Red Hook’s Summit Academy is in danger of closing or restructuring at the end of this school year.
Every two, three or five years, charter schools have to submit an application to the New York City and State departments of education.
[pullquote]Official Notice:
There will be a public hearing at Summit Academy Charter School (27 Huntington Street) authorized by the NYC Department of Education Chancellor on April 9 regarding the future of the school. Summit is part of Community School District 15.
The speaker sign-in will be at 5:00 p.m., and the hearing will begin at 5:30 p.m.
The school currently serves 350 students in grades 6-12. They are seeking a five-year renewal of the charter that would begin on July 1, 2019.
As part of the application, Summit is seeking an authorization to partner with a support organization to undergo a restructuring of the school. The restructuring would include replacement of the current board of trustees and educational program for current and incoming students while utilizing the same charter.
The New York City Department of Education is required to hold a public hearing to solicit comment from the community in connection with the charter school renewal and revision process.
The renewal application doesn’t include any changes to the utilization of school district space.
This will be a renewal and revision meeting and will take place in the school auditorium.[/pullquote]
Summit was authorized in December 2008. Five years later they were renewed for three more years. The state then came back and gave them two more years, which leads to where the school is right now.
NYC charter schools are evaluated based upon school performance compared to neighboring district public schools. They can’t just be equal to or in range of the schools; they must beat the district in various test scores.
“While our scholars have been improving year over year in middle school and year over year in high school, we still fall short of exceeding or beating the district,” school founder and executive director Natasha Campbell said.
As a result, Summit has two choices. The first is to close the school as of June 30. The second choice, and one endorsed by the Board of Education, is to have the school undergo a restructuring process. This would mean that there would be new teachers and administration at the new school and it’s not known now who that would be.
The school does not accept this ruling and wants to prove how much the kids are improving and how they benefit from the school and the administration.
Principal Cheryl Swift told the parents at an emergency meeting that she believed they are making a difference with the scholars. With the help of the parents and the kids, they believe that they can get the decision reversed to keep Summit with its current management team.
“It is our mission to not only educate you child academically but to make your child the best young adult we can possibly make them, so they can go on to college and do the things that they dream of,” Campbell told everyone at the meeting. “That is our goal and mission. Because we believe that and you agree with me, it’s important that you do not accept this.”
She encouraged the parents to be active and protest.
“You have way more power than us,” Swift said. “Your voice and actions can change this decision. It is imperative that you let them know that we support your child academically and how we are making a difference in your child’s life. It is important that there is protest and that we need to put feet on the ground.”
The sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders are constantly improving, and the high school’s graduation rate and the college graduation rate from Summit are higher than those of the city and state.
“I need you to understand that is because of the hard work of your teachers,” Swift said. “It is the relentless work of your teachers coming in during office hours.”
There are a few benchmarks that charters schools much reach that the Board of Education outlined at the meeting.
There are measures that compare school performance to the Community School District (CSD) and there is data that the Board of Education prioritizes most. The first element, of which Summit was lacking, was the proficiency rates on the English Language Arts (ELA) and math exams in comparison to the CSD. This is the most important part.
The Board of Ed also looks at the proficiency rates on the ELA and math exams for high-risk students. This includes students who are English-language learners, students who have disabilities and students who are economically disadvantaged. They look at Regents scores and how they compare with the city average.
In addition, they are looking to see if graduation rates meet or exceed the citywide rate, specifically graduation rates for students with disabilities, English-language learners and economically disadvantaged students.
The final criteria is investigating the college readiness index for Summit students. They try to see if the courses that students have taken are rigorous in college preparation. The college and career prep index will tell the Board of Ed if a student who goes to CUNY will have to take remedial courses or be ready initially for a 101 course.
“The Department of Education has decided that instead of closing Summit they want to restructure Summit,” Campbell said. “What restructuring means is that another organization comes into the school and takes over. They may change staff; they may change curriculum and may change how the school functions. The goal is that restructuring will make Summit its best version of itself.”
The Board of Education’s goal is to identify what is being done well and keep it and to try to improve on where the school is struggling.
The school board and Department of Education asked that people email the school board and inform them what they like most about the school.
Many parents spoke out on how kids improve year by year upon entering Summit after struggling academically in their previous school, how their kids have been on the dean’s list, how the basketball teams do well, how students perform well academically, how the teachers really connect with the students, and how the school is a family-like atmosphere.
A school board member spoke about how this is the first time in NYC that a charter school has been offered to be restructured, but it has happened with regular DOE schools. The Board recognized how the students are progressing each year, how Summit was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and how the graduation rate is 84-85 percent.
The board member added that the board does not agree 100 percent with what is going on and the process, but looking to the future for the children, they have to ensure the process is followed to stabilize the kids to make certain that the family-like atmosphere that the administration and parents speak of stays together.
This is the timeline on next steps that will be taken: on March 29 a potential new operator of the school will be selected; in early to mid-April there will be a public hearing at Summit; and on May 6 the Board of Regents will have a vote on whether they approve the restructuring of the school and the new school operator.
A pastor who was at the meeting wanted to know if Summit receives as much funding as the rest of the district since it is compared to the overall district as a whole.
Parents repeatedly said that their kids struggled before coming to Summit due to the ineffectiveness of their zoned school but once coming to Summit their kids started to prosper.
There was one student who said she would be a senior next year and had had come from another school that had shut down. She did not want to look for another school to go to for her senior year.
It was also brought up that sixth-graders have come into Summit at a second-grade level, which has caused some of the underperforming in the junior high.
A Board of Ed representative said that the option to restructure was not something they had to do and that an emphasis is put on improving the junior high.
The school will stay open as it has been until the end of the school year, and unless the Board of Ed approves the restructuring, the school will close. The Board did say that they are trying to keep the school community together and if the school does indeed close they will assist in finding a seat for students in a different, higher-performing school.
