To get a better understanding of the working of Texas Leadership Charter Academy, and the challenges it faces in our community, we sat down last week with its Chief Executive Officer Walt Landers.
The first thing out of the box Landers wanted to discuss was the large number of parents removing their children from TLCA to home school.
Landers could not provide the total numbers who had withdrawn from TLCA to home school. But “We had 14 over the weekend.” he said. For a school with an enrollment of only around 1,400 that is quite a number in one weekend.
TLCA is concerned about that, not just because of the loss of revenue from the state, but because of concern about the children’s education. Lander worries the students will fall behind as not every parent is able to do home school well.
Home School Exodus A Mystery
Landers had no explanation for the increase in withdrawals to home school. He suspected it may be parents removing their children so they would not have to take the STARR test. But he was going to look into it to see if he could determine what the reasons were.
This loss also has a greater financial impact than would students withdrawing from a public school. The public school would lose the Average Daily Attendance (ADA) allotment for that student. But the state could penalize charters further. The state requires charter schools to provide an estimate of their Average Daily Attendance each year. The state can penalize the school if that estimate is off by more than 10%.
When asked about TLCA’s impact on the city’s public schools, Landers said he did not think they pulled that many students from SAISD.
“When we started, 50 percent of our students came from Cornerstone.” he said.
Landers said the cause of declining enrollment in San Angelo ISD is demographic, it is not TLCA
TLCA has capped its enrollment at around 1400. “That is the ideal size for us.” Landers said. “About the size of a 3A High School is where we want to be.”
The People They Serve
“All our schools are Title I schools.” Landers explained. He sees TLCA as the school of last resort for many at risk students. They take some students who have been kicked out of everywhere else and for some reason they do fine at TLCA. “We are for helping kids.”
Before COVID, 27 % of TLCA graduates were the first person in their families to graduate high school.
Landers echoes the difference in students pre-pandemic from students post-pandemic. This is a common observation of all educators.
The Death of Innovation
The one thing Landers dislikes about the Charter School program as it exists today is that it has killed innovation.
“At the start charters were about innovation. That is not the way it is.”
Charter schools were originally intended to free schools up from the cumbersome regulation of the educational bureaucracy of the public school. The idea was that this would allow them the freedom to innovate.
But over the years charters have been subjected to the same requirements and regulations as regular public schools and ISDs. TLCA must meet the same standards as SAISD and other public schools. The main difference is it has some of the character and feel of a private school. In all other ways it is a public school.
“The Wild, Wild West”
Home schooling and bureaucratic oversight is not the only thing TLCA has in common with public schools. The uncertain nature of education in the coming age of vouchers is also concerning.
“It’s the wild, wild west in education right now.” Landers said.
He discussed at length what the implication of the Education Savings Account (ESA’s or Vouchers) bills pending in the legislature might have on TLCA.
He expects that, at least at first, TLCA will suffer the same negative impacts that are expected to hit the public schools. But he believes that would be temporary.
Landers said that in Florida, a state further down the road in the “school choice” movement than Texas, when vouchers went into effect, the enrollment at charter schools went down in the short term. “In the long term the charters grew again.”
None of the voucher bills allow ESA funds to be spent at charter schools. When asked what TLCA would do if a voucher bill became law this year, Landers was not sure.
“We are discussing it,” he said.
Options For TLCA Under Vouchers
One option would be to go back to being a private school and accepting vouchers. (TLCA started as a private Christian school). This might be more attractive if the amount the state spends on vouchers will exceed the Average Daily Attendance allotment for each student they receive from the state.
Currently that allotment is $6,160 per-student, per-year. The proposed voucher bills in the legislature would provide more than that for parents to enroll their children in a private school. One proposal calls for the amount of $11,500 per-student annually to private schools.
TLCA could remain a charter school. But according to Landers, one of the options they are considering is doing both. Stay as a charter school, but also add a private-school component to take advantage of the voucher program.
TLCA is subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act, and Texas Public Information Act, just like public schools. You can access their budget and financial information and learn where and how to attend their board meetings on Texas Leadership Public Schools website.
2 Comments
“TLCA is concerned about that, not just because of the loss of revenue from the state, but because of concern about the children’s education. Lander worries the students will fall behind as not every parent is able to do home school well.”
Considering Lander is a pastor and not a school administrator, and that teachers at TLCA don’t have to be certified (please correct me if I’m wrong) I think his worry is misplaced. People who malign homeschooling families as not qualified to teach their children, do not understand that parents know their children best. Parents teach children to share their toys, say please and thank you, feed them healthy meals, make sure they bathe and get adequate sleep, and can certainly teach them the basic skills they need to read, do math, and develop life skills such as washing dishes, cooking, earning money, and getting along with adults and siblings. I will assert that anybody CAN homeschool, but not everyone wants to or will. But to say that not every parent is able to do homeschool well, does a huge disservice to the many, many homeschooled graduates who graduated from college early, with honors, opened up businesses, and go on to lead successful lives. It sounds like Lander’s primary concern is lost revenue, not the education of children.
With all due respect…he said “…NOT EVERY parent is able to do home school well.” He is not maliging homeschool at all, it just part of the concern. I think you know that he means by “well”.. structuring, maybe accessing quality materials and making sure the student can compete in a post secondary world if they chose to continue on in their education after their high school curriculum is competed. And, being a certified high school teacher and administrator for over 20 years, even from a pastor’s point of view, he is correct to have SOME concerns.
I have witnessed the very best of homeschooling by my friends and seen the long-lasting devastating effects of homeschooling gone wrong in our schools when students re-enroll or enroll for the first time. I’ve witnessed that not every parent wants and knows their child best (as much as I would like that) and homeschooling in those few cases, can exacerbate the situation. Additionally he is concerned about revenue, as he should be and I would be as well, to serve the students, staff and teachers he has without cutting programs for students and jobs while still having to maintain facility costs that either remain static or many times, go up.