Charter school twice denied. Ky. education board denies appeal from first-ever applicant.

The Kentucky Board of Education on Tuesday unanimously denied an appeal from the proposed River Cities Academy, the first group that wants to open a charter school in the state.

The board’s final order, read aloud during a meeting on the appeal, said that the Newport Independent School District Board “was legally barred” from approving the application and did not err in its decision because River Cities Academy failed to meet the requirements of state law. The school board’s decision was not contrary to the best interest of the students or community, it said.

The order said the charter school group wrongly relied on public funding in its 5-year budget projections. The General Assembly has not approved a funding mechanism for charter schools.

The order said River Cities “has not demonstrated the ability to operate in a fiscally sound manner...as its budget is built on financially unsound assumptions regarding the receipt of public and private funds necessary to sustain its public charter school.”

The issue was before the state board of education because on Dec. 26, the first application ever filed in Kentucky to open a charter school was denied by the Newport Independent school board. The Kentucky General Assembly approved charter schools in 2017 with the stipulation that a local school board would have to approve an application and if that was denied, the appeal would be heard by the Kentucky Board of Education.

Kentucky Board of Education member Lu Young said that the Newport Independent Board and the River Cities Academy did not take the process lightly.

River Cities Academy waived its right to a hearing, according to the written appeal.

It’s Jan. 23 appeal said “we formally declare that the premise of the denial is in error, spurious and fundamentally flawed.”

“As an all-parent volunteer group organized in good faith to provide one small option to improve the educational outcome for our community, we hoped to apply to an objective authorizer, open-minded to the needs of our community,” the appeal said, “Instead, we found ourselves confronted by authorizers who we believed were highly influenced by outside interests. Furthermore, while we share the same goals of providing excellent education for children in the community, we were confronted by a defensive superintendent whose district consistently ranks in the bottom 5 percent of the state.

Lynn Schaber, a leader in the proposed River Cities Academy,” told the Herald-Leader Tuesday in response to the denial that her group was “very disappointed” in the decision of the state board.

“We believe that the overall dislike for charters has created a negative filter that has blurred out the good that (River Cities Academy) would bring to the community,” Schaber said. “The original intent of the legislation was to bring freedom and innovation into the education system and instead we’ve been met with resistance and a culture of entitlement when it comes to defending existing budgets. The state board used funding as the basis for denial. We understand this, but are frustrated as this was not called out as one of the seven major issues that The Newport (school board) had with our application. Instead they chose to focus on dramatic and unfounded issues, giving us no choice but to appeal. “

Funding is only one part of establishing a successful school, Schaber said, adding that her group wanted feedback on its full proposal and wanted approval contingent upon a funding mechanism being approved for charters schools in Kentucky.

“Clearly the process was not as collaborative as we originally envisioned,” she said. “We are sad that the opportunity for a different approach to education has been taken away from Northern Kentucky.”

The Kentucky Board of Education on Tuesday began a 10 a.m. meeting about the appeal by going into a closed session that lasted about an hour.

Appointed by Gov. Andy Beshear on his Inauguration Day, the new state school board and the new governor are not viewed as supporting charter schools as were the state board members approved by former Gov. Matt Bevin, who pushed for charter schools in Kentucky.

No one in the state applied to open a charter school until October when River Cities Academy filed a 1, 062-page application with the Newport Independent Board. Superintendent Kelly Middleton said in December that the school board made the unanimous decision against the River Cities Academy application after following the recommendations by a review committee that included representatives of public school districts in Northern Kentucky, Northern Kentucky University and others.

In December, Middleton cited major concerns expressed by the review committee: “The applicant lacked specificity and provided unfinished planning in multiple areas that leave significant question as to whether or not the school will be able to launch successfully for a proposed August 2020 start date. The applicant does not provide data to support the complexities of the population to be served and relies on generalized notions of what the applicant believes should be good for all children.”

Among the concerns was the lack of authentic evidence of community support for the charter school, a lack of evidence to support competency and capacity for providing services to students with special needs, and a lack of a transportation plan for elementary school students.

The charter group displayed questionable integrity for indicating a partnership with The Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky had been secured when no such agreement existed, a December news release from the school district said, and there was “significant plagiarism in the application process, including the use of external sources without providing proper citation.”

The River Cities appeal said “the claim of plagiarism is decidedly false on multiple levels.”

“In order for any plagiarism report to be valid there must be an expectation of original authorship. The expectation of original authorship when responding to application questions is not at all equivalent to the expectation when publishing a book, as the (Newport Independent) Superintendent intimated in his presentation to the Board on December 26, 2019.

The appeal said from the start, the Newport Independent’s approach was “heavily biased against RCA” as demonstrated by the board’s major concerns with the application.

River Cities Academy proposed having 200 students from Newport and Northern Kentucky’s other river cities — Covington, Dayton, Bellevue, Fort Thomas and Ludlow. Superintendents from Fort Thomas, Covington and Ludlow spoke in opposition to the charter school during a Dec. 18 public forum in Northern Kentucky on the application, the December news release said.

Other groups who want to open charter schools in the state have said they won’t file applications until the General Assembly approves a funding mechanism for charter schools.

This story was originally published February 25, 2020 at 12:24 PM.