UPDATE: The Iowa State Board of Education approved all of the applications described below on January 11. Original post follows.

Randy Richardson is a former educator and retired associate executive director of the Iowa State Education Association.

The Iowa Department of Education recently announced that five groups have applied to open eight new charter schools in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids for the 2024/2025 school year. Only one of those five groups is based in Iowa.

The full applications for each proposed charter school are available on this page of the Department of Education’s website. Be aware that some of these applications stretch to nearly 400 pages, so if you want to review them, plan to spend some time on the task.

EMPOWERING YOUTHS OF IOWA

Retired teacher Sarah Swayze created the nonprofit Empowering Youths of Iowa in Cedar Rapids in 2021. This is the only Iowa-based organization to submit a charter school application.

Empowering Youths of Iowa currently provides an online credit recovery program and a safe place for students to study and interact. The group plans to open the Empowering Excellence Charter School in Cedar Rapids in the fall of 2024.

This charter school would only serve only 11th- and 12th-graders. It would primarily focus on students who were about to drop out of school and provide them with an alternative path to a diploma. The school hopes to open with 78 students and grow to 174 students within five years. Currently, about 60 students in the Cedar Rapids Community School District use Empowering Youths of Iowa’s services.

The charter school’s curriculum would be offered through the online learning platform Edmentum.

Empowering Youths of Iowa is currently located at Collins Community Credit Union in Cedar Rapids. They hope to be able to continue in that location as a charter school.

CIVICA CHARTERS

CIVICA Charters, headquartered in Hialeah, Florida, has applied to open elementary charter schools in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines. The schools will initially provide classes for students in grades K-3 and then expand through 5^th grade. CIVICA is planning on an initial enrollment of 300 students at both sites. The charter plans to hire twelve teachers at each site for the first year.

CIVICA currently operates schools in Colorado, Florida, and Nevada. They are also applying to open a new school in Arkansas.

The application lists the contact person as Carlos Alvarez, the company’s CEO and Chief Academic Officer. He began his career more than 20 years ago as a paraprofessional at a school in Florida. Since then he has served in a variety of administrative roles at Florida schools. He became involved with CIVICA in 2008.

Their first charter was City of Hialeah Education Academy (COHEA), founded by the city’s mayor at the time, Julio Robaina. The school opened in August 2008 with 97 students. Criminal justice, firefighting, and emergency medicine were among the first offerings at the school. COHEA’s grades 6-12 enrollment is approaching 1,000 students. In addition to the original programs, the school now offers mass communications, law and legal studies, education, and an AP advanced academy. The success of the COHEA model prompted its founding principal, Mr. Alvarez, to form a charter school network.

The CIVICA network contracts with Academica, a charter school education services provider, to assist in developing the charter school network. Academica currently services more than 200 charter schools across the country, providing facilities support, bookkeeping, budgeting, human resources, legal and other business services at the request of charter school boards.

However, Academica is not without some controversy. The company is a for-profit private education company headquartered in Miami, Florida. It is owned and managed by Fernando Zulueta and is considered one of Florida’s largest school management companies. The Miami Herald reported in 2011 that the company had $158 million in revenue.

Academica came under fire in Florida as its owners also own significant real estate assets, which house the charter schools that are exempt from property tax. In 2010, the owners of Academica operated more than 20 companies doing business with Academica schools. That same story in the Miami Herald claimed that the school boards, which approve the real estate contracts, are financially connected to Zulueta.

In 2007, Miami-Dade school district auditors asked the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office to investigate a multi-million construction contract to build an Academica charter school given to a contractor which served on the same school’s board.

Between 2013 and 2014, the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education audited the relationship between charter schools and education services providers, including Academica’s schools in Florida, identifying related party transactions between the for-profit Academica and a real estate company that leased both buildings and security services to the schools.

OAKMONT IOWA FINAL CHARTER SCHOOL

Cris Gulacy-Worrel is the contact person for Oakmont Iowa Final Charter School. According to their application, they plan to open a high school serving 100 students on the north, east, or northeast side of Des Moines. Oakmont currently operates sixteen campuses in thirteen cities across Ohio, serving more than 2,300 students.

