ISSUE: -- The board of an Edgewater charter school voted unanimously July 12 to close, after what started as a search for more space ended with the principal's resignation.
Officials with KIPP Harbor Academy had said that it could not easily replace Principal Jallon Brown, one of its specially trained leaders, so the school had to be shuttered.
Brown said she stepped down because 10 of her 12 teachers found new jobs between an initial June 20 announcement that the school would close and the reversal of that decision a week later. She said it would be virtually impossible for her to replenish their ranks before classes resumed Aug. 6.
KIPP officials have blamed the Anne Arundel County public school system for failing to support the middle school's mission to expand. But some parents say KIPP mishandled the matter by informing them of the school's struggles too late and balking at the school district's offer of portable classrooms outside its home at Sojourner-Douglass College.
Could the school have been saved? If so, what might have been done differently to keep KIPP open?
KIPP moves raise questions
I'm a public school parent, volunteer and advocate. I'm a charter-school skeptic who even questions some aspects of the sainted KIPP schools. For example, the KIPP schools in my area, San Francisco, have staggeringly high attrition, implying that they achieve their success by shedding unsuccessful students (more on that later).
The skeptic in me wonders if KIPP wanted to shut the Edgewater school down for some reason, since even after a site was found, it still couldn't manage to keep it going. Then it blamed the lack of a site so that funders and other supporters don't wonder why their school collapsed. That's my bet.
Interestingly, the Center for Education Reform - the nation's strongest pro-charter-school voice and a huge supporter of KIPP - in essence asked the same question: "While most of the blame belongs to the district and a charter school law that handcuffs charters in the state, it's interesting that KIPP - a successful and politically powerful national charter organization - didn't intervene officially to keep the school open."
Regarding KIPP attrition: Yes, low-income students tend to have high mobility - they move a lot. But if a traditional public school loses one of those students, that student is likely immediately replaced with another high-mobility student. If KIPP loses a student, KIPP doesn't replace the student. So the result - whatever the cause - is shedding a LOT of students. If a traditional public school could get rid of that percentage of students, there would be a significant impact on its achievement, too.
Caroline Grannan San Francisco
Everyone failed, and we all lose
The failure of the Anne Arundel County education establishment, Sojourner-Douglass College and the KIPP program administrators to reach an agreement is another example of success thwarted by arrogance, indifference and self-indulgence.
The county school board refused to give space to a successful charter school program, in the neighborhood of the children served, in order to make way for distant "future programming."
Superintendent Kevin Maxwell said that KIPP was not his school. But those children were his children, and the KIPP program was providing them with a way out of ignorance and poverty, which the county school system has been incapable of doing.
KIPP Harbor Academy's home of the past two years, Sojourner-Douglass College, wanted a five-year contract. This is the same collegiate institution which bullied its way into the Edgewater community touting its contributions to K through 12 education programs. Self-service outweighed its responsibility to community.
As for KIPP, the board and principal waited too long to sound the alarm. It was their mistrust of the public which ultimately sank the program.
The shame is on all of them! Children lose. It's a habit that the Anne Arundel County education establishment can't seem to overcome.
Maryellen O. Brady Edgewater
Interested officials would have acted
KIPP Harbor Academy could have been saved. There are still 900 to 1,000 empty desks at Annapolis Middle School, but the Anne Arundel County Board of Education did not even have the guts to publicly vote on KIPP's repeated requests to use plus or minus 20 percent of those empty desks.
Anne Arundel County's offer of three portable classrooms across a busy road from Sojourner-Douglass College at the 11th hour was too little, too late, and the fact that virtually all of the KIPP staff were offered positions in neighboring school districts in less than one week is testimony to the quality of the staff and the reputation of the KIPP program.
County Executive Leopold and Superintendent Maxwell have proven once again that the minority children of Annapolis are not as important as their egos and politics as usual.
Andrea Manfredonia Annapolis