Board rejects Austin charter bid

In a victory for the Austin school district, the State Board of Education on Friday rejected an application 8-5 by a new charter school operator to gain a toehold in the Austin district.

Royal Public Schools, created by Soner Tarim, founder and former chief executive of charter school giant Harmony Public Schools, was seeking to open new charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, near Burnet Middle School in North Austin and in the Houston area by August 2020.

The Austin school district has been losing students — and the money that comes with those students — for several years, and district officials forcefully pushed back against the Royal application. Once a charter operator wins approval to open a school in a district, expansion requests are routinely approved administratively by the Texas Education Agency.

The decision came after board members questioned Tarim about his curriculum plans, whether he would serve special needs students and whether he would deny admission to certain students.

Board member Georgina C. Pérez, D-El Paso, pressed Tarim to explain why he targeted the Burnet Middle School area when none of the nearby campuses are failing under the state grading system.

Tarim justified opening schools near Burnet Middle School because he said six nearby schools were failing based on data from Children At Risk, a Houston-based organization that grades campuses every year in a widely cited report. But under the state accountability system, none of the campuses failed last school year.

“Royal has created a personal Royal-specific rating system,” said Pérez, who was one of four Democrats and four Republicans to vote against the Royal bid. “Your application and my information don’t match.”

Although Burnet did not receive an overall failing grade last year, the school did receive failing marks in student achievement, Tarim pointed out.

Tarim said the board turned down his charter school because members fear he might create a charter network as large and successful as Harmony. Harmony had enrolled about 34,000 students across 56 campuses in 2018, including 4,000 in the Austin area.

“I felt that I have served properly for families and for the children” over the years, he said. “It comes down to a political vote, which I understand and respect it.”

Board member Tom Maynard, R-Florence, said he voted for Royal because Tarim has demonstrated success in the past, even as he was concerned about Tarim’s characterization of certain Austin schools.

“You have to weigh those things out,” Maynard said. “Does it really rise to a level that would disqualify the whole application particularly given the track record?”

Fighting back

Tarim said he would reapply. This is the second time the state has not approved his application for Royal.

A committee of the board on Thursday had recommended that the full board reject Royal. More than a dozen people testified against Royal, including Austin school district officials.

The Austin school district would lose $85 million over a 10-year period due to the loss of students to Royal Public Schools, Nicole Conley Johnson, the Austin district’s chief business and operations officer, told committee members.

“The district and our community can’t continue to sit idly on the side while our students and taxpayer funds are siphoned off by charter,” Conley Johnson told the American-Statesman after Friday's vote. “We are certainly willing to compete, but in this case there were too many holes in what Royal was proposing, and our community saw right through it and made clear what the best choice was for our students.”

About a quarter of students annually who leave the Austin district transfer to charter schools. Enrollment in the 80,100-student district has steadily declined over the past six years.

Conley Johnson said the loss of students to charter schools amounts to a loss of $105 million in state funding for the district. The district’s overall budget is about $1.6 billion.

Meeting a need?

Board member Marty Rowley, R-Amarillo, said he voted against the Royal application because he didn’t think there was a need for a charter school in the area Royal was seeking to operate.

“I like for a charter to say we’re pretty much looking to going to this location right here and the reason we’re going in there is because existing needs are not being met,” Rowley said.

Responding to concerns raised by Pérez, Tarim denied he would ask prospective students about disciplinary history on the application form. He also promised to serve proportionately as many students with special needs as Austin district schools, although his application had said he would serve far less.

Tarim said he was meeting a need because no one else in the area would be integrating social emotional learning and science, technology, engineering and math curriculum as he was proposing.

The Austin school district has been one of the country's pioneers of social emotional learning, Pérez said.

“It was very difficult for me to determine if it was innovative or unique,” she said. “Austin ISD has been implementing that for at least eight years on all of their campuses. Their pilots are even older than eight years. To implement SEL in every content area is absolutely nothing new.”