Charter School Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Proposed Morgantown Charter School Holds Public Forum For Second Application

The only organization currently pursuing approval for a charter school in the state held a public forum in Morgantown last week.

Last year, the Wisdom Academy submitted an application to the Professional Charter School Board to become West Virginia’s latest charter school. However, the application was rejected.

Javaid Syed is the board chair for Wisdom Academy. He said a lack of financing was the main reason for the rejection.

“What you want is you want commitments,” he said. “So this year, we have gotten commitments over $900,000 from our community. And we have submitted that as well. Plus, we have made major changes in our application as well.”

Now, the Wisdom Academy is applying again. Some of the changes Syed referred to include a rigorous assessment schedule for potential students, part of the proposed school’s “Individual Performance Plan for Success” (IPPS). Described in the application as a “portfolio like” database of student materials, board members like Debra Harrison said the IPPS will be used to assess students quarterly with teacher, administrative and parental input.

“If you put a process or a program in place, you need to monitor it to make sure it’s being effective,” Harrison said. “One of the things that often happens is these wonderful programs are put into place, and then the appropriate monitoring doesn’t occur, so that you can’t really determine the success of that program.”

A lifelong educator, Harrison joined the Wisdom Academy board between application cycles and helped develop the school’s new curriculum and assessment program.

“We will be continually monitoring the pieces that we put into place, and they will be monitored quarterly, and we can immediately intervene if we see that there’s a deficit, or we can also accelerate students,” she said. “If we find that there’s an area of interest that they’re excelling in, then we can provide them those opportunities as well.”

If approved, the school would open its doors in the fall of 2025 and become the second physical charter school in Morgantown and the fifth in the state. At a public forum this past Thursday, Syed and other board members laid out the case for the charter school. Their pitch amounts to taking advantage of a charter school’s curricular flexibility to address a cultural need in the Morgantown community.

“There’s a community here, a pretty large community, and they feel that the kind of needs that they have, the current schools are not meeting,” Syed said. “Plus the children are being sort of mishandled.”

Muslim students at Morgantown High School were recently granted a space to conduct group prayers on Friday after a year of discussion with school and county administration.

Both last year and again at this year’s public forum, attendants specifically asked about the school teaching Arabic as a foreign language. Syed said the school will be free to choose any language to teach that the community may like.

Abdo Buais is a Morgantown business owner. Despite not having children of his own, he attended the Oct. 10 forum, and said his friends need a different way of educating their kids that better fits their culture.

“For example my people, they came from Arabic countries,” Buais said. “In the future, they cannot speak Arabic, this is one of the problems. So they need some place that can, after school, they can also learn Arabic.”

Buais, who is originally from Yemen, also said a growing Spanish-speaking community in Morgantown would benefit from the flexibility a charter school can offer. In his presentation, Syed highlighted extensive after school extracurriculars as part of the school’s plan for student development.

The Wisdom Academy is currently the only active charter school application in the state. At its recent board meeting, the Professional Charter School Board announced a new partnership with consultant Ampersand Education to produce marketing materials and campaigns to attract charter school applicants.

James Paul is the executive director of the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board. He said he has worked with the Wisdom Academy board to improve portions of their application.

“Our role as an authorizer is not to be a distant, far away body that just says yes or no,” Paul said. “I want to work with applicants and help them develop their application in a way that’s going to produce a school that’s most likely to succeed and most likely to fill needs in communities in West Virginia.”

Paul said people like Buais, along with a survey of local families presented as part of the application, are a good indicator that the school is wanted.

“Another indicator of demand for this school is the amount of individuals who have come out now two years in a row, to hear about the plans for Wisdom Academy in a public forum,” he said.

Paul said the board will give a decision on the application by the end of November.

Special Session Ends, Bills Extend Beyond Original Scope

The legislature adjourned its second special session Tuesday around 10 p.m. Out of 42 proposed bills, 37 passed the legislative finish line. Many involved one or both chambers suspending constitutional rules to pass bills without a typical three-day reading process.

The governor framed the special session call around childcare and a personal income tax cut along with appropriations. But many other bills made it to the call as well, including bills on nuclear waste regulation, charter school funding, an opioid treatment clinical trial, and firefighter funds.

All special session bills were fast tracked to the finish line, which involved one or both chambers passing the bills without considering them over a total of at least five days.

The last bill the legislature passed allowed for two limited clinical trials involving prescriptions of controlled substances.

Both chambers passed the bill, but it passed narrowly in the House where it was shy of four votes to be effective immediately.

On the Senate side, senators were scrambling to convince some of the House members who voted no on the bill to reconsider. Sen. Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, says a grant funded recovery clinic in his district was at risk of closing if the bill wasn’t effective immediately.

Ultimately, the House reconsidered its vote and passed the measure to be effective as soon as Gov. Jim Justice signs it.

A bill that would temporarily restrict fire stations from levying a fee on businesses and homes outside of their tax district was passed. Firefighters were in the gallery protesting the fast-tracked bill amid debate on whether fees penalized out-of-municipality residences.

After leaving the galley, Buckhannon Fire Chief James Kimball pointed to large proportions of out-of-municipality fire responses and funding needed for staffing and training.

“Counties that have a lot of population should be looking at supplementing their volunteers with career staff,” Kimball said. “It’s just in today’s world, we are so busy.”

Bills expanding charter school funding and establishing state primacy for nuclear waste passed after debate in both chambers.

