The Echo

Let's break this one down.  I'm in purple:

Reach Academy has earned right to a future

11:31 PM, Jul. 14, 2011
5Comments

New life for Reach Academy Charter School can't just turn on the fact that 200 girls would be thrust into traditional public schools well after the school choice options have closed.

The NJ attributed this same misfact regarding school choice to me in its Pencader story last week.  That time, it was apparently added after the story went to the editors.  School Choice law allows for Good Cause.  A student can choice into any Delaware school that has space.  Reach's closure would surely constitute good cause. 

• (2) "Good cause" shall mean a change in a child's residence due to a change in family residence, a change in the state in which the family residence is located, a change in a child's parent's marital status, a change caused by a guardianship proceeding, placement of a child in foster care, adoption, participation by a child in a foreign exchange program, or participation by a child in a substance abuse or mental health treatment program, or a set of circumstances consistent with this definition of "good cause."   http://delcode.delaware.gov/title14/c004/index.shtml

After a miserable first year of financial mismanagement and staff changes, Reach's survival must now rest on its credibility in getting the money right.  

Actually, Reach's survival rests upon two things: Yes, they must get the money right.  But, they must do so without negatively affecting the classroom.

On Tuesday, Delaware secretary of education Lillian Lowery recommended the charter be allowed to reopen on probation, which indicates the new school board met this priority.

And it did so by accepting the willing hand of Brandywine School District Superintendent Mark Holodick, to guide it in financial management.
This 'good neighbor' partnership includes access to David Blowman, Brandywine School Districts' chief financial officer. Blowman is a former executive assistant to Lowery's predecessor Valerie Woodruff.

In 2006, he was among the original state advisers sent to assess the scale of financial problems in the Christina School District that Lowery uncovered soon after being named its superintendent.

That team determined the district was bankrupt and in need of a $20 million loan, which it finally repaid to the state this year.

I wish just one editor at the NJ would fact check! The state offered Christina $20 million in 2006 with a five year repayment plan.  But, the district only accepted $15,007,624.  That's a difference of five million dollars - peanuts to the Journal, but a very meaningful number to tax payers.  And the loan was not just "finally repaid to the state this year." The significance of the language chosen by the NJ would imply that Christina's repayment was not timely. In fact, all loan payments were made to the state according to the five year repayment plan established in 2006. 
Lowery is not over the top when she frames the partnership as "huge," because Reach's issues were not about academics.

"It was the fiscal piece ... they have the right people now to vet them appropriately," she said.

They have the "right people now to vet them appropriately."  Dr. Lowery, they always had the right people - they had you and your department who, despite the appearance, is beholden to the laws that govern education in Delaware, including the responsibility to inform and assist charter schools in developing the Citizen Budget Oversight Committees.  Delaware legislators may be willing allow the laws they pass to langish, but the people who elect them are increasingly of a different mind! 

And while I am certain that Mark Holodick and David Blowman are good 'peeps,' simply because they are known to DOE does not automatically qualify them to vet Reach.  Within in my term as a board member, I have developed a respect for Public-Charter Partnerships, and believe it would behoove Delaware to develop them, I am concerned that this in fact a back door move to transfer Reach's charter to the public district - a process simplified by the changes to the law that the legislature passed this June - a bill that langishes on Markell's desk.  I bet my bottom dollar that Markell signs it at Reach!

That alone is enough for the state Board of Education to vote to keep Reach Academy open for a second year during its meeting next Thursday.

NJ - Reach should remain open because it has merit and a strong financial plan, not because it added a couple well-known to DOE Delawareans to its CBOC.  It isn't who you know - it's what you do with that knowledge.  And that's what your opinion piece here, completely missed.