Education commissioner asks board to approve lackluster charter applications that will cost school districts additional millions of dollars

​This week, the State Board of Education will consider five new charter school applications recommended by Commissioner Mike Morath and the Texas Education Agency. The Texas State Teachers Association urges the board to reject all of them. “With many school districts across the state already suffering serious budgetary shortfalls following Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to shut the door on additional state funding last year, this is no time to increase the amount of tax dollars being drained from traditional public schools by charters,” TSTA President Ovidia Molina said. “Texas public school districts already are losing more than $4 billion a year to charter schools, many of which are lower performing than the neighborhood schools they are raiding for students and tax dollars. The five charter applications that the commissioner and TEA are recommending this year are lackluster at best and offer little expectation they will improve educational opportunities for students in their proposed attendance zones.” All five applications would cut financial corners to the detriment of students. Some would decline to offer classes such as PE, foreign languages or fine arts. One says it would offer special education without planning to hire a special education teacher in its first year. Some would not offer transportation services. But all, if approved by the board, would take students and tax dollars from existing school districts. Maybe the worst application to get the commissioner’s endorsement is the proposed Unparalleled Preparatory Academy, which would try to eventually enroll as many as 1,120 students from grades 6‐12 in Manor ISD, near Austin. A key person involved in this application is a fellow of Building Excellent Schools (BES), a Massachusetts‐based organization that trains, supports and mentors charter leaders. Eleven charter schools involved with BES have been approved in Texas since 2016, and most have been plagued by poor academic performance and low enrollment. Only one has come close to meeting its enrollment projections, and, at last report, seven were underenrolled by more than 50 percent. Five of the BES‐involved charter campuses evaluated under the state accountability system in 2022 were not rated for student achievement because of low STAAR scores. Had the state not made an exception for low scores following the pandemic, each would have received an F in student achievement. One BES‐affiliated school got a C in student achievement, and the remaining campuses were not rated because they did not serve tested grades or opened later than 2022, the last year school accountability ratings have been released to the public.