Passions run high when supporters talk about the Reach Academy for Girls. In November, Delaware Secretary of Education Mark Murphy did not recommend renewing the school’s charter and the school was slated to close at the end of this academic year.
When Murphy announced his decision, he pledged to make the transition for Reach students and parents as smooth as possible. The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) set up an email address, a telephone hotline and posted “Frequently Asked Questions” about the closure. A session was also held in Wilmington to give parents information about other school options for their daughters. Just three parents attended the session.
School administrators challenge closure in court
Reach administrators were not going to let the school close without a fight, however, and filed a suit with the U.S. District Court in Delaware to reverse the DDOE decision. An injunction against the closure was granted last week by U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Stark until court proceedings decide the school’s fate. The trial is set to begin no later than the end of July.
[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ReachLegal_Green0110141.mp3|titles= WDDE News Director Tom Byrne's interview with Neumann Univ./Widener Law education professor Kathleen Conn about Judge Stark's Reach order.]
Stark said in his decision that the school’s ability to “retain and recruit” students would be in jeopardy if it was forced to close before the court decision was made. He also noted the state’s Jan. 8 school choice as a factor. Many parents had not applied elsewhere as they were holding out hope Reach would remain open.
Sydney Hicks, of Newark, was relieved to hear the school got a one-year reprieve.
“I’m happy about it,” she said. “I was a little bit concerned about what I was going to do for next year because it was getting late.”
Her daughter, Vuri-Glen Kinuthia, is in the third grade at Reach Academy. She started at the school in kindergarten. Hicks said her daughter is doing well at the school and that her reading performance is very good and her math, while not as good as reading, is on the cusp of meeting standards for the school.
Murphy took his lead from the Delaware Department of Education’s Charter School Accountability Committee which deemed the school as falling far below standards academically for all three years that the school has been open. The committee cited Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System (DCAS) scores as evidence of the academic failure. The school fell well below the state averages according to the report.
Charter school supporters make their case
Rev. Canon Lloyd S. Casson, president of the Reach Academy’s board of directors, said the school is not failing and that he will continue to fight to keep it open so it will have a real chance to meet its potential. He cites a number of changes made just this year that he believes will turn the school around academically, including a building move, a new school leader, new teachers and a new support system for those teachers.
[audio:http://www.wdde.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ReachReaction_Green0110141.mp3|titles= WDDE News Director Tom Byrne and contributor April Hall discuss reaction at Reach Academy to Judge Stark's order.]
“The fact is we moved from an old parochial school which, for the initial time of the school, wasn’t bad but we were having to use modular units, which we were running out of space for… It just wasn’t good and we recognized that residual issues emerged, including discipline issues. Lots of disciplinary problems, which of course makes it difficult to do anything,” he said.
The school moved to New Castle, into the former Pencader Charter School, which closed at the end of last year after its charter was not renewed. DDOE had to approve the move as a change to Reach’s charter.
“It’s well fitted-out and you can walk through there and know that learning is taking place,” Casson said of the new building. “Disciplinary issues have gone way, way down. Children are happy to be in school, they really are. The parents are happy, the teachers – they have a space they can call their own.
He also said a teacher coach was added to staff to help teachers and students in the classroom. He said there is a lot more observation of teachers’ skills and training. Many of the teachers are new to Reach this year.
“What we did determine at the end of last year is that we did had a significant number of teachers who were either resistant to attempt teaching at the core standards level or people who just couldn’t come up to that standard and so they were let go,” he said. “So we have a pretty new cadre of teachers as well.
“I think we were on our way. It’s just in applying for a charter renewal; mostly the statistics used for this decision were from 2011-12, 2012-13. 2013 wasn’t taken into consideration by either the accountability committee or the secretary.”
Casson said the school is only in its third year of operation and only its second after installing an entirely new board and school leadership in the middle of its first academic year. He said already this year, with assessments the school itself is using to measure math and reading progress, students are improving. He didn’t have any scores to quote.
