(The Center Square) – Renewals for 10 years based on their performance have been accorded to 13 charter schools in North Carolina.
Another 27 schools that did not meet the standards for automatic renewal have requested the North Carolina Charter Review Board grant the extensions. Those requests will be considered by the commission in January, Ashley Logue told TCS.
Logue is the director of the state Office of Charter Schools.
In order to qualify for a 10-year renewal, charter schools must have “financially sound” audits for the previous three years, and have student academic outcomes for previous three years that are comparable to their local public school district.
“I was part of many of these schools’ renewal in 2023 when they received three-year charter renewals,” Jenna Cook, with the state’s Office of Charter Schools, told the Review Board in Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s great to see that there are several of these schools that are now being recommended as 10 years.”
Taxpayers provide more money for education than any other part of the state budget. For fiscal year 2024-25, the figure was $17.9 billion. First-term Democrat Mo Green is the elected superintendent leading the Department of Public Instruction.
The state has about 90,000 public school educators spread among 115 districts for more than 2,500 traditional public schools, 200 charter schools, one regional school, and 1.5 million students.
On Tuesday, schools that did not qualify for automatic 10-year renewals made their case before the Charter School Review Board.
Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington was first approved as a charter school in 2016 and last renewed in 2021 for five years.
“We serve significant populations of students who are economically disadvantaged, English learners,” Principal Kate Tayloe told the review board. “We do so with intentional structures to ensure that they thrive. This diversity is central to our mission and to the outcomes we will share with you today.”
Beginning in 2021, the school implemented a series of changes designed to improve its performance, Tayloe said.
“Most importantly, this progress is not isolated,” the principal said. “It is steady, predictable and supported by strong systems that are now fully in place.”
Girls Leadership Academy did not automatically qualify for a 10-year renewal because its student outcomes were not comparable to those of the local school district over the last three years.
“However, we ask the board to consider two critical pieces of context that we believe provide more accurate and mission aligned picture of compatibility,” Taylor told the board. “When we look across a five-year span instead of just three, the trend tells a very different and much more complete story.”
The state is developing stricter standards for granting “ready to open” status to proposed charter schools after enrollment in some schools has fallen 40% below projections.
Logue is gathering feedback on the proposed new standards and plans a public information session on the proposals.
