The Echo

http://www.wdde.org/36255-community-education-building-open-delayed

On Dec. 18, I opined about the three start-up charter schools that were requesting approval from DOE to defer opening their schools until 2014-15 school year. 

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but something doesn't feel quite right. Why are our three newest charters asking DOE to allow them to delay opening? In fact, all three requests will be decided upon by the State Board of Ed at it's Dec. 20th meeting. What a coincidence!   http://www.elizabethscheinberg.blogspot.com/2012/12/de-new-charters-did-ya-notice.html
 

Anonymous responded to my post on Dec. 21, the day following the State Board of Education meeting.

According to the discussion at the State Board meeting, they requested it because of facilities not yet completed and the continued search for an appropriate school leader. Keep in mind these schools did not have the federal charter start up grant funds that every charter school previously approved has had so in terms of available start up funds they had to do much of their own fundraising and didn't receive the nearly 300,000 from the federal grant that others had received because the federal grant for this purpose ended.
I really don't believe there is any conspiracy or that it has anything to do with the Charter working Group.
 

The News Journal also ran a story that confirmed Anonymous's comment, 3 Charter Schools Won't Open in 2013 which states:

In a letter to parents in October announcing plans to delay the opening of the First State Montessori Academy, the board of directors noted funding challenges because of the federal startup grant changes. In addition, the board hopes it can share space at a new charter school building that is being prepared, according to the letter.
The Community Education Building, overseen by the Longwood Foundation, is opening a new school in 2014 at its location in downtown Wilmington.

Yesterday, WDDE ran this headline: Community Education Building to Open a Year Later than Planned.

The Community Education Building, Bank of America’s gift to Delaware’s charter school movement, will not open until the 2014-15 school year, 12 months later than planned.
The delay will allow the building’s operators to “get it done right,” said Riccardo Stoeckicht, Community Education Building president.
But the delay was a major reason for two new charter schools, which had hoped to lease space in the building, to defer their planned openings from 2013 to 2014.”
 

The interesting piece to this timeline:  The CEB hired an outside contractor to help evaluate the applications of those schools who wished to move into the BofA's "Gift." Previously, CEB had shared that they would announce that list of successful candidates in fall of 2012.  That self-imposed deadline has come and gone.  However, the WDDE story does confirm one rumor - Kuumba Academy will be making the move to the CEB - just not next year.  The other entities are still unconfirmed, although the latest actions of these upcoming charters give us some insight. 

• First State Montessori Academy and Academia Antonia Alonso indicated that finding a home in the Community Education Building was part of their plans.
• Oliver Yeh, board chairman at First State Montessori, wrote that the school had applied for space at the Community Education Building but the review process determined that it was “not a perfect match.”
• Kathy Laskowski, a board member at Academia Antonia Alonso, a dual-language immersion elementary school program developed with the support of the Latin American Community Center, said site selection and the delay in the Community Education Building’s opening were factors in the decision to defer the school’s opening for a year.
• Kuumba Academy is looking forward to being the building’s first tenant, Head of School Sally Maldonado said. Kuumba has asked to occupy 40,000 square feet “but that has to be negotiated,” she said.
• Kuumba, which now serves kindergarten through fifth grade, is asking the State Board of Education to authorize it to operate a middle school, serving sixth through eighth grades. If that request is approved, the school could grow from its current 249 students to about 855, including a preschool program, Maldonado said.
• Cristina Alvarez, founder of the proposed Delaware Design Lab High School, puts it bluntly: “We’re going for broke. That’s where we want to be.”
• The Community Education Building’s next solicitation of prospective tenants will occur this summer. Applications must be filed by Aug. 1 and selections will be announced by Sept. 15. An independent panel of national education experts has been hired to review the applications, Stoeckicht said.
• Stoeckicht would not say that the building’s selection process is more rigorous than the one the state uses to approve charters. But he did say that “the big challenge is closing the urban achievement gap, and I can say we are totally in alignment with the Department of Education on that point.”

All of this brings me to one big question - Did DOE and associated parties fail to tell the State Board of Education that their potential success lies largely with the success of the CEB?  Yes, parties cited location, decreased start-up funding, and the lack of an identified school leader as reasons to delay.  Was that a thinly veiled attempt to say that if the CEB doesn't deliver on near-to-free space, these schools will be unable to move forward?  Do charters really believe the CEB will be the charter panacea? And why didn't these parties simply stated that the CEB is behind in opening its building thus we behind in opening our schools?  That would have been the more transparent way to approach the situation with both DOE and the NJ.  Fortunately, for the public, WDDE dug into the malarkey and found the ribbon of truth.

And that's all the news that's fit to print.