increase in the 2016-17 school year.
Since charter schools do not come under the traditional public school accountability laws, closure has been what charter school supporters refer to as their accountability. When recommendations like this are made, it casts a huge shadow on the other SBOE agenda which is to accelerate the taking over of traditional public schools as what is seen in HB 1638.
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State board changes controversial charter school’s grade for second year