Montgomery County’s sole charter school has enough documented violations to close the facility, school system leaders told school board members at a meeting Thursday.
The meeting was the first time Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Taylor and other top school leaders explained their justification for wanting to close MECCA Business Learning Institute (MBLI). The charter currently serves nearly 100 students in sixth and seventh grades, though there are plans to expand the school to ultimately include high-schoolers.
“No one wants this next item to be an item of discussion or even on the agenda at all, yet we’re here,” Taylor said ahead of the district leader’s presentation to the school board. “It’s supremely regrettable that we’re here.”
The school board is expected to vote on whether to revoke the charter at a later meeting. At Thursday’s meeting, board members did not indicate how they would vote.
MBLI opened at the beginning of the school year, but despite operating only a few months, Montgomery County leaders have said they have identified several problems with the school’s operations. In December, Taylor announced plans to recommend the charter school close, citing concerns it wasn’t sufficiently accommodating students with special needs and did little to rectify the problems. Those concerns violated state and federal education laws, according to the school system’s leaders.
The charter school’s leaders claim the system hasn’t been cooperative in its interactions, and at times, school leaders have overstepped their oversight authority. They requested the state board of education intervene in December, and that process could take weeks to complete.
“As a brand-new public charter school, MBLI regularly sought clarification, guidance, and assistance from its authorizer as we worked to establish systems and ensure compliance,” the charter school’s leaders said in an email Wednesday, ahead of the school board meeting. “That type of correspondence is typical for a new school and does not mean that MBLI did anything wrong.”
MBLI is the only charter school operating in Montgomery County, and it recently relocated from a temporary site in Bethesda to a permanent location in Germantown.
Charter schools receive public funds and are free to attend, but are run by private operators. In Maryland, local school boards can authorize a charter.
School boards generally have been reluctant to permit a charter school. MBLI was repeatedly rejected by the Montgomery County board, until the state board of education took an unusual step of requiring conditional approval of MBLI’s application. State board members said the “extraordinary relief” was necessary, saying that the local board had “repeated reluctance” to authorize charters and required unrealistic conditions for approval.
Montgomery County has had one other charter school before MBLI, but it closed in 2014 because of financial problems. It now operates as a private school.
In a letter dated Dec. 8, Taylor announced that he would recommend the school board revoke the charter because of concerns that MBLI wasn’t sufficiently accommodating for students with special needs. He said school system leaders provided notice of some of their concerns and requested a corrective action plan, but the charter school leaders did not provide a copy of their plan by a deadline. Originally, charter leaders were expected to turn in a corrective action plan on Nov. 29, according to the school system leaders, but a grace period was given due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
“The letter [recommending revocation] is really an escalation of a history of ongoing issues of noncompliance after technical assistance from MCPS staff,” Robyn Seabrook, the school system’s chief of legal services, said during the school board meeting Thursday.
The school system this week released more than 100 pages of email communications between the Montgomery school leaders and the charter school’s operators. The emails illuminated other problems that concerned Montgomery County school leaders, such as a cease-and-desist letter from the Montgomery County Education Association — the teachers union — that alleged the charter school was violating several aspects of the union’s bargaining agreement.
MBLI’s leaders said they were not aware the school system would release the documents. They added that the emails were “a partial snapshot of ongoing communications” and “present a one-sided view.”
The charter school’s leaders provided a corrective action plan on Dec. 12 that included promises to update some students’ individualized education plans and train staff on accommodating special-needs students.
During the meeting Thursday, charter school leaders said the recommendation to revoke the charter was premature, saying that MBLI has been operating for only three months.
“That context matters because the standard approach to oversight, especially for a new school, is typically progressive — identify concerns, provide clear expectations, allow a reasonable window to implement corrections and then verify through monitoring,” Principal Shiree Slade said.
The school board is expected to vote on Jan. 22 on whether to revoke the charter.
If board members revoke the charter, it’s unclear immediately what would happen to the school’s students.
The post Montgomery school leaders defend proposal to close county’s sole charter appeared first on Washington Post.
