A year of turmoil finally coming to an end
There is an old axiom: When you find yourself in a hole .... stop digging. Since Aug. 3, 2015, Macon Charter Academy has been busy digging an ever deeper hole for itself. The school year started for Macon’s second charter school — not in its new facility at 151 Madison Street — but at the Macon Coliseum. The new building and grounds were not finished yet. And despite promises to the contrary — even an open house scheduled for Aug. 9 — the building wouldn’t open until Aug. 24.
That was just the beginning of the school’s issues. When the doors finally opened it was already on its second governing board. By the time of the hearing before the state Board of Education on Thursday to decide whether the school’s charter should be revoked, it was on its fourth board and third principal.
The year in between saw the school’s founders ousted, probation, miserable test scores and a precipitous drop in enrollment. Even in the throes of possible closure and in the shadow of probation there were charges the school was enrolling kindergarteners in violation of its probation agreement. Though school administrators denied the allegations, the communications director for the Bibb County public schools said in a statement, “An investigative team sent by the district to MCA to review these complaints determined there is reason to believe the allegations are indeed true.” All that did was add insult to injury a week before the state was to decide MCA’s fate.
The state was set to take action in July but MCA filed bankruptcy and the state board decided to table its deliberations until the court ruled, which it did, in the state’s favor, in saying the bankruptcy didn’t impact the state and local school boards regulatory functions.
The unanimous decision by the state board Thursday to close MCA no later than Aug. 31 was the only decision it could make for several reasons. One member of the state board, Brian Burdette, said, “They had I don’t know how many second chances to do this, and they didn’t do it,” and he said the school was asking for permission to “build the airplane in the air.” The attorney representing the state, Stacey Suber-Drake, said the school has been plagued by “turmoil, confusion and instability.”
While the beauty of charter schools is flexibility, one of the allures can also haunt. When a school is not working for the good of the children attending, it can be shut down.
With an enrollment of only 155 students, the school was not viable and could not survive financially and there was nothing in the school’s short history to indicate to the state board that much would change even if given more time. Too many promises had been broken.
However, the most important reason — one that should have been the raison d’etre of the school — is the welfare of the children. Time and again over the past year that reason for existence seems to have been forgotten, and the sooner these wounded children can get back into a classroom with a qualified teacher, the better.
According to Bibb County schools Superintendent Curtis Jones, Bibb school personnel will be at MCA on Tuesday and Wednesday to meet with parents so an orderly transition process from MCA into a public school, private school, virtual school or home school can begin. Now the trick will be to keep those parents, who obviously believed MCA was the best situation for their children, involved. The schools these children enter also have a task. Many may not be on grade level and will be in unfamiliar surroundings for a time with new teachers and classmates that have already had almost a month to bond.
We may not have heard MCA’s last gasp. It can still appeal the decision either to the superior court of Fulton County or Bibb County. They could ask a judge to allow it to stay open until the appeal is heard. They could make a case that it would do irreparable damage to the school if it were closed and the state’s decision overturned. They could make that case, but we believe it would be a losing argument. It’s time to move on.
This story was originally published August 20, 2016 at 2:00 PM with the headline "A year of turmoil finally coming to an end."