As you know the TEA is closing our children’s school at the end of this year. I would like to pass on a little of the information that I have learned on this subject.
I would also like to detail a plan for what we can do to help get this decision over-turned a little later in this letter. So, please read it all the way through and help us take action to stop this.
SB2 1-Sep-2013 – The Source of our Current Issue
SB2 was passed and became effective 1-Sep-2013. This bill was sponsored by the current Chair Person of the House Committee on Public Education. It was passed by this committee by a vote of 7 Ayes, 0 Nays, and 4 absent on 13-May-2013. It then passed the House on 17-May-2013 and was subsequently signed by the Governor and became law 1-Sep-2013.
This new law allowed for the closure of charter schools based on past unsatisfactory ratings that would not have required school closure at the time they occurred. I believe this is why the ratings were not more strongly disputed by the school at the time that they happened.
If you look at it from the point of view of this law, if I change my son’s bedtime this week I should automatically ground him for staying up too late last week.
We will get to the actual cited failures in a moment but first I want to bring up our hope for changing this situation.
To learn more about SB2 visit:
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=83R&Bill=SB2
HB 3281 Sponsored by Rep. James Frank
HB 3281 would change some of the requirements introduced by SB2 that allow for schools to be closed over technicalities. It also introduces changes that would allow for disputed closures to be seen by a judge instead of the current wording that disallows for a charter school to have the right to appeal.
In section 7 of this bill it states that it would go into effect immediately if it receives a two-thirds majority vote. If this were to happen then our school would stay open and our children will still be attending Phoenix next year. The school that we have all chosen for them to go to.
HB 3281 was introduced 12-Mar-2015 and referred to the House Committee on Public Education 17-Mar-2015. Here is where it sits. The last update is “Left Pending In Committee.”
So what does this mean? It means that they are doing nothing. They are not even going to vote for, or against it.
I find this unacceptable. They are not even going to vote against it and tell us no. Instead they are just going to let it sit there and do nothing.
Personally, I am kind of tired of our government’s uncanny ability to do nothing.
To learn more about HB 3281 visit:
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=84R&Bill=HB3281
So…What Can We Do About It?
One thing we can do is keep quiet and do nothing. That will send the clear message to the Senate and House Committees on Public Education that we think they are making the right decision for our children.
Since I do not happen to agree with them on this, I am speaking up.
There are currently 11 committee members of each committee for a total of 22.
So here is what we can do.
· Write letters to each of these 22 members and mail them to their offices. Then call all of their offices and ask that HB 3281 go to vote immediately. Send all of them repeated emails asking for something to be done about closing our school.
· Every time you email one of them copy all of the others. This way they know we are contacting all of the members on these committees.
· Be polite but insistent that they hear our concerns. We do need the help of these people and we are clearly in the underdog position.
· Tell them that HB 3281 must be a priority to vote and should not be sitting on the House Desk.
· Tell them that HB 3281 must have verbiage that makes it effective in June of 2015. If it waits until September of 2015 it will already be too late for
us.
· Explain to them that we made a choice to send our children to this school because we believe it is the best option for them. Even though each and every one of us has to take our child to school and pick them up every day. If we wanted the easy way we would just let the GISD bus shuttle our kids back and
forth to school for us.
· We can tell them that we do not agree with their decision to take our choice away and that this is the only Charter school in our entire county.
Here is a list of the contact information for the members of the Senate and House Committees on Public Education. Parents, students, family friends, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, anyone who has an interest in the future of our children please speak up.
This is our last chance to keep the school open and we have to speak up now!
Senate Education Committee
| Senator Larry Taylor – Chair |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0111 |
| Larry.Taylor@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr – Vice Chair |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
|
| Capitol Station |
|
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
|
| (512) 463-0127 |
|
| Eddie.Lucio@senate.state.tx.us |
|
|
| Senator Paul Bettencourt |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0107 |
| Paul.Bettencourt@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Donna Campbell |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0125 |
| Donna.Campbell@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Sylvia R. Garcia |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0106 |
| Sylvia.Garcia@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Don Huffines |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0116 |
| Don.Huffines@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Lois Kolkhorst |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0118 |
| Lois.Kolkhorst@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator José Rodríguez |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0129 |
| Jose.Rodriguez@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Kel Seliger |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0131 |
| Kel.Seliger@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Van Taylor |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0108 |
| Van.Taylor@senate.state.tx.us |
|
| Senator Royce West |
| P.O. Box 12068 |
| Capitol Station |
| Austin, Texas 78711 |
| (512) 463-0123 |
| Royce.West@senate.state.tx.us |
|
|
House Education Committee
| Jimmie Don Aycock – Chair
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0684
Email: District54.Aycock@house.state.tx.us |
Alma Allen – Vice Chair
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0744
Email: District131.Allen@house.state.tx.us |
| Gary VanDeaver
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0692
Email: District1.VanDeaver@house.state.tx.us |
Dwayne Bohac
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0727
Email: District138.Bohac@house.state.tx.us |
| Dan Huberty
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0520
Email: District127.Huberty@house.state.tx.us |
Harold Dutton Jr.
