The planned APA Alpine Charter School Board Meeting for tonight has been canceled. The Town of Alpine will be discussing the school at their December 3rd workshop at 7 p.m. This is an important meeting for community members to attend. Email any questions, concerns, or topics you would like them to discuss to any or all of the town council members by November 13th to get them on the agenda.
Below is the official Approval with Conditions:
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Approval with Conditions
A team’s likelihood of opening and operating a successful, high-performing charter school depends on having comprehensive, coherent plans with an array of highly capable individuals from different professional backgrounds to implement them. For this reason, relative strengths in some areas of the application cannot compensate for material weakness and deficiencies in others. Therefore, the review panel generally believes that for a positive recommendation, an application must meet expectations in a majority of sections, without any final does not meet expectations ratings.
Overall, the submitted APA Alpine application met the expectations in approximately 72% of the requirements and partially met the expectations in approximately 28% of the requirements, with no does not meet expectations at the conclusion of the full application evaluation process.
As a result of this in-depth review, NACSA (on behalf of the full review panel) has determined the APA Alpine application and the team’s demonstrated ability to implement the plans therein, are both substantially developed and the proposed school model presents many promising features; therefore, the recommendation to the WCSAB is for approval. However, the review panel and the WCSAB continue to have specific areas of concern that can be satisfied with the adoption of the conditions outlined below.
Condition #1: Prior to the school’s opening, the APA Alpine board of trustees will supplement its existing board membership with additional K-12 education expertise to bolster the group’s capacity to complete a robust annual evaluation of the EMO’s services and deliverables.
Condition #2: Prior to the recruitment and hiring of the founding leader, the applicants will adjust the organizational structure so that the APA Alpine school leader is a school employee that reports directly to the charter school board rather than the EMO.
Condition #3: To guarantee inclusivity and uphold the spirit of federal protections for at-risk students under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA), Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, and similar, APA Alpine will submit these all recruitment and outreach materials for approval by the WCSAB prior to dissemination leading up to the school’s first year of operation and thereafter as requested.
Condition #4: Prior to the submission to/approval by WCSAB and subsequent execution of the EMO management agreement by the APA Alpine board, the EMO will produce a detailed line-item budget that includes clear and quantifiable deliverables in each category of service to enable a comprehensive valuation of market value, adequacy, and criteria for fulfillment.