A Charlotte nonprofit is looking to start a charter school in Athens, run semi-independently from the rest of the Clarke County School District but funded with local tax dollars.
The Movement Foundation, backed by Movement Mortgage, has committed to spend $360 million to open 100 charter schools nationwide in the next 10 years. The foundation has built four in North Carolina so far and is looking to expand to Athens, Atlanta and Charleston, according to CCSD Director of Innovation Strategy and Governance James Barlament.
Only one of those schools is old enough for academic data to be available, and its track record is mixed. The school had lower levels of achievement than Charlotte-Mecklenburg or North Carolina schools as a whole, although achievement was higher among African-American students. It spends less money on books than other schools, and no arts education is offered at all, Barlament said during a presentation at the school board’s May 4 meeting.
Movement Mortgage would build or renovate a space for the school, then lease the space to the school, leading board of education member Patricia Yager to wonder whether the company would profit at taxpayers’ expense. “$1.2 million is coming from our district and going to lease a school somebody else owns,” Yager said.
The $1.2 million figure is what Movement is asking CCSD to divert from other local public schools annually. The charter school would also receive $400,000 in federal funding and $3 million in state funding each year. Movement is asking for full control over the school’s budget.
If approved by the BOE, the school board would have some oversight over the charter school, but it would also be under the purview of executives in Charlotte and a separate board. Five members have already committed to serve on that board, Barlament said, and none live in Athens.
The BOE has four options, Barlament said: It can reject the application outright, although there doesn’t seem to be a legal reason to do so, he said. It can accept the application, or it can ask for revisions or clarifications. The deadline to make a decision is June 15, and a vote is currently scheduled for June 1.
Even if the BOE rejects the application, Movement could apply to the Georgia Charter School Commission, a workaround set up by the state legislature to approve charter schools that local systems reject. “At the end of the day, they could still establish a charter school in Clarke County,” Barlament said. “The options are, they could be under the purview of you, the [Clarke County] board of education, or under the purview of the state board of education.”
If approved, the elementary school would open in 2024 with 104 kindergarteners and 30 third-graders, then gradually add grades, eventually reaching more than 600 students. Those students could live anywhere in the county, and they would be selected by lottery if there are more applicants than slots.
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