Under the session’s original focus, the legislature also passed a 2 percent personal income tax rate cut and a childcare tax credit, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in appropriations bills.

Special session bills now wait for Gov. Jim Justice’s signature.

Proposed Charter School Holds Public Forum In Morgantown

One of the two charter schools under review to open next year held a public hearing in Morgantown Thursday night.

Wisdom Academy is seeking formal approval from the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board. The state’s charter school law requires applicants hold a public forum during their interview process where local residents can learn about the application and provide input.

Javaid Syed is the program director of information technology and computer science at Salem University, and the board chair for Wisdom Academy. In his presentation, he discussed the importance of preparing students for a changing world, particularly around technology.

“If you do not provide digital literacy to our children properly, the school children will be left behind,” Syed said. “Time is not going to stop for anyone.”

He answered questions about the school from parents and community members for close to an hour. These questions ranged from why a charter school was necessary to what curriculum would be followed.

“We have seen firsthand the challenges that our students have felt when they were going to school,” Syed said. “We feel that at this stage we are at, we have this opportunity to create this school and address some of those weaknesses that are in the public schools. I feel that we are in a position that we can address some of those challenges that the diversity of Morgantown student body (has). We will be able to cater to the needs much better than the public schools.”

The Wisdom Academy’s application states that two of its board positions are to be filled by members from the Iqra Educational Foundation, a local non-profit offering support to the academy. The non-profit’s members purchased the Monongalia County Schools Administration Offices building in Morgantown, the proposed site of Wisdom Academy.

At least three people present Thursday night asked about the possibility of teaching Arabic at Wisdom Academy.

“We’re going to evaluate it, we are going to see what the student needs are,” Syed said. “It’s still a bit too early to say ‘No, no, we are going to do it’ because I don’t want to commit to anything. Because, first of all, we have not been approved yet.”

Syed was surprised and motivated by the more than 30 people who showed up to the forum.

James Paul, executive director of the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board, also felt attendance was notable.

“Tonight’s turnout was significantly larger than turnout in the previous application cycle,” Paul said.

He said a bigger turnout is good not just because the public forum is required by law, but because feedback can help applicants like the Wisdom Academy improve their offerings.

“It’s hopefully beneficial to the applicants who are able to respond to anything that was raised tonight, they can refine their application or prepare for how they’re going to take the feedback that they’ve received tonight and implement that if the school is eventually approved and opened,” Paul said.

Paul said the focus on Arabic as a potential foreign language at the charter school highlights the purpose of the charter school movement.

“Certainly one of the promises of charter schools is the ability to have a more specialized academic curriculum, academic themes, modes of instruction,” Paul said. “I think it’s great that this particular school is looking at potentially doing some unique things with foreign languages.”

The charter school board expects to complete its review of Wisdom Academy in November. If approved, it would become the second charter school in Morgantown and the eighth in the state.

Note: This story was updated at 4 p.m. Oct. 20 to correct a reference to the Iqra Educational Foundation. The foundation supporting the Wisdom Academy is a separate entity from an organization of the same name in Skokie, IL.

State Charter Schools Receive Millions In Federal Grants

West Virginia charter schools will receive millions in federal funding over the next two years.

The West Virginia Professional Charter School Board (PCSB) was awarded more than $12 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program. The PCSB was created in 2021 by House Bill 2012 to oversee charter schools in the state.

In announcing the grants during his administrative update briefing Friday, Gov. Jim Justice emphasized the importance of school choice.

“We absolutely moved forward by just putting our toe in the water and lo and behold, what does it tell us?” Justice said. “It tells us we should be listening to parents. It tells us absolutely that we should have HOPE Scholarship. It tells us over and over and over. We should give kids and parents a choice.”

West Virginia currently has five operating charter schools – three physical and two virtual – with two more authorized for fall 2024.

In its application, the charter school board said it will use the money to double the number of charter schools from seven to 14 and increase student achievement in all West Virginia public schools.

House Bill 2012 increased the number of brick-and-mortar charter schools authorized and in operation in the state from three to 10. The law also states that beginning July 1, 2023, and every three years thereafter, an additional 10 public charter schools may be authorized.

West Virginia Board Of Education To Discuss Charter Schools

The West Virginia Board of Education is set to discuss charter schools this week.

The board will meet on Wednesday and Thursday in Charleston. A board policy proposal on charter schools is on Thursday’s agenda.

Details of the policy were scheduled for release Wednesday. The board’s agenda says it’s recommended that the policy be placed on public comment for 30 days.

Legislation signed by Gov. Jim Justice authorizes a staggered implementation of charter schools, limiting the state to three charters until 2023, then letting three more go up every three years after that.

The West Virginia Education Association claims the bill contained a number of violations of the state Constitution, including the violation of a requirement that bills be limited to a “single object.”

GOP Resurrects Charter School Bill

West Virginia Republican senators have resurrected a charter school bill, sparking outcry from Democrats who say the bill should be dead.

The move on the Senate floor Tuesday prompted Democrats, in protest, to request that bills be read out loud in their entirety.

On Monday, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler led a charge to postpone indefinitely the charter school bill. The motion passed with three Republicans absent in the committee.

On Tuesday, Republicans moved to pull the bill out of the committee for floor consideration. The motion passed 18-16 along party lines. The bill could get a vote by Thursday.

Kessler said Republicans disregarded Senate rules. Republican Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael disagreed.

Republicans have control of both legislative chambers for the first time in more than eight decades.