The Oakmont group has reached out to variety of Des Moines leaders, seeking support for their efforts. In September their executive leadership team met with Rob Denson, the president of Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC). The discussion involved both Directors of the Career Advantage program, Mike Lentsch and Randy Gabriel, along with other staff members. The primary focus of this meeting was to explore opportunities for dual enrollment in Career and Technical Education programs within the framework of Oakmont Education.

The group also met with community partners in the skilled trades workforce sector. One of the groups aims is to establish a pipeline to employment for Oakmont’s skilled graduates and to create employment opportunities within partner organizations.

Additionally, the Oakmont team met with Will Keeps, president of Starts Right Here, to explore potential collaboration opportunities. The group also had an extended meeting with Governor Kim Reynolds. According to the application, Reynolds suggested the visit to Iowa. Mike Huguelet, executive director of the Iowa Coalition for Public Charter Schools, hosted the three-day event.

The charter school will focus on drop-out recovery for high school students. The primary instructional method is Computer Assisted Instruction. The school will use Apex Learning software that comes from Edmentum. Many educators in the Des Moines area will be familiar with this software, which was formerly called Plato and has been used in Iowa for more than 20 years.

The Oakmont charter schools have also generated some controversy. The Akron Beacon Journal reported extensively on these issues in 2018. Marcus May founded the company, originally called Cambridge Education Group, in 2012. Cambridge managed 20 charter schools in Ohio; Jack Stack was one of the company’s co-owners and as a member of the Cambridge management team, oversaw all of their schools.

May used a parent company, Newpoint Education Partners, to operate his schools in Florida and Ohio. The Akron Beacon Journal reported, “By 2016, prosecutors say he allegedly defrauded Florida and its public schools of more than $1 million.”

Investigators in Ohio then began to examine May’s business practices. They discovered that “Ohio schools paid $1.1 million to Apex Learning,” and invoices showed that Apex “inflated pricing to siphon $229,756.57 from Florida’s education system and $456,551.92 from Ohio schools, including four in Akron.”

May was eventually convicted of fraud, fined $5 million, and sentenced to 20 years in jail. Stack told the Akron newspaper in 2018 that he no longer had a stake in Cambridge. It should be noted however, that four days after an associate of May’s was found guilty of fraud in Florida, Stack filed the paperwork to create Oakmont Charters. Thirteen charter schools operated by Cambridge then signed agreements to be part of Oakmont.

Oakmont Academic Knowledge is the nonprofit arm that supports the public charter high schools managed by Oakmont Education. The nonprofit also serves as a workforce intermediary by establishing local and regional Workforce Advisory Committees to connect employers with their career and technical education graduates.

QUEST FORWARD CHARTER SCHOOL

The Quest Forward Charter School submitted applications to open two schools in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines. Joe Ricketts, the founder and CEO of Ameritrade, operates the Opportunity Education Foundation, which in turn operates Quest. Ricketts and his family own 95 percent of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and donated more than $1 million in 2016 to help Donald Trump’s campaign.

Opportunity Education’s Quest Forward Learning is now active in over 30 schools worldwide, including two U.S. high schools fully funded by Mr. Ricketts to ensure that students from low-income backgrounds also have access to the high-quality education made possible by these programs. One high school, founded in Omaha in 2017, has 97 students and seventeen staff. The other high school, started in 2017 in Santa Rosa, California, currently has 102 students and seventeen staff. Both high schools are considered to be college preparatory programs. Information available online from Opportunity Education indicates that these schools aren’t for all students.

According to the applications, both the Cedar Rapids and Des Moines schools will initially serve 300 students in grades 6-9 before expanding to include a full high school in year four. 

The Quest Forward application indicates that the schools will work with Academica. Quest also has a working agreement with the New College of Florida to provide the Great Books program, which offers “a unique sequence in great texts and ideas, adapted specifically for high-school students.” Considering that Governor Ron DeSantis recently restructured that college to provide a more conservative education experience, this should be an interesting approach.

