Lynch at Large

The program was never wrecked I am a student there and it is the best school in most of Arkansas. All that happens was the previous administrator doing things that left us in trouble.

So my advice to you is to not badmouth what you know nothing about. If you think we are a bad school then look at our test scores. We have less students than a lot of other schools and still our scores are better. If you look in the news you will see all of the student popualtion fighting to keep this place going. I think you need a reality check and stop badmouthing a place that provides eduacation.
 

The student, while maybe a little overcome with emotion, and rightly so, is right about the school. I teach at Academics plus Charter school and I have been there throughout the entire fiasco. The things that have been constant and excellent about the school are the student performance and the teacher dedication. Part of the problem is the nature of charter schools in general. They don't get the same funding as public schools so there is an inherent funding shortage that they have to compensate for. The initial funding for the school came from a Wal-Mart Foundation start-up grant and other start-up funds. After the first 3 years of success these funds are no longer available. At this point charter schools have to really start cultivating donors as well as increasing population. It was at this point that our population did increase to more than 300 students and some discrepancies in our administrative reporting and administrative treatment of students and parent became known to our board. This cause problem with the board of education and the parent body. Some board members in an effort to keep their commitment to fair oversight investigated the claims and found them true other board members would not even ask questions. When the board met some members wanted to continue to back the administrator who refused to give the board any evidence to help clarify the situation and who withheld financial records from the board of education. To keep the school from immediate closure the board discussed dismissal of the admistrator. The members who backed her angrily walked out of the meeting. The remaining group, which represented a quorum were forced to do something so they voted not to renew her contract which was ending in a month. The administrator was angry filed suit against the remaining board members and left the months of unpaid bills and nearly a year of unsettled accounts for the new administrator to deal with. She also tried to influence every parent that she still had influence with to take their children out of the school. The scandal was all over the papers so at a time when our administration and board should have been focused on funding and growth a cancer was being removed and the aftermath has left us in a bad situation. The school is a great one, the students, teachers, and parents have performed. The former administrator was great at vision and lousy at administration, but she didn't want to share the limelight. The vision has been set, we now have a great administrator and board and students and parents. The college program is succeeding. There are many who would like to take advantage of this, but we still have to make up the shortfall and continue to let people know we are accepting applications. Maybe in your opinion we deserve to fail, but I don't feel like a failure and when I look at my students who have worked so hard and come so far, I think they deserve to succeed.