Oxford – The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board on Tuesday gave an update on the $15 million charter school grant and discussed the potential increase in charter applicants at their board meeting.
There are currently 10 organizations signed up to learn more about the request for proposal process and the charter school program grant. This information will be shared through a webinar hosted by the authorizer board.
“As a result of that, we are expecting an applicant pool and a pipeline for our 2018 request for proposal cycle that has the potential to be larger than what we’ve seen in the past,” said Sarah McMillian, Deputy Director the the board.
“We’re seeing potential for a number of candidates to go further in the process than we’ve seen in the past as well.”
In October, the authorizer board received a 5-year, $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help future charter schools with start-up costs such as hiring staff, teachers, and securing facilities and provide technical assistance to existing ones.
There are currently three charter schools in Mississippi, each located in Jackson; the authorizer board recently approved a fourth to open in Clarksdale next fall. Clarksdale Collegiate is currently the only one eligible for funds — if they meet the criteria.
The U.S. Department of Education has changed its approach in regards to handling the application process for the grant, said Marian Shutte, Executive Director of the authorizer board.
“We’re making sure that our policies, specifically related to enrollment align to the requirements for charter schools to receive those funds. They have certain roles related to lotteries and preferences that schools have to follow who receive those dollars,” said Shutte.
“So we want to make sure we are making sure the schools are coming forth and setting those enrollment policies to align with the federal guidelines so they’re eligible to receive those dollars.”
Previously, the department would approve or disapprove everything in the applications and require revisions, but now they will provide feedback to those agencies. The agencies will then determine how to incorporate the feedback, said Shutte. She went on to say the education department felt they had ‘”capacity concerns in their office” which resulted in holding up entities from moving forward with the application process.
“What we’re working with them on is a general guidelines document. They will approve that document and we will work with all of our charter schools to make sure they’re in line rather than the U.S. Department of Education approving the enrollment policies for every single school … them approving the guidance rather than the actual policies of each school,” said Shutte.
Shutte mentioned that they have been conducting interviews to hire someone to manage the grants. She said they have someone they’re interested in making an offer to soon.
On Tuesday the board also approved to release the 2018 request for proposals from charter schools looking to open in the state after noting they received zero public comments on the draft for revisions. Starting Wednesday, the 2018 request for proposals will be released on the authorizer board website. The letters of intent and eligibility demonstration is due on March 6. The board won’t make a final decision until September 10.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.