‘Arkose Academy’ heads to appeal

MAT-SU — After a 4-3 rejection from the Mat-Su Borough School Board in a Dec. 3 meeting, the directors of the potential Arkose Ridge Leadership Academy say they will appeal to the Alaska State Board of Education with a new and improved proposal.

Members and supporters of the “Partnership for Arkose Ridge Leadership Academy,” as it is known legally and online, could hardly believe their ears when the school board voted to deny the application to form what they describe as an “innovative, place-based school.”

“It was a shock to many members of the audience, including people in district administration,” said partnership board member and high school teacher Paul Morley.

Morley said the partnership knew there were a couple of school board members who “weren’t gonna sway for various reasons,” but they were not expecting to be turned down by the majority.

The proposed charter school has been in the works for months. Interested parties held the first official meeting last January and organizers have been soliciting responses to an online survey about parents’ and students’ desires and needs in a school via word-of-mouth since about the time they created a website, now available at arkoseacademy.org.

The more than 150 responses the partnership received in that time, however, apparently were insufficient to convince the school board that the community really wants “another” charter school.

“The prime reason cited by (school board President Susan) Pougher and (member Ray) Michaelson for voting against our charter was a perceived absence of parents advocating for the school,” Morley wrote in an email. “We did cite online survey data in previous presentations to the board, but for the most part this data was discounted as inconclusive. We did not pursue compiling a list of supportive parents since the state application does not require such evidence of interest.”

Instead, the partnership thought it best to devote more energy “attending to numerous other specific requests,” in collaboration with district administration, Morley said. Three weeks later, after much fine-tuning, the new proposal came up for discussion as a non-action item in a Nov. 19 school board meeting.

“We were found to have met all categories and sub-categories of the state’s charter school application evaluation rubric,” Morley wrote.

Still, the motion failed, with lack of support cited as the issue.

“We did not feel we had been specifically directed to provide this data, and it turned out to be the reason for swinging the vote,” Morley said. “We were really unprepared for that.”

In fact, their unpreparedness was almost purposeful. Morley said the partnership chose “not to swarm the board room with supportive parents” because they didn’t think it was necessary.

“We wanted the charter to stand on its own,” he said.

They also chose not to rely too much on their survey data because they felt that, so early in the game, it might not be completely reliable.

“It’s hard to get families to commit to something that doesn’t exist,” Morley said.

Perhaps that’s why the school board unanimously voted for the renewal of both Academy Charter School and American Charter Academy at the same meeting Arkose was voted down — it’s easy to keep what’s already in existence going.

But the partnership members say they are not about to throw out all their hard work. A new appeals process regarding the proposals of charter schools, initiated in April and finalized Dec. 5, allows applicants to file a “notice of appeal” with newly re-appointed state Board of Education Early Development Commissioner Mike Hanley.

In the notice, the applicant must specify the grounds for the appeal and provide evidence of any factual errors. They must submit the application turned down by the school board, all supporting documents, the decision of the board, the minutes of the board meeting and any recorded testimony presented to the board to the commissioner in their appeal.

If, after reviewing all these things, Commissioner Hanley does send the Arkose Academy proposal back to the local board — rather than denying the appeal or passing it on to the state school board for appeal — it will likely be placed on the Jan. 21 agenda as an action item.

The partnership has updated its online survey to ask more specific information, and as such will ideally obtain more detailed support/data. This would be presented to the local school board at the January meeting.

In the meantime, the partnership invites students, parents, teachers and other community members in relevant fields to complete the survey by clicking on the “Show Your Interest!” tab at arkoseacademy.org. Board members can also be contacted directly, as several of them are high school teachers, though others are parents or borough and state employees.

Morley said they are still hoping to open the academy in time for next school year, but the necessary steps may need to be taken very quickly.

“A lot of them are on hold before (the charter) is approved,” he said. “We’ve gotta develop facilities and a public fitting process, then there’s hiring of staff, further curriculum development and staff training, all of which require a lot of detailed planning.”

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.