AURORA | A controversial education group that was barred last year from opening a new charter school within the Cherry Creek School District in Aurora may get another shot after the state board of education approved an appeal from the group Thursday, Jan. 15.
The state board voted 5-2 to remand the application of Heritage Heights Academy, a proposed charter school vying to open in southeast Aurora, back to the Cherry Creek Board of Education for reconsideration. The CCSD board unanimously voted to deny Heritage Heights’ charter application in October 2015, citing concerns with many of the school’s proposals, including several with its Florida-based management company, Academica. State board members Jane Goff and Val Flores cast the two dissenting votes on the appeal.
The state board declared that CCSD’s decision to deny Heritage Heights’ application last year “was contrary to the best interest of the pupils, the school district, or community,” according to a news release issued Thursday night by the Department of Education.
“Heritage Heights Academy is very pleased with the decision made Thursday when the State Board of Education felt it was in the best interests of the pupils of Cherry Creek School District to remand the HHA charter application back to the CCSD Board of Education to reconsider our school for approval,” Jen Gibbons, co-founder of Heritage Heights, wrote in an email. “We are excited to work with CCSD and readdress any concerns regarding the application to ensure we are an outstanding choice in Cherry Creek School District.”
In a statement sent Friday afternoon, Cherry Creek officials largely rejected the state board’s decision.
“If the state board truly believes in local control, they did not demonstrate that with this decision,” said Dr. Harry Bull, CCSD superintendent. “To suggest that the board elected by the people in the Cherry Creek School District did not put our students’ best interest first shows a troubling and complete disregard for the right of local communities to make their own decisions about what is in their best interest.”
Though no details have yet been sent to CCSD, state law requires that the state board provide specific, written instructions for reconsideration any time a remand is triggered. The remand does not guarantee a reversal of the CCSD decision; it merely serves as encouragement for further review.
“The appeal gives (the Cherry Creek Board of Education) a lot of ‘encouragement’ to work with us to resolve their concerns,” school organizers wrote in response to a comment on the Heritage Heights Facebook page on Friday.
Jim O’Brien, immediate past president of the Cherry Creek School Board, said that the state’s recent decision flies directly in the face of the local board’s drawn-out deliberations.
“I was appalled that five members of the State Board of Education chose to abrogate and overturn the findings and recommendations of the Cherry Creek School Board in its denial of a charter application by the Heritage Heights Academy,” O’Brien said in a statement. “By failing to uphold the CCSD Board’s decision, supported by hundreds of hours of review by the district’s Accountability Committee, educational professionals, and interested parents, the state board, in effect, asserted that it knows what is best for the Cherry Creek School District and community. I’m not aware that the state board has any familiarity with the Cherry Creek community.”
In its resolution for denying Heritage Heights’ application, the CCSD board referenced a lack of parental involvement in the school’s proposal, the school’s failure to secure a building, and several worries about Academica’s checkered financial history.
“Academica has been unwilling to provide the district with its financial records to assess Academica’s financial acumen and financial practices,” the CCSD board wrote in the October resolution.
Heritage Heights has remained steadfast in its mission to open within Cherry Creek boundaries later this year. In its notice for appeal, the proposed school countered several points made in the CCSD resolution.
“Rather than provide a thoughtful review of the application, the (Cherry Creek School) Board engages in pure speculation, in addition to unfounded bias toward Academica … to form the basis of the denial,” lawyers for Heritage Heights wrote in the appeal document.
Academica, which operates more than 100 charter schools, primarily in Florida but also in Utah, California and other states, has been criticized in recent years for its business dealings. According to a Miami Herald investigation in 2011, the for-profit company pulled in more than $158 million in annual revenue.
The company has also been criticized for having conflict of interests with people close to Academica serving on boards for individual charters, as well as for lucrative real estate dealings in south Florida. Those issues resulted in a federal investigation into Academica’s practices.
Backers of Heritage Heights have said that the school would fill a vital niche in a community where thousands of students are on a waiting list for the district’s lone charter school, Cherry Creek Academy on the district’s west side. Cherry Creek Academy’s wait list has about 3,300 students on it, according to the school, which is more than five times the size of the 570-student school.
An online petition in support of Heritage Heights Academy had garnered more than 320 signatures as of Friday afternoon.
Under state law, the CCSD board must make a decision on whether or not to approve Heritage Heights within 30 days. The next regular Cherry Creek Board of Education meeting, where the issue is expected to be discussed, is scheduled for Feb. 8.
— Staff Writer Brandon Johansson contributed to this report.
