Evaluators dismiss 3 charter schools’ proposals

The state Public Charter School Commission voted Thursday to reject applications for three campuses proposed for Oahu and Kauai, citing serious concerns over incomplete academic and financial plans.

An evaluation panel made up of commission staff and volunteer experts had deemed the applications for iLEAD Kauai, IMAG Academy and Kamalani Academy insufficient and recommended they be denied for failing to meet benchmarks. Earlier this month the commission’s Applications Committee recommended denying one of the schools and deferred to the full commission on the others.

At a public hearing Thursday, the commission voted unanimously to deny IMAG Academy’s and iLEAD Kauai’s applications, and voted 5-0 with one abstention to deny Kalamani Academy’s proposal.

“This is the latest round in a trend where the commission is being much more cautious on the front end to make sure that applications are very solid and well thought out, and that they present a very strong plan for how a school’s going to meet the needs of students in the state,” Tom Hutton, the commission’s executive director, said after the votes.

The commission has approved one charter application a year the last two years from a pool of more than a dozen.

Hawaii’s charter schools are largely funded with taxpayer dollars through per-pupil funding — approximately $6,500 per student this school year — but are independently run under contracts with the commission. The schools enjoy a greater degree of autonomy by reporting to their own governing boards rather than to the state Board of Education.

A 2012 law that overhauled the state’s charter law to tighten oversight and accountability established the Public Charter School Commission with a statutory mission “to authorize high-quality public charter schools throughout the state.”

The denied applicants can appeal the decision to the Board of Education. The BOE has yet to overturn a commission decision.

ILEAD Kauai proposed a school to serve East Kauai students in grades kindergarten to 8, starting out with 125 students and growing to 430 students at capacity, according to its application. The school would offer an alternative education that emphasizes project-based learning.

“There are a lot of sort of exciting and intriguing buzzwords in this application about things that they want to do, and we’re all for project-based learning and these kinds of things, but the application itself, in our view, doesn’t demonstrate how these ideas would fit together into the day-to-day running of the school,” Hutton told the commission. “It articulates a lot of the ‘what’ but not enough of the ‘how.’”

He added that the evaluation panel found the academic track record of established iLEAD schools on the mainland weak.

“This has been an impressive effort at garnering statements of support for the school … but in our view, the passion of the support doesn’t compensate for deficiencies in the application itself,” Hutton said.

Deena Fontana Moraes, iLEAD Kauai’s proposed director, told the commission, “It looks as though we’re being evaluated through many of the systems that already exist. Charter schools are all about innovation and we’re bringing innovation to the table.”

Commissioner Mitch D’Olier, who chairs the Applications Committee, said he’s convinced that East Kauai needs a charter school. “There’s a community that really needs a school, and we should be supportive of that. But this school doesn’t seem like that school to me,” he said.

IMAG Academy proposed a K-12 school to primarily serve Waipahu, starting out with grades kindergarten, 7 and 8 and eventually growing to 915 students at full scale. The school would emphasize a project-based and so-called V-BASE (value-added business, arts, science and engineering) education.

“Your yes vote would give us the permission to create the physical evidence this part of Oahu needs to see and actually feel, and will add to the educational choices students and parents can then demand in the Central-Leeward area,” Sheila Buyukacar, the proposed director of the school, said.

The evaluation panel cited concerns about the school’s academic plan not being comprehensive enough and its financial plan allocating too much state funding to personnel costs.

“The biggest concern (is) on the startup plan and what that reflects about the understanding of the enormity of this undertaking,” Hutton said. “This all sort of boils down to some pretty serious capacity concerns.”

Kamalani Academy proposed a school to serve East Oahu with a planned location in Hawaii Kai for 350 students in grades kindergarten to 6 before expanding to include grades 7 and 8. The school would partner with two established mainland companies to offer a so-called arts integration approach to learning.

The evaluation team said the application lacked a clear explanation of how the arts would be integrated into an academic framework and how student outcomes would be measured.

“I think that some of the pukas that are in the application, the intention was to leave those pukas in order to really allow the professionals to fill them in,” said Jamie Simpson Steele, who testified in support of Kamalani.

“As a commission, I think we have to see the fine details. The pukas have to be filled,” commissioner Roger Takabayashi countered. “We cannot go on faith.”

The commission plans to launch into its next application cycle with the release next month of its 2015-16 request-for-proposals for new charters.