Chairman Brockway made several announcements including:

- New SCSC Facility and Assets Manager, Robert Watts, was introduced. 

- SCSC General Counsel Cerrone Lockett is participating in the NACSA Leaders Program.

- The SCSC is currently looking for an Executive Director. NACSA is developing a search committee to aid in the selection process.

SCSC Commissioners and Staff will be visiting the following schools in April:

• Genesis Innovation Academy for Boys & Girls
• Georgia Fugees Academy
• Atlanta Smart Academy
• Ethos Classical
• Delta STEAM & Atlanta Unbound Middle

Commissioner Lowden arrived at 10:12 am.

The SCSC Executive Director provided an update on legislation.

SCSC Commissioners and Staff commended Lauren Holcomb for her hard work as SCSC Executive Director and presented her with commemorative gifts.

The SCSC Director of Charter Development gave an update on past and upcoming trainings.

Please visit the SCSC Training Opportunities page for more information. 

The SCSC currently has seven new schools and two replication schools in the pre-opening pipeline. To date, Georgia School of Innovation and the Classics and Savannah Exploratory Charter Academy have elected to defer their opening until Fall 2024. As of March 1st all pre-opening schools were required to receive their facility code from the Georgia Department of Education. To date, three schools are operating on an extension request for that deadline. We are in communication with all those schools and anticipate that they should still be able to submit their facility codes without having a major impact on their pre-opening trajectory. Additionally, on March 24th, all schools were required to submit evidence that they had received applications from students equivalent to at least 65% of the school’s year one enrollment target. All schools met that enrollment target however, some schools were very close to that mark so we will continue to monitor their enrollment at our next April milestone. We anticipate continuing to provide pre-opening updates at upcoming SCSC meetings.

The deadline to submit a petition for a start-up charter school was March 17th. The SCSC received 12 petitions. 

SCSC also received a local transfer petition in March from RISE Prep and RISE Grammar, which serve K-8 and are currently authorized through June 30th by the Fulton County Board of Education. 

The deadline for schools to submit a replication petition is July 14th.

The SCSC Research Analyst provided an update on GaDOE's request to amend the state's ESSA plan to the US Department of Education, which would eliminate the CCRPI grade band and single score.

SCSC staff clarified that these scores can still and will be calculated by the SCSC. The SCSC Executive Director commented that this promotes a lack of transparency and ill-informed families.

The SCSC Associate General Counsel annouced that the Communications Policy FAQ Document is published on the SCSC website. Additionally, the SCSC Legal Division completed the review of schools' Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) and disseminated CAP responses to all schools on March 17, 2023.

The SCSC Chief Operations Officer provided an update on Annual Audits and the FY24 Approved Auditor Program.

The SCSC Director of Research and Evaluation and other staff members presented the 2021-2022 Comprehensive Performance Framework (CPF) results. See the presentation here.

Commissioners asked clarifying questions about the results and discussed any technical assistance the SCSC can provide to schools to improve scores.

The SCSC Director of Research and Evaluation gave an update on authorizer standards.

Commissioner Cole added that he was in favor of the previous recommendation for SAIL- School for Arts Infused Learning.