The school's test scores and finances deteriorated following its move to the former Holy Name Elementary School, officials contend.
SPRINGFIELD – State education officials have warned the New Leadership Charter School to improve its academic, financial and management performance by 2013 or risk being shut down.
The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s governing board voted Tuesday to place the school on extended probation until its charter expires in January, 2013.
The move comes 11 months after the state board revoked the charter of the Robert M. Hughes Academy in Springfield, forcing the K-8 school to close following an MCAS cheating scandal.
Mitchell D. ChesterThe education board’s vote this week came on the recommendation of Commissioner Mitchell Chester, who said New Leadership has been struggling to meet state and its own standards.
“Unless there are significant improvements in the school’s academic, fiscal and operational health over the next 20 months, I will consider non-renewal of the New Leadership Charter School’s charter in January 2013,” Chester wrote in a letter to the education board.
New Leadership attracted unwanted national attention in 2009 when a student, 11-year old Carl Walker-Hoover, committed suicide after complaining of bullying by other students. While Walker’s mother, Sirdeaner Walker, said administrators failed to help her son, state officials never faulted the school in the suicide.
The chairman of New Leadership’s board of directors, Peter Daboul, acknowledged the recent problems cited by the commissioner, but attributed them mostly to the school’s difficult move in September 2009 from its temporary location at Western New England College to the former Holy Name Elementary School on Alderman Street.
“It was disruptive, and a stress on the administration and the board,” said Daboul, a retired vice president at MassMutual Life Insurance Co.
“The bottom line was that our performance measures, which had been on an upward trend, took a noticeable decline,” he added.
Established in 1998, the grade 6-12 school has 490 students, with 60 percent being African-American; 35 percent Hispanic and 4.6 percent white. Seventy-six percent are low income, and 11 percent are enrolled in special education classes, according to the state education records.
The school’s finances have deteriorated due to a dispute with the city, which funnels state education money to the publicly financed charter school, Daboul said. The school contends that the city has kept about $1 million of the state aid, and the parties have been unable to reach an agreement.
Daboul said the state education department will ultimately decide the issue, and Chester has asked that it be resolved as quickly as possible.
Once the funding and transition-related troubles are ironed out, the school will be in a good position to get off probation and have its charter renewed in 2013, Daboul said.