SCHOLARSHIP PREP

Scholarship Prep, which currently operates four charter schools in southern California, submitted applications to open an elementary and middle school in Des Moines. Jason Watts established Scholarship Prep in California in 2015 and continues in the role of CEO.

Another member of the group’s leadership team is was Gloria Romero, a former California state legislator and former leader of the Democrats for Education Reform group, which supports privatization of schools. Romero led the effort to pass the parent trigger law in California, allowing parents to vote on a method to restructure a failing school. She also supported an effort to pass a law that would forbid teachers from donating to the California Teachers Association PAC through dues deductions. UPDATE/CORRECTION: After the publication of this article, I learned that Ms. Romero left Scholarship Prep in 2021.

Scholarship Prep’s application in Iowa included a unique pay plan for teachers. The starting salary would be $51,234, and the familiar salary schedule would have some unusual caveats. For instance, the school would determine step placement, based on the following criteria: experience, campus need, qualifications, and/or performance.

The salary lanes are based on Level 1, Level 2 or Lead status. All teachers start on Level 1. In order to move to the second salary lane, Level 2, teachers must meet all the following criteria:

• At least two (2) years of exemplary evaluations
• Successful student academic performance (growth and mastery) as measured by CAASPP or iReady (These are unique to California, but no Iowa specific measure was mentioned)
• Successful leadership of at least one (1) school committee
• Attendance at all major school events (Back to School, Open House, Collegiate Awards)

In order to move to the final salary lane and be considered a Lead teacher, staff must have at least one year of successful Level II experience to apply. Responsibilities of Lead teachers would include: 

• Modeling and co-teaching lessons
• Partnering with administrators to develop and facilitate professional development
• Overseeing school-wide character education
• Analyzing data to develop school goals and action plans, and monitor progress throughout the year
• Supporting attendance and truancy programs

All full-time employees will be eligible for up to $1,500 in stipends for achieving schoolwide student performance goals and/or schoolwide recognition. Examples of school recognition include, but are not limited to: state and/or national school award(s), district/county performance ranking. The application also mentions that all employees would be at-will.

Scholarship prep plans to enroll 75 students and hire 4.4 teachers in the first year.

Scholarship Prep has met with some opposition in California. The public school district in Palmdale denied their application to open a charter school. The district noted a lack of sufficient detail regarding the instructional methods and approaches that are appropriate for the students the charter school intends to serve. The Anaheim Public Schools also denied a request from Scholarship Prep, giving no reason. UPDATE/CORRECTION: Jason Watts clarified that the school district did not deny the request. Rather, “The city council overturned the planning commission’s approval due to traffic challenges.”

TAKEAWAYS AND NEXT STEPS

One of the supposed benefits of charter schools is that they can be experimental and provide opportunities that are restricted for regular public schools. After reviewing all eight applications, I don’t see anything that is new, unique, or not already provided by many other school districts or existing charters across the state.

While the charter schools will be located in Iowa, it’s important to note that many of the applications list a for-profit education service provider. These providers are all from other states.

None of the applications make clear how much the charter schools will pay the providers for their services. However, you can look at what has been paid in other states and make a good guess. According to a story in the Nevada Current, state legislators passed a law in 2021 requiring charter schools to report the amount of money they pay to education service providers. Academica enrolls 55,000 students at its Nevada charter schools and receives $450 per student.

If the company charged the same amount in Iowa, it would mean that the CIVICA Charter schools alone (with a planned enrollment of 300 students in each school) would being paying Academica about $270,000 of public money. That also means the taxpayers of Iowa are being asked to sign a blank check without knowing how many of our tax dollars will be leaving the state to line the pockets of large education companies.

It’s also not apparent from the applications who will provide financial oversight of these schools and their relationships with the education service providers. Will this fall to State Auditor Rob Sand, or will the state simply assume that the schools can function independently without much oversight?

The Iowa State Board of Education will consider these applications for approval, approval with conditions, or denial during the January 11, 2024 board meeting. At this time no agenda has been posted for the meeting.

We also don’t know whether the Board of Education will provide an opportunity for the public to comment on each of the applicants. For those people who want to be proactive and not wait to see how the board will handle the process, the names and email addresses for each board member are available here.