Megacharter update: capacity balloons to 2800 students

The Longwood Foundation-sponsored Community Education Building will accept another round of applications this spring for occupancy in the fall of 2015. This round of applications is for middle and high schools only. Current tenants are Kuumba Academy (K-8) and Academia Antonia Alonso (K-5), which will move in by this summer.

Since its announcement in 2012, the planned capacity of the building has ballooned to 2800 students.
. This comes at a time when six charters are up for either initial approval or expansion this spring. One of them (Great Oaks) has met with CEB about locating in the building.

A while back I wrote:

…northern Delaware is in fact on the cusp of a dramatic charter expansion not approved by any voters. […]The underlying risk is that a greatly expanded charter presence would harm traditional public schools, at worst turning them into second-class dumping grounds and forcing Districts to close or repurpose schools. Suburban parents who are used to tuning out Wilmington issues should take note: the new mega-charters will have an impact on suburban schools.

 
And in fact, the Red Clay board cited negative charter impact on its schools when it voted to oppose HB 165 last summer, which provided additional funding and relaxed oversight of charters. The bill passed over the objections of the state’s most populous districts (Red Clay, Christina, and Capital), which predictably started the current gold rusn of charter applications.

This year, Red Clay wrote a letter to the State Board of Education detailing the negative impact the new charters would have on the district, and warns that:

“Three high school openings in one area would necessitate the closing of another school.”

CEB has also announced the building will provide “wrap-around life services (healthcare and wellness services, after-school enrichment, etc.” So far, no word on how organizations should apply, or which services will be available.

Timeline for the current CEB application process is:

Application instructions and data template released – April 28, 2014
Deadline for submission of written application and data template – COB May 30, 2014
Notification of Finalists by June 13, 2014
Finalist In-Person Interviews by June 27, 2014
School selection notification by July 15, 2014

Whoizzit?

The Community Education Building (CEB) has revealed in its general FAQ that the first cohort of schools has been selected to be tenants in the building. All applicants have been notified, and disclosure is at the discretion of each school. From the FAQ:

What were the results of the 2012 school application and selection process?

We received several charter school applications. After a rigorous interview process, CEE-Trust, our independent national review panel, made final recommendations to the CEB Board, which accepted them as made. All applicants have been informed of the outcome of the selection process. Given the impact that the CEB’s decision to delay opening will have on schools, individual applicants will communicate their selection outcome and future expansion/opening plans.

Remember the 2012 applications were apparently for existing charters only.

So, WHOIZZIT? Is it your charter? The game’s afoot.

***

In other updates to the FAQ:

Student occupancy has been delayed until Fall 2014.
The number of student seats has been bumped up again, to 2400.
Schools that were not selected may apply again with the second cohort by Aug. 1 2013.
There are 20,000 square feet devoted to wraparound support services.

And in an interesting FAQ item:

Is there a possibility that the opening be delayed beyond 2014?

Only a major issue (i.e. the lack of financing) could further postpone the initiative.

Is this a hint at obtaining capital funding via changes to the charter law?

Updated: CEB updates timeline

The Community Education Building has quietly released applications for the second cohort of schools to be accepted as tenants. The new deadline is August 1, 2013.

Applications for the first cohort of schools were due August 31 2012. It is not clear if any applications were received or approved. It is also not clear if schools that submitted applications in 2012 must reapply, or if their slots have been reserved. CEB has not responded to requests for clarification.

Update 12/6/12: Riccardo Stoeckicht of CEB has responded in a comment below, pointing out that most of the questions above have been answered in a CEB FAQ. I’m not sure when the FAQ was updated, but I’ll assume it was there and I missed it at the time I wrote this post. The updated FAQ says that some schools applied, some were selected, and all applicants have been notified and disclosure is up to them. I’ll be covering the new info in another post.

