A Baker charter school squared off with state school regulators this week inside a Baton Rouge courtroom over the renewal of its charter contract.
Education Explosion, the nonprofit that owns and operates Impact Charter School, sued to force the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, to take action on its expiring charter.
Sixteen other charter schools were up for renewal when a BESE committee met Tuesday. Impact was noticeably left off the list, despite promises Louisiana Department of Education officials made to school administrators that its contract would be up for consideration this month, according to an injunction petition Education Explosion filed Dec. 4 in the 19th Judicial District Court.
When attorneys for the charter school lodged arguments against BESE and the Department of Education during a hearing Monday inside the 19th JDC Courthouse, District Judge Ronald Johnson sided with the state agencies and tossed out Impact’s claims.
Tony Ligi, an attorney for the Department of Education, argued that the lawsuit was premature. Impact’s current three-year charter is set to expire June 30. According to state statute, BESE has until Jan. 31 to notify the school if its charter contract will be renewed or not.
Impact is a pre-K through eighth grade public charter school that opened in Baker in 2014 and serves 430 students, mostly minorities from economically deprived backgrounds. All but about $200,000 of school’s $7.3 million in revenue last year came from government funding, according to a June 2023 financial statements an . The charter renewal is necessary for the school to continue receiving state funds from Louisiana.
“We’re hoping, more importantly than anything else, that between now and the deadline of Jan. 31, we’re able to address the issue of their renewal," Ron Haley, the Baton Rouge attorney representing Impact, said outside the courthouse after Monday’s ruling. “Whether it’s the automatic six-year renewal or they just get renewed for a number of years, we believe we’ve met the criteria for either of those options.”
The claims
BESE initially granted Impact a five-year charter contract in 2014, followed by three-year renewals in 2019 and 2022. The school has never been the subject of BESE violations and has met performance standards over the years.
But Louisiana Legislative Auditor agents raided the Baker grade school May 13 and seized several financial records, computers, flash drives and tax documents from Impact’s founder and CEO Chakesha Scott and other ranking school administrators. Scott was listed in a search warrant that alleged possible financial crimes, fraud and theft at the school.
Chakesha Scott, founder of Impact Charter School in Baker, La., said the school is helping bring more families back to the area.
In its petition, Impact says state auditors' investigation into the school’s finances dates back to August 2023, yet the agency has yet to issue a report of its findings. At Monday’s hearing, Haley told the judge there is no timetable for when it might be complete and worried Impact’s renewal could be held up past the Jan. 31 if the investigation isn’t concluded by then.
According to the lawsuit, Department of Education officials met with Impact board members Aug. 8 to walk them through the renewal process. When one of the charter school’s officials asked if the pending report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor's Office would delay the process, an attorney for the Department of Education said it would not, and state officials indicated their contract would go before BESE’s board on Dec. 10.
But Scott, Impact’s CEO, got a Nov. 21 phone call from Department of Education Assistant Superintendent Germain Gilson, who said the charter school hadn’t met the qualifications for an automatic renewal and wouldn’t be on the Dec. 10 agenda, the injunction filing stated.
Haley argued that the state’s renege on its earlier pledge was “arbitrary and capricious.” According to the school’s filing, it has left Impact in limbo and caused anxiety on campus about the school’s future. Staff members are looking for new jobs, and parents worry they may have to enroll their children at other schools next school year. Haley said, on top of that, administrators can’t make plans for the future, such as refinancing loans on a school building or preparations to accept a new class of enrollees in the fall.
“No reason has been given this entire process as it pertains to my client and this audit and their ability to try to get their renewal,” Haley argued Monday. “The goal post keeps getting moved further and further back.”
The arguments
While the plaintiffs insisted state officials are waiting for the legislative audit to run its course before approving Impact’s new charter, attorneys for BESE and the Department of Education told Judge Johnson the school hadn’t met the criteria to be deemed a “high-performing school.”
According to school board policy, charter schools need a school performance score in the A or B ranges for the three years before their charter expires to warrant an automatic renewal. Ligi explained that Impact failed to meet that benchmark in the first year of its current charter. The school got a letter grade of C for its 2022 school performance score.
But Haley countered that state law only calls for a school to meet BESE standards to qualify for an automatic six-year charter renewal. He said BESE policy outlined its standard level of academic performance as C-rated schools.
But Ligi said that is for non-chartered public schools. A separate provision in BESE policy specified the requirements for charter school renewals, mandating the B grade for three consecutive years.
“These provisions are not self-executing. Instead, they require BESE to exercise discretion and determine whether a school has met the requirements,” said assistant Louisiana Attorney General Amanda LaGroue, who represented BESE at Monday’s hearing.
After reviewing state statutes and the BESE rulebook, Judge Johnson agreed that the provision applied to charter schools and ruled in the state’s favor.