Full text of the statement issued by the Cherry Creek School District can be found below.
On Jan. 14, 2016, the Colorado State Board of Education voted 5-2 to return the Heritage Heights Academy charter school application to the Cherry Creek Board of Education for reconsideration, saying that “the decision of the local board was contrary to the best interest of the pupils, the school district, or community.”
The Cherry Creek School District Board of Education unanimously voted to deny the charter application on Oct. 12, 2015.
“We are disappointed in the state board’s decision, but I am also very disillusioned by the assertion that our own locally elected school board’s unanimous decision was not in the interest of our own students,” Cherry Creek School District Superintendent Dr. Harry Bull said. “Our board of five members carefully reviewed all of the documents submitted by the charter applicants and listened to the voices of parents and community members on both sides of the matter before making their decision.
“If the state board truly believes in local control, they did not demonstrate that with this decision,” Bull added. “To suggest that the board elected by the people in the Cherry Creek School District did not put our students’ best interest first shows a troubling and complete disregard for the right of local communities to make their own decisions about what is in their best interest.”
Colorado State Board Vice Chairman Angelika Schroeder said in her comments that she found numerous deficiencies in the application and that the applicants “had a lot of work to do, ” before voting to remand the application back to the CCSD Board.
According to state law governing charter schools, the State Board of Education can remand a charter application only if it finds that the local school board’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious” or that it acted contrary to the best interest of students. The state board members did not indicate why they felt that the local board had not acted in the best interest of students.
“I was appalled that five members of the State Board of Education chose to abrogate and overturn the findings and recommendations of the Cherry Creek School Board in its denial of a charter application by the Heritage Heights Academy,” Jim O’Brien, immediate past president of the Cherry Creek School Board said. “By failing to uphold the CCSD Board’s decision, supported by hundreds of hours of review by the district’s Accountability Committee, educational professionals, and interested parents, the state board, in effect, asserted that it knows what is best for the Cherry Creek School District and community. I’m not aware that the state board has any familiarity with the Cherry Creek community.”
The application was reviewed by the District Leadership Team, the District Accountability Committee, along with the charter-friendly Colorado Charter Institute and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. All indicated the same concerns noted in the CCSD Board of Education’s denial of the application. The district also posted hundreds of pages of documents considered by the board on its website and solicited public comment through a variety of forums and venues.
“Overall, the application has been reviewed and assessed as having a High Risk. Evidence of need for the program provided by the Applicant was not substantiated with reliable evidence. The selection of curriculum is incomplete and requires instructional strategies that are not evidenced to be successful with the target population. The School’s objectives lack rigor and an understanding of Colorado accountability, and will not allow the school to demonstrate the effectiveness of its mission or vision. The structure, expertise, and role of the governing board are unclear, with confusion in the responsibilities and oversight of the school administration and the service provider. While the provided budget aligned to the application narrative, and included a reliable contingency in the event that enrollment falls far below expectations, many of the assumptions are unclear and many initial costs are underestimated. The school has not identified potential viable facilities, and has not outlined building needs that align to best practice,” The Colorado Charter Institute concluded.
With regard to financing, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers stated in its report “The proposed budget anticipates small annual cash surpluses, which may leave the organization in a precarious situation. As discussed above, the NACSA Financial Performance Standards call for 60 days cash on hand. In the school’s first year of operation, the days cash on hand will be just over 18 days and by the fifth year of operation it will be just under 35 days. This will leave the school in a precarious position should there be a delay or reduction in funding, difficulty recruiting the budgeted number of students, or significant unanticipated expenses.”
“In light of all that, I think we can safely say that the CCSD board’s decision was anything but arbitrary or capricious,” Bull said.
Colorado State Board of Education members Jane Goff and Valentina Flores each voted to uphold the Cherry Creek School Board’s decision. Goff said in her remarks that she found the application “very weak,” and noted that the state board had approved weaker applications.
The Cherry Creek School Board and community members denied the charter application citing concerns about financing, questions about the roles, responsibility and the autonomy of the school to be managed by the out-of-state for-profit company, Academica, Inc., the lack of an identified site for the school, a defined plan for academic accountability, and how much input parents would have in the selection of the school’s governing board. The CCSD board also said that the charter application failed to show how it would provide a unique opportunity for high academic achievement not already available from neighborhood schools.
Read the Cherry Creek School Board’s resolution denying the Heritage Heights Academy charter school application and the reports by Colorado Charter School Institute, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and the Cherry Creek School District Accountability Committee.
The district has 30 days to respond to the state board.