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0510
Email: District142.Dutton@house.state.tx.us |
| Mary González
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0613
Email: District75.Gonzalez@house.state.tx.us |
Rick Galindo
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0269
Email: District117.Galindo@house.state.tx.us |
| Ken King
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0736
Email: District88.King@house.state.tx.us |
Marsha Farney
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0309
Email: District20.Farney@house.state.tx.us |
| Joe Deshotel
Capitol address:
P.O. Box 2910
Austin, TX 78768
Phone: 512-463-0662
Email: District22.Deshotel@house.state.tx.us |
|
What Else Can We Do
In separate posts below you can find the email addresses of all 31 Texas Senators and 150 Representatives. I have emailed every single one of them a couple of times and my son has emailed them all once already.
There is also a post with all of the contact info for the Senate and House Education Committees.
I have been emailing in batches of 50. When I tried to do all of them at the same time the email did not go through and I got an error back saying too many recipients.
The first time I emailed all of them I had to do them one by one on the web submission forms. This is a much easier way.
As For The Unsatisfactory Conditions Cited By The TEA
I know this is something we have all wanted some clear information on.
SB2 changed the law to allow for the non-renewal of a charter if there have been 3 unsatisfactory ratings in the last 5 years. These ratings can be a combination of failures in any rated area. In our case there are 2 academic and 1 financial.
Even though the effort to revoke the schools charter was over-turned our current problem is stemming from the wording of the law concerning non-renewal.
We will start with the financial.
2012-2013 Financial Rating. (Based on the 2011-2012 School Year)
Below is a snap shot of the report that issued the Unsatisfactory financial rating.
As you can see the only failure was that a report was turned in late. Our school only meets the minimum requirement of the laws passed by SB2 to qualify for non-renewal.
So you could easily interpret this as the non-renewal of our charter is based on a report being turned in late. Not that the funds were mismanaged, or there was theft involved, or the money received from the state was being spent on items other than what it was intended.
Nope, our children’s school is being taken away over a piece of paper not being received in a timely manner.
I received this report from the TEA. In this case I did not really need any clarification sine you can see the areas marked as Pass or Fail in the left hand column.
But here is the response that I got from Ms. Turnipseed concerning the financial rating.
” For the Financial unacceptable rating, The report was uploaded to the Federal Clearinghouse on time and it was not uploaded to the State until 4 months later because of the change in Leadership. The previous Superintendent did not upload it.”
“If a school answers NO to any of the first 5 or 6 questions. It is an automatic FAIL. When we reviewed the budget. It was off by $138.00.”
2011 Academically Unacceptable Rating
In the report that I got from the TEA on this one, they change the text to orange for the areas that did not meet standards.
You can see from the snap shots of the report below that there were 2 issues.
The first one was for mathematics. The test scores shown for Econ Disadv were 4% below the requirement. The total mathematics score for all children did meet standards though.
The second one concerned 8 students who had left the school. The school did not have an immediate paper trail showing where these students had transferred to so they are counted as a drop out. The school was able to track down 5 of these students leaving only 3 unaccounted for. When the school requested that the TEA consider the new information they declined and the rating was left the same.
Since I have no idea how this is actually rated I cannot say myself if this would have changed the rating. After receiving a reply from Ms. Turnipseed though she indicates that she believes the score would have changed based on the new information.
From Ms. Turnipseed’s response to my questions.
“Let me address the 1st unacceptable rating, 8 students were unaccounted for and 5 were found.”
“I believe that the number of students who were found would have changed our rating.”
2014 Improvement Required – Closing The Gap
For this one, the school just did not meet the standard. Not really much to say about it other than they have been working to improve this. From what I have been told of the test scores that are already back there has been significant improvement already.
Below is the response I got from Ms. Turnipseed concerning this and a snap shot of the report from the TEA.
“The Last “strike” was due to the the school not meeting the criteria for index 3. Closing the Achievement Gap to which over 33% of the schools in Texas failed to meet the criteria.”
In Closing
I hope you find this helpful. Seems like our last chance of keeping the school open is to make our voices heard about passing HB 3281. If we want our school to be here for our children next year we have to speak up now.
Just yesterday my son told me that he still thinks they are not going to close his school. When they first announced the school closing there were several nights that he just couldn’t sleep he was so worried about it. From talking to other parents he was not the only child that felt this way. I hope he is
right.
Thank you for everything that you have already done to get our voice out there and for the efforts everyone is still putting in to it.
Sincerely
Eric Lofton
savepcs 