March 12, 2012 MEMORANDUM To: Members of the Board of Trustees’ Charter Schools Committee From: Susan Miller Barker, Executive Director, SUNY Charter Schools Institute Subject: Albany Preparatory Charter School Closure The board of trustees of the Albany Preparatory Charter School (Albany Prep) voted to close the school at the end of the current school year; prior to the start of the charter renewal process. As such, the Institute is working with the board and staff at Albany Prep as well as with the Albany City School District, to ensure its orderly closure at the conclusion of the 2011-12 school year; a year prior to the end of the school’s current charter term. Executive Summary: Albany Prep is a 5-8 middle school located in Albany, New York that currently serves 239 students. The school is in its 7th year of operation having received only a short-term renewal of three years from the SUNY Trustees in 2010. The school’s current charter is set to expire at the end of the 2012-2013 school year. Albany Prep was scheduled to submit an application for renewal of its current charter in August of 2012. However, in April of this year, before the school submitted a renewal application and prior to SUNY’s renewal review process commenced, the Albany Prep board of trustees voted to close the school at the conclusion of the 2011-2012 school year. The Albany Prep board indicated that it voted to close the school prior to the end of its charter term because it did not believe that the school would post the academic performance necessary to meet SUNY’s requirements to have its charter contract renewed. (In a subsequent charter term the only possible renewal outcomes are: a full-term, five year renewal or non-renewal.) SUNY agreed and accepted the board’s decision. The Institute has an established protocol for charter school closures, which schools must follow as part of their charter agreement. Upon notification from the Albany Prep board of trustees of the vote to close, Institute staff met with the board, staff and parents to begin implementing SUNY’s charter school closure protocol. Institute staff is working to support families in finding new school options for next year. In addition to presenting at a parent meeting at the school facility, Institute staff conducted outreach to each of the school districts in which Albany Prep students reside (11 in total) and prepared detailed packets of information for parents about alternative school options for next year in their district, at other charter schools, and in private and parochial schools. Packets were mailed by the Institute to each child’s home and the material was also made available on the Institute’s website at: http://www.newyorkcharters.org/albanyprep. Background: About Albany Prep’s Initial Renewal Period (2005-06 – 2009-10) • Originally envisioned as an international baccalaureate school, Albany Prep’s school leadership and board struggled with how best to meet the demands of an incoming student body they indicated was much further behind academically than anticipated. • School officials believed that in order to achieve academic success, they had to first establish a school culture. SUNY evaluation highlighted frequent delays in instruction as teachers sought compliance with rules about uniforms and behavior. • The school was challenged to retain students and requested a significant enrollment decrease (by 100 students) in its second year of operation. • The school experienced leadership turnover twice in the first charter term. • In the third year of the first charter term, the school was just beginning to implement potentially useful assessment procedures and had begun to implement a process for developing a comprehensive curriculum that is aligned to state standards. • The school established a strong record of academic performance in mathematics but continued to struggle in English language arts. • In the final year of its first charter term, the school was granted a short-term renewal of three years with SUNY’s renewal report citing both progress and remaining challenges: - Classroom instruction generally provided purposeful learning activities and students were on task in learning basic skills and gaining foundational knowledge. - In 2008-09, the final year of its Accountability Period, Albany Prep compiled an overall record of meeting its key Accountability Plan goals in both English language arts and mathematics. - The school was deemed fiscally sound. - The school had still not adequately evaluated the teaching staff or provided its large number of novice teachers with direct supervisory support and sufficient professional development. - Until the last year the board and leadership had not instituted adequate admissions and intake policies and procedures to ensure compliance with all laws and regulations. The school had been put on probation by the SUNY Trustees for, among other things, violations of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. About Albany Prep’s Short-Term Renewal Period (2010 – Present) • The positive academic trends identified by SUNY at the time the short-term renewal had not taken hold. • SUNY’s 2011 evaluation report of the school indicated that the school’s progress toward refining the systems and procedures in its educational program was not sufficient to meet SUNY’s renewal standards. • While enrollment stabilized, the percentage of the school’s students testing at or above proficiency on the state’s annual assessment in English language arts dropped from 76% in 2008-09 to just 20% in 2010-11. • Results on the state’s mathematics assessment were similar with the percentage of proficient students falling from: 89% in 2008-09 to 34% in 2010-11. • In the most recent year the school failed to out-perform the schools in the underperforming district in which it is located in both mathematics and English language arts and performed far under what was expected when compared to similar public schools state-wide. (SUNY’s accountability analysis, which is a more in-depth look at students who have been in the school for two or more years, is attached.) By way of both school evaluation reports and multiple communications with the school’s board of trustees, SUNY Charter Schools Institute staff have continually expressed concern that the school was at-risk of non-renewal.