“I do know that with the sort of interim testing that … we were doing as we were going through the renewal process we’ve seen a remarkable shift upwards in practically all of our grades with the interim testing that we’ve been undertaking since September,” he said. “Each time we see, as we knew we would as we had already started working in this area, we’ve seen an increase.”
Bob Johnson and his daughter Megan attended were among the few that attended the information session on alternative school options for Reach students held at a Wilmington hotel after Reach Academy revoked permission to have it at their New Castle building. Johnson transferred his daughter from Concord Christian Academy this year after tuition proved too expensive for the family in the current economy.
Megan attended the session with her father and said she was a cheerleader and on the honor roll at Reach. Bob Johnson said he was glad the school offered violin lessons, as Concord Christian had.
“We stayed with it through moving to the new building,” Johnson said. “I feel like with a new building, a new dean, new teachers, the state should have given them more time before deciding not to renew the charter.”
Johnson said at that time that he was unimpressed with the options left for his daughter and he is doubtful about the traditional public school system and their techniques. He was happy to have his daughter in an all-girl building.
When Stark made his decision to keep Reach open, he said DDOE had the right to place conditions and requirements on the school. Casson said he hoped to hear from the state about additional support, perhaps even funding to keep this year’s improvements on track.
“I’m hoping and assuming – if the state really operates in the right spirit (of Stark’s decision) then we are going to be a partnership... The conditions won’t be Draconian, they will be conditions that will require us to accept … various support and resources. Whether that’s funding for additional expertise or whatever that happens to be,” Casson said. He said he still hopes for a constructive and positive relationship between DDOE and Reach Academy.
Reach supporters say all-girls school beneficial
Currently, Reach Academy is the only all-girls charter school option in the state; Prestige Academy is Delaware’s all-boy charter school. If Reach closed there is a question under Title IX as to whether or not female students are being served as well as male students. As it stands, no additional single-sex schools can apply through Delaware’s charter school program.
“The jury is not in that all girls would benefit from an all-girl education. The jury is in that are a lot of girls for whom an all-girl education is by far the best, Casson said. “We know, for example, dealing with a lot of young women, who don’t have a lot of self-confidence and are already, some of them at very young ages, in a situation where they could make very big mistakes, just in trying to mine themselves, to discover themselves, to have confidence, to have love.”
“What’s happening at Reach is what our school leader affectionately calls, and has all the girls calling, ‘girl power.’ They are learning how to love themselves, how to appreciate themselves, to know that learning and growing is a great thing, it is a cool thing to do,” said Casson. “And that’s why the parents love Reach. That’s why they don’t want it to close.”
Wanda-Dale Wortham and her family are among those who do not want Reach to close. Wortham said when the announcement of the closure was made, her family prayed that there was a better solution for the school.
Two of Wortham’s daughters already attend Reach. Jordan is in third grade and Morgan is in second grade. A third daughter, who Wortham said was particularly upset about the closing of the school, plans to start kindergarten there next year.
“My girls are excelling at Reach Academy though I don’t have an experience to gauge it against,” Wortham said. “But the school as a whole, everyone is very friendly, very helpful. I feel like the school is so much more than test scores.”
Wortham said she recently went to an honor roll assembly for her daughters and was impressed with the number of students who performed so well on their report cards.
She said she wants her daughters in the all-girl environment because even if they aren’t at the age where boys become a romantic distraction, the teasing or bullying potential could take her daughters’ attention away from their studies.
“I’m sure there are other advantages,” she said. “I just liked the thought of it being an all-girls school.”
Jordan Wortham, 9, said her favorite class at Reach is writing where she is “able to have my imagination go wild.”
“I would tell (officials) they should keep (Reach) open because the school has its own way of teaching and my whole school is kind of like a family.”
“There is something about Reach Academy that we, the officials, need to learn about telling our story -- because it’s a powerful story,” Casson said. “We’ve been talking about the need for an annual report and that sort of thing, but we’re a new school. We’ve been functioning effectively for two years. That is much too short a time to have a school and call it failing.”