One of the unique features of being a public charter school is that every few years you must justify your continued existence through a renewal process with the agency that authorizes your school. The current ANCS charter contract with the Atlanta Public Schools and Georgia Department of Education runs through June 30, 2016, and right now we are working on the application to renew our charter contract for another term. The application first gets reviewed and approved by the ANCS Governing Board before it then goes to the Atlanta Public Schools board in the fall of 2015. After approval by APS, the contract then goes to the state board of education for approval. ANCS, APS, and the state then enter into another three-party contract.
On Tuesday, March 24 at 6:30 PM, we will be holding a community meeting at our elementary campus for ANCS parents and other interested community members to learn more about the renewal of the ANCS charter contract. The renewal process can be boiled down to a charter school answering two questions: (1) Have you been successful in doing what you said you’d do in your first charter term? and (2) What changes—if any—do you propose making in your next charter term? The March 24th community meeting will be focused on giving an overview of our answers to those two questions, with special emphasis given to the second question and a few changes under consideration. Here’s a preview:
Accountability goals: Beginning this year, all locally-approved charter schools in Georgia are now held to the same set of accountability goals: to outperform the local district and state CCRPI scores and to outperform demographically-similar schools’ CCRPI scores. So ANCS will be subject to these goals no matter what. Yet we also know that our school’s impact on students goes beyond that which can be measured by performance on one test alone, so we are looking at using a range of assessment tools to create additional goals that reflect our support of students’ holistic development: intellectually, social-emotionally, and physically. You can find some examples of the tools under consideration from a recent report I gave to the ANCS board.
Enrollment policy: One aspect of our enrollment policy we must change involves our school’s priority attendance zones. Upon our merger of two separate charter schools five years ago to form ANCS as a single, K-8 school under one charter contract, the DOE allowed us to retain the tiered priority attendance zones for each campus. Since that time, charter school regulations have changed, and the DOE is requiring us to submit a renewal application that has the same priority attendance zones for both campuses. These zones would go into effect for registration for the 2016-17 school year. Our board will make a decision on this issue by the end of June this year, and in considering how to meet this requirement, a few principles will guide the eventual decision:
- The priority attendance zones should not exclude neighborhoods in one of our current priority attendance zones.
- The priority attendance zones should align with our founding as a “neighborhood” charter school.
- The priority attendance zones should reflect our commitment to serving a diverse student population.
Aside from the attendance zone issue, our commitment to diversity also has us utilizing all available mechanisms to create and maintain socioeconomic diversity among the students at our school. A recent report I made to the ANCS board focuses on these efforts, which includes increased enrollment outreach to working with other charter schools to convince Georgia legislators to follow the lead of other states in giving charter schools the option of creating enrollment priorities that help schools maintain diversity. If legislative changes–such as through HB 474–open up this opportunity for Georgia charter schools, we will explore it for ANCS.
Possible IB program for grades 6-8: Last spring, the ANCS board formed a task force to investigate whether pursuing International Baccalaureate (IB) authorization for the Middle Years Programme (MYP) for ANCS in grades 6-8 would benefit our students and teachers. The task force—whose recent report to the board can be found here—will make a final recommendation in late summer, and should ANCS choose to apply for IB status, this change would be incorporated into our renewal application.
In terms of changes—either required or potential—for our next charter term, that’s basically it. We don’t wish to add more students, expand to the high school grades, or make radical changes to our academic program. We are pleased with the experience we provide for students in grades K-8, and the changes we are considering are aimed at helping us to make that experience even better while keeping us aligned with the mission articulated in our school’s strategic plan. I hope you’ll come join us for the community meeting on March 24th to learn more about the renewal of our charter and to get your questions answered.