State board votes to shut down Macon Charter Academy

The Georgia Board of Education has voted to revoke Macon Charter Academy’s permission to run a school, effective Aug. 31, on the grounds that the school is not meeting the terms of its contract to operate.

The school’s co-founder and current governing board leader, Monya Rutland, said after the hearing she was disappointed.

“We certainly planned and hoped for a more favorable outcome even if it was one that would allow the school to remain open through the end of the year,” she said after the roughly six-hour hearing in Atlanta.

Rutland said she does not know if the school will appeal the board’s decision. MCA could appeal to the superior court of Bibb County or of Fulton County, where the state school board is headquartered. If MCA appeals, they could ask a judge for permission to stay open past August.

“Right now, all I’m thinking about are our families at Macon Charter and getting with them and providing them with the responses and information that I know they’ll be seeking,” she said.

But state school board chair Mike Royal said the unanimous vote to revoke the charter came for many reasons.

He said the school’s financial standing is shaky at best, for one. Besides that the school has a record of turmoil and change, he said.

“Our staff has tried to work with them for months,” said Royal.

But he also said the state does support charter schools and that MCA could try to apply for permission to operate again.

“They had I don’t know how many second chances to do this, and they didn’t do it,” said Brian Burdette, another state school board member. Burdette said the school was essentially asking for permission to “build the airplane in the air.”

Rutland began the hearing by asking for a delay. She said she had been informed Tuesday that the school’s attorney would not be representing the school in the case. Rutland said she would need time to compile a witness list and schedule witness appearances.

The board let her call witnesses but wasn’t interested in delaying the hearing, which they had scheduled in a July 1 vote. The board unanimously voted down her request to delay the hearing.

Enrollment at the school has fallen below 200 students, down from some 700 pupils. Bibb County school officials have said they are ready and able to absorb students who leave MCA.

Rutland told the board that the school has had its ups and downs.

“What we also want you to get is there’s a new board, and in some cases, a new sheriff in town,” Rutland said at the hearing. In a shakeup this summer, she became the leader of the governing board.

But the school has been plagued by “turmoil, confusion and instability” said Stacey Suber-Drake, the attorney who argued the Georgia Department of Education’s case to the members of the state school board.

The state Department of Education alleged a long list of problems with the school’s academics, finances and management. The school failed to do the basic job of classroom teaching in many cases, according to the state. The department alleged payroll mistakes, that the school was late to set aside money for teachers’ retirement accounts. They said parts of the school needed cleaning up, that fixtures needed repairs.

The state alleged problems at the top: a board that got several tries to fix these problems and didn’t fix them and didn’t make sure children got an education.

“Frankly, I had a hard time keeping track of who was on board at any one point,” Lou Erste, an associate superintendent with the state Department of Education, said during the hearing.

In state test results published in July, the school came in below Bibb’s average.

In September 2015, the state Department of Education put Macon Charter Academy on probation after Bibb County school officials accused the school of problems with teaching, finance and governance.

In February this year, the school hired Prestige Charter School Solutions, an Atlanta firm that advises charters. The point was to try and get the school operating in line with state standards.

Mark Cramer, a partner with Prestige, testified during the hearing. He described a school where staff took long lunches, or called in just before school opened to say they’d be absent. He said the academics needed a lot of work — the curriculum was strong, he said, but teachers weren’t getting it across to kids.

Asked if the school could have improved with more time, Cramer paused before replying, “I’d have to say no.”

He said it takes time to improve a school and that he thinks for MCA, efforts to improve were too little, too late.

But Georgia Gary, who became principal of MCA in mid-April, disagreed.

Gary told the state school board that when she started the job, she saw things that displeased her: teachers coming in when they wanted, very little learning going on. There were no bad kids in the school, but there were a lot of bad adults, and she let about 90 percent of the staff go, she said.

“We are different” this school year, she said.

Gary said she set new standards that are changing the school. She said she requires teachers come to school on time, to teach children, to keep them safe. She said disciplinary problems have fallen.

But those arguments failed to convince the state school board that MCA should remain open.

This story was originally published August 18, 2016 at 6:06 PM with the headline "State board votes to shut down Macon Charter Academy."