A proposal to start a new charter school in Columbus has been submitted to the Muscogee County School District , and superintendent David Lewis wants the board to reject it.
The MCSD board is scheduled to vote on the recommendation during its Monday meeting.
The application came from two officials representing the proposed charter school, named Dominion Purpose Academy : executive director and lead founder LaTasha Jones Adams and chairwoman Shae Anderson . That’s according to the agenda for the board’s Aug. 12 work session, but the application isn’t attached to the agenda, and MCSD didn’t fulfill the Ledger-Enquirer’s request for a copy before publication.
The only information available about the proposal is a summary on the agenda. It says Dominion Purpose Academy wants to start with grades 6 and 7 for its first year and expand to grades 4-8 by the end of its fifth year.
It also says Dominion Purpose Academy is working with consulting company Level Field Partners , headquartered in Washington, D.C., to plan the charter school. Level Field Partners has helped finance and develop more than 120 charter school projects in 29 states, according to the agenda.
Despite the proposal being on the agenda, MCSD administrators and board members didn’t publicly discuss it at the work session. The only comments about it then were voiced by Adams and her daughter, who addressed the board during the public agenda portion of the work session.
Adams praised MCSD for creating alternative schools targeting certain populations of students, such as Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts for grades 6-12 and Brewer Acceleration Academy for grades K-2. But she contends that’s not enough.
“When I look at the kids here, when I look at the experiences that they’re having, and I look at the scores, I want to help to be a solution,” she said. “There are great things happening in Muscogee County schools. I think that families need more options.”
The new option Dominion Purpose Academy proposes, Adams said, is a charter school with a curriculum based on Design Thinking .
What is Design Thinking?
The Harvard Graduate School of Education describes design thinking as “a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving. In practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Design Thinking can be flexibly implemented; serving equally well as a framework for a course design or a roadmap for an activity or group project.”
Adams said Dominion Purpose Academy would “collaborate with companies with Design Thinking.”
“I’ve traveled literally around the nation, studying the schools and working in businesses with Design Thinking,” Adams said. “I’d love the opportunity to partner with Muscogee County schools with this charter school.”
The Ledger-Enquirer didn’t reach Adams or Anderson to learn more about their proposal. None of the board members replied to the Ledger-Enquirer’s attempt to find out how they will vote on this proposal and why. In an email, Lewis explained his rationale for recommending the board reject it.
“The recommendation is based on a review by and the professional opinions of staff members with expertise in each operational area, as well as two subsequent follow-up inquiries with the petitioner,” Lewis wrote. “Their review determined that the proposal lacked specificity, required an over-reliance on district support and resources that could not be assured and was fiscally unsustainable long-term to be recommended as a district-sponsored charter school.
“Per process, a more detailed explanation will be provided to the petitioner in writing within 60 days if the board votes to reject the proposal. However, the proposal may also be approved at the state level which, if approved, would allow it to operate under state oversight.”
What is a charter school?
The Georgia Department of Education defines a charter school as “a public school of choice that operates under the terms of a charter, or contract, with an authorizer, such as the state and local boards of education in accordance with the Charter Schools Act .
“Charter schools receive flexibility from certain state and local rules in exchange for a higher degree of accountability for raising student achievement. Charter schools are held accountable by their authorizer(s) for upholding the terms of their charter.”
Georgia’s initial charter school law was enacted in 1993. It allowed existing public schools to convert to charter schools. The state’s first three conversion charter schools were approved in 1995. The charter school law was expanded in 1998 to allow for organizations outside of a school district to petition the school district or the state to create a start-up charter school.
Out of nearly 2,200 public schools in Georgia, 97 are charters, according to the National Association of Public Charter Schools .
Dominion Purpose Academy’s application is the first startup charter school proposal submitted to MCSD during Lewis’ 11-year tenure as superintendent. Two years before the board hired Lewis , it voted 6-3 in 2001 to reject a start-up charter school petition from John McEachern.
The board unanimously approved the conversion charter petitions from Clubview (2005), Wynnton (2008) and Reese Road (2009) elementary schools, as well as Clubview’s five-year renewal (2011). But none of them are charter schools now. Since then, they voluntarily surrendered their charters, Lewis told the Ledger-Enquirer Now, MCSD doesn’t have any charter schools.
In September 2008, Fort Middle School submitted to MCSD a letter of intent to implement a planning grant to convert to a charter school. But the school withdrew its petition Feb. 11, 2011 “due to the current uncertainties surrounding the regulations for achieving charter status,” according to the withdrawal statement.
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