20 more charter schools want to open in NC, including 3 each in Wake and Charlotte
North Carolina has received applications from 20 new charter schools that want to open in the next two years, according to a presentation on Monday.
Three new charter schools apiece in Wake, Mecklenburg and Guilford counties as well as one each in Johnston, Union and Chatham counties are among the applications that met an April 29 filing deadline. Most of the applicants want to open in 2024, but four schools will seek state approval for an accelerated opening in 2023.
The presentation at Monday’s N.C. Charter Schools Advisory Board meeting comes during National Charter Schools Week. Enrollment has doubled in the state’s charter schools over the past seven years ever since the state lifted the cap on the number of these nontraditional public schools.
“This week we celebrate our charter schools and all of the great things they are achieving in our state,” Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said in a news release from the N.C. Coalition for Charter Schools. “Charter schools allow children to get a quality education without being limited by their zip code, and that is why we continue to see them grow at a fast pace.”
The continued growth in charter school enrollment coincides with fewer students attending traditional public schools. Critics say charter schools are causing white flight and have pointed to several recent highly publicized cases of charter schools being accused of fiscal mismanagement.
“We just hope that the charter school board looks at whether they’re needed and how they’ll impact the community,” Heather Koons, a spokeswoman for Public Schools First NC, said in an interview. “We have all these choices in the Wake County Public Schools. Why are we diluting the funding for a charter that may not even be necessary?”
Charter schools are taxpayer-funded schools that are exempt from some of the rules that traditional public schools must follow.
Movement Schools to expand to Raleigh
The Movement Foundation wants to open three more schools in 2024: northeast Charlotte, west Charlotte and Raleigh. It would be Movement’s first charter school in Wake County.
The Movement Foundation, which was created by Charlotte-based Movement Mortgage, recently announced it’s investing $100 million to open 100 new charter schools across the country in the next 10 years, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Movement locates its charter schools in underserved areas where there are large numbers of low-income families.
Details about Movement’s three newest North Carolina schools were not immediately available. The state Office of Charter Schools has not yet posted the applications online, saying they’re still being reviewed to make sure that they’re complete.
Arizona charter school operator expands in NC
American Leadership Academy wants to open a new charter school in Monroe in Union County in 2023 and in Garner in Wake County in 2024.
American Leadership Academy was founded by Glenn Way, a charter school operator who has made millions of dollars building, selling and leasing properties to the schools he runs in Arizona.
American Leadership Academy has state approval to open a new school this fall in Clayton in Johnston County. The school has 1,501 students with a waiting list of 891 students.
Wake Preparatory Academy in Franklin County, just over the border with Wake County, will open this fall with 1,620 students and reports a waiting list of 2,120 students. Wake Prep is managed by Charter One, a company also owned by Way.
Carefully review applications
The state Charter Schools Advisory Board will review the applications over the summer and recommend whether the State Board of Education should approve them.
In April, the state board approved five new charter schools to open in 2023. But during the discussion, some state board members urged the advisory board to take into consider whether an area is over-saturated with charter schools when it makes its recommendations.
Cheryl Turner, the chairwoman of the advisory board, told her colleagues on Monday that 20 applications was less than what they expected this year. But she urged her colleagues to be careful about reading the applications, noting how they had missed how one recent applicant empowered its developer to remove the charter school’s board of directors.
“We need to make sure that every piece of it, someone has looked at it in depth,” Turner said.
This story was originally published May 9, 2022 at 5:38 PM with the headline "20 more charter schools want to open in NC, including 3 each in Wake and Charlotte."
