- April 26, 2024
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The Flagler County School Board pushed back its decision about allowing a new charter school to open, citing concerns about the proposed school’s management company, The Leona Group LLC.
The board voted 3-2 Tuesday to table its decision about the school, which would serve nonnative English speakers from sixth to 12th grade, until its next meeting. Vice Chairman Andy Dance and Board Member Colleen Conklin dissented.
The board requested that The Leona Group LLC return with more details about the Flagler Charter Academy of Excellence, its proposed school, including more specific outlines of its governing board and budgets, as well as with responses to complaints raised by other districts who have contracted with the company.
During its discussion, the board was reminiscent of Heritage Academy, the charter school it closed in March.
“The comfort level for me is absolutely not there,” Conklin said. “I don’t want us to be in a situation like we were last time, with dedicated teachers, parents and kids who love the school, but a management company that does the wrong thing.”
Complaints against Leona, which is the third-largest charter management group in the country, include issues of its financial transparency, its governing boards' interests, and its students not meeting state requirements, Conklin said.
Its schools in Michigan bring some of the lowest performance ratings in the state, she said, and Leona serves schools throughout the nation, but a number of Florida schools have dissipated their relationships with the company.
But those dissipated relationships were circumstantial, said Chuck Malatesta, regional vice president for the company, giving an example from Broward County.
“The Leona Group took over a few schools from another management company,” he said. “After the audit went through, we found they had misspent their funds.”
Leona ultimately paid to replenish funds that had be falsely spent, Malatesta said, but the school’s governing board then wanted to continue to staff its school based on the school’s former misaligned budgets, which caused conflict.
“The schools we took over in Broward were already upside down financially when we came in,” Malatesta said. “We tried to make it work to the tune of $.5 million, but it just didn’t work.”
Malatesta said issues like this one arise occasionally, but that there are no problems like this in the majority of Leona-run schools. He said he can return to the board with more specific responses to issues Leona has faced in the past.
A similar conflict arose in Pasco County when a Leona charter school wasn't meeting its enrollment requirements.
"When any of our schools don't make it financially, Leona Group tends to gift them the money because we don't want to see a school close," Malatesta said.
He added that The Leona Group can only offer assistance to a certain extent, and that when schools are facing financial difficulties, Leona is entitled to disappate its relationship with