Chairman Brockway commended former Commissioner Perez for his service on the State Charter Schools Commission.

New SCSC Commissioners Jim Cole and Ben Scafidi were introduced. 

Commissioners will be visiting the following schools this semester: Genesis Innovation Academy for Boys & Girls, Atlanta Unbound Academy, Atlanta Smart Academy, Ethos Classical, Delta STEAM Academy, and Georgia Fugees Academy.

The Executive Director gave an update on the FY23 and FY24 Budgets and House Bill 318. 

SCSC Commissioners and staff discussed the rising cost of the State Health Benefit Plan and the progress of the GOAL schools.

The SCSC has hosted its first New Schools Orientation & Governance Training of the year.

The second and final New Schools Orientation & Governance Training will occur on March 22 and April 12-13, 2023, respectively.

The SCSC currently has seven new schools and two replication schools in the pre-opening pipeline. One of those replication schools, Georgia School of Innovation and the Classics, elected to defer its opening until Fall 2024. As of December 16th, all pre-opening schools still pursuing a Fall 2023 opening were required to submit a copy of their draft lease agreement as part of the pre-opening checklist. To date, the SCSC has received five executed lease agreements, and 2 schools are still finalizing their facility agreements to satisfy pre-opening requirements. One school has not submitted its lease documents nor contacted the SCSC to request an extension.

Commissioners and staff discussed continuing to receive pre-opening schools updates and limiting the number of times a school can defer opening.

The portal remains open for groups that would like to submit a petition for a start-up charter school as part of the FY23 petition cycle. Petitions are due by March 17, 2023. 

In addition, last week the SCSC held calls with and provided feedback to five groups that intend to submit petitions this year through the Early Feedback Program. 

On February 1, 2023, the GaDOE submitted an amendment request to the US DOE for the state’s ESSA plan.  Most notably, the GaDOE is proposing no longer creating summative CCRPI scores for schools and districts. This would apply to the current, 2022-23, school year and all future years. If approved, this change would impact the measures included in the academic section of the CPF. SCSC staff are already in the process of drafting edits to the academic measures to account for the updates. We hope to have a formal proposal to share at the April board meeting. 

Commissioners and Staff discussed the implications of this new update.

Schools submitted their Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) on February 17, 2023.  CAPs review is in progress.

The Chief Operations Officer provided an audit update (see slide here). Atlanta Heights Charter School, Cherokee Charter Academy, Cirrus Charter Academy, Coweta Charter Academy, and Northwest Classical Academy are schools who turned in their audit late or have not turned in the audit at all.

SCSC Commissioners and Staff discussed the reasons why these schools are late in submitting their audit.

At the March meeting, the SCSC will share the CPF results for all state charter schools for the 2021-22 school year. This includes academic, financial and operational scores. All schools will be receiving their CPF scores in the next couple weeks and will be provided an opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions before the scores are publicly posted to the SCSC website. 

The SCSC Director of Research and Evaluation gave an update on the progress of Authorizer Standards. See the presentation here.

Attania Jean-Funny provided an update on Liberty Leadership Academy.

Dr. James Bumpus provide an update on Cirrus Charter Academy.