Bibb BOE hears from Macon Charter leadership

The leadership team at Macon Charter Academy spoke to the Bibb County school board Tuesday night and outlined their plans for moving forward at the school.

The charter school has come under fire in its first four months of operation, most recently after declining to work with a school management organization to help turn around the school's operations.

"The governing board quickly determined that it needed to take more immediate steps," said the board's president, Lonnicia Maxwell.

One issue with the proposal of the turnaround company, Renaissance School Services, was the cost. Renaissance charges 9 percent of a school's revenue, which would amount to roughly $400,000 for MCA. After analyzing the school's finances, Maxwell said such a cost could not be feasible. As a result, she said there would be only one option for the school if the Bibb board chose to require MCA to use Renaissance.

"It is in the best interest, at that point, to terminate" the school's charter, Maxwell said.

Instead, the governing board recommended Ed Judie, a former district administrator for Bibb County schools. He said that he had organized a "team of individuals in all areas" -- including special education, curriculum, discipline and human resources -- that would initially work on a pro bono basis.

"I would like to ensure that all the children in our community are successful," Judie said.

A large portion of Judie's plan involved taking school operations tasks off the plate of Principal Ron Boykins. For instance, Boykins recently spent a significant portion of his day talking to contractors about repairing holes in the school's roof.

"The principal should be focused on instruction and meeting what the founders want and the parents," Judie said.

The main goal of founders Monya and Charles Rutland was for the school to prepare students for Central High School's International Baccalaureate program. One complaint from parents has been that the school has strayed from that purpose, but Boykins said that wasn't the case, pointing to a plan that he and his administration team have followed and attempted to share with parents of the school's "babies," as he called them.

"What I'm here to say is we haven't. We haven't swayed," he said. "Given time, we can turn Macon Charter into something special for babies."

That time element was key to Boykins, who responded to claims from Renaissance and other organizations that the school was failing. He said the state definition of failing schools was based on a longer analysis of results in the College and Career Ready Performance Index, the first of which has yet to be released for MCA.

"When you start talking about a failing school, it's a school that's been around for three years," Boykins said.

He said that the school administration has made efforts to stabilize the school, from enrollment to teacher turnover, but media reports and a probation handed down by the Georgia Department of Education had a negative effect on numbers.

The school had a high enrollment of 676 in September but just 553 in November, and Boykins said he saw noticeable decreases whenever local media stories were published or broadcast.

"Some of it that we've talked about is we're getting too much visibility," he said.

Teacher Hint Denson also took the podium to talk about her experience at the school. Denson works with fifth-graders at the school and talked about the "potential" she's seen in her students, who have expressed their love for the school to her.

"I've seen so much growth from the beginning to now," she said.

MCA eighth-grader Marquez Finney talked about the "awful" experiences he had at Ballard-Hudson Middle School compared to his current school. He said he received more help and saw better behavior from his peers than at other schools.

"I think that what I have at Macon Charter is better than anything I've ever had before," he said.

The large crowd gathered for the called meeting was subdued, for the most part, although Superintendent Curtis Jones had to remind attendees to be respectful on a couple occasions. That was usually related to applause, but several parents grew upset and even left during the remarks of former Telegraph education reporter David Schick, who was given a chance to speak by Maxwell.

He described the school as a "strategically crafted house of cards" set up as a profit source for the Rutlands and recommended that it be shut down.

"I'm of the opinion this school never had a chance at the highest levels," Schick said.

Boykins and MCA board members expressed a different view. While they recognized the attendance decline and related financial woes, the school leaders said they felt MCA could correct problems with the support of Judie's team and the Bibb County school board.

"I'm committed to making this school work," said MCA board member Willie May, a retired Macon police officer.

Boykins urged the Bibb County school board to trust local leaders to resolve the school's issues instead of turning to outside entities.

"We're going to build something real special at Macon Charter that's going to make Bibb County proud," he said.

Jones said the meeting gave the Bibb board a "better idea of the situation" surrounding MCA. He said the board would now take what it heard, including the plan to involve Judie's group, into consideration before any further action would be taken.

"I think there were some valid points that were made, and the board listened to those," Jones said. "At the end of the day, it's about children."

This story was originally published December 1, 2015 at 10:37 PM with the headline "Bibb BOE hears from Macon Charter leadership ."