The Escambia County School Board will meet at noon today to try and hammer out an agreement with Charter Schools USA and its nonprofit foundation, Renaissance Charter School, Inc.
Here are the documents that they will be discussing. These are from Friday and may have been modified over the weekend as negotiations are ongoing.
LETTER OF INTENT to Escambia re Warrington Middle School v2 Counter
Form SOH3 Performance Based Agreement
ECPS to Hold Emergency School Board Meeting on Monday, May 1, 2023
Pensacola, FL – The School Board of Escambia County, Florida will hold an Emergency Meeting on Monday, May 1, 2023 at noon (12:00 pm).
The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss the Warrington Middle School Performance Charter Agreement between the School Board of Escambia County, Florida and Renaissance Charter Schools, Inc. This item was postponed from the April 28, 2023 Special Meeting.
This meeting will be held in Room 160 of the J.E. Hall Center, 30 E. Texar Drive in Pensacola.
The red-lined versions of the performance plan and the proposed lease agreement are an absolute mess, a horrible deal for the community and the children of that area, and don’t even mesh together legally. I have a hard time believing everything got cleaned up from Friday til now. This is an absurd arrangement, short of a SIGNED GUARANTEE CLEARLY STATING that Charter Schools USA will accept *every* middle school student in that zone for the entirety of Renaissance’s contract on the charter.
Everybody can clearly see now exactly the intent of this charter arrangement–to blow up a public school to hand the facilities and grounds over to a private, for profit company who WILL NOT COMMIT TO FIXING THE SCHOOL, but instead wants to cherry-pick which students can go there. As those of us who realized what they are up to have been trying to make clear.
If the School Board folds on this, make no mistake: it’s to protect their seats. They will argue it’s because the State is threatening to take away all the district’s funding. Call their bluff on the funding, and if they do it let them suffer the repercussions with the electorate. And for once, put the needs of the disadvantaged kids over the longevity of political careers and executive appointments. It really is that simple. The time for appeasement of this administration should have been over a long time ago.