BESE delays acting on new charter school application

   A decision on whether to approve Red River Charter Academy’s application to operate a middle school in Avoyelles Parish will not be handed down from the state level until December, an RRCA official said.

  Pat Ours, RRCA board president, said the state Department of Education’s third-party evaluator recommended approval to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. BESE was supposed to address the issue at its October meeting, but has delayed action until December.

   If BESE approves the charter, RRCA will have to go before U.S. District Judge Dee Drell for final approval. Because the public school district is still under a federal desegregation order, the court must decide that the charter school would not adversely affect the desegregation of public schools.

   RRCA hopes to open as a school for grades 6-8 for the 2017-18 school year. It would add a high school grade each year after that, eventually becoming a 6-12 high school.

Its plans are to operate the school in the former Garan plant building. The school would start in portable buildings until the permanent site was remodeled for use as a school.

  “The mission of Red River Charter Academy is to prepare a diverse group of students for post-secondary success through rigorous academics and character development,” Ours said. “The goal of RRCA is to provide a safe, academically rigorous school-of-choice for students, parents and teachers in Avoyelles Parish.”

   Ours said the independent evaluator highly recommended the school, noting that the application met or exceeded all of the 75 standards required for a charter school.

   The evaluator wrote that RRCA “provides a thorough application that clearly outlines the educational model and their implementation and evaluation.”

 

   This is the third trip to BESE in three years for RRCA. In 2014, 2015 and this year, RRCA has asked the Avoyelles School Board to approve the middle school charter. The application was denied each year.

   In its first effort in 2014, the independent evaluator did not recommend approval and RRCA officials chose not to appeal to BESE directly. Last year, the evaluator recommended approval but BESE delayed acting until after the new governor and BESE members took office. State Superintendent John White opposed approval on grounds that it might interfere with Avoyelles Parish’s desegregation plan. BESE rejected the application.

   “The application process has been long and very rigorous, and we believe it should be,” RRCA Executive Director Stephanie Moreau said. “We have worked very hard to get this far and we have listened to the needs of our community. 

   “The board and leadership of RRCA are committed to putting in every effort to get RRCA up and running,” Moreau continued. “We are proud to be a part of Louisiana’s educational movement in a way that will certainly benefit all of our children.”