The application timeline is:

Action steps and dates associated with the application process are:

Application instructions and data template (PUBLISHED: June 15, 2013)
Submit written application and data template (DEADLINE: August 1, 2013)
By invitation, participate in a final interview (BY: August 15, 2013)
School selection notification (BY: September 15, 2013)

The new school opening timeline is:

Milestone dates:

October 2012 – First cohort of tenants selected
February 2013 – Bank of America transfers title of the building to the CEB
Spring 2013 – Facility build-out begins
Spring/Summer 2013 – Selection process for second cohort of tenant schools
June 15, 2014 – School Certificates of Occupancy issued
July 1, 2014 – Schools access facilities
Fall 2014 – Schools open

Applications due this week for Longwood’s Community Education Building

Is the CEB rushing to beat charter reform?

Applications for charters who wish to move into the CEB next fall were released to the public at the beginning of August and are now due this week, allowing fewer than 30 days to complete. CEB says it will accept only one or two charters for next fall. Final decisions will be made by October.

Charters selected by CEB will still have to submit applications to the state by December to approve or modify their charter, after which public hearings will be scheduled and the State Board of Education will deliberate to approve or disapprove the modification, typically by sometime in April or May.

Apparently only current charters will be able to move in next fall. CEB President Riccardo Stoeckicht says:

Under the state’s regulations, only charter schools that are already operating or are approved to open next year could move into the building in the fall of 2013, Stoeckicht said.

Simultaneously, the Governor’s working group on charter reform will be meeting through December when it will deliver its recommendations, which probably won’t be acted on until late spring at the earliest.

So it is very likely the first two existing charters will be approved by the SBE under the current charter law rather than any reformed charter law. Even though CEB has engaged a third party to promote independence in the selection process, given the short timeline it’s easy to wonder if there has been some pre-discussion with certain charters.

I keep hearing charters are public schools. So why is the selection process private? The public certainly has a strong interest in deciding what kinds of schools it wants or doesn’t want in the building. When the state board hearings come for the selected CEB charters, I’d certainly like to know who the other applicants were and why they were rejected.

(thanks to Larry Nagengast of wdde.org for his indispensible reporting on these topics)

Longwood Foundation names board, announces applications for Community Education Building

 

 

The Longwood Foundation has revealed more about its intentions for charter schools in the Wilmington building donated to the Longwood Foundation by Bank Of America in February. As the Foundation announced at the ceremony, the plan was to create a “Community Education Building” not-for-profit organization to manage the building and its schools.

And now, the Foundation has revealed its new website at cebde.org. The website has been under construction for a few weeks, but now there is plenty of new content.

Check it out at cebde.org.

To begin with, the Board of Directors has been named. You may recall we speculated last February that Charlie Copeland was involved in this and let slip some inside info. Charlie said in February:

The Longwood Foundation plans to take that building and create the “Community Education Building” (CEB) and put 4 Charter Schools right in the heart of the City of Wilmington.

It turns out Charlie is on the Board of the CEB after all.

And then we noted that Chuck Baldwin of CSW gave some more clues:

This building, which will be used for education, will allow for successful models to replicate in Delaware (KIPP, Montessori). Schools will be established in the inner city and provide educational opportunities for thousands of our children. DuPont and Bank of America are committing million of dollars in resources and are truly “putting their money where their mouth is” when it comes to education reform.

I didn’t see Chuck’s name on the CEB website, but he’s right down the road at CSW. Let’s look for those Kipp and Montessori schools to show up.

And the CEB application process for charters is also online, announcing a third-party organization for school selection:

This summer the CEB will entertain applications from charter schools interested in opening their facilities in the building in the fall of 2013. Charter Schools interested in joining the CEB in 2014 will be invited to submit their application in the late spring of 2013.

To ensure that the CEB achieves its mission and vision, the Board of Directors has engaged the Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust) to create and manage an independent school selection and performance review process.

Here are the members of the selection committee, and here are the application materials for new and existing charters.

There’s a lot of info to process here. I’ll be reading this more and posting more over the coming days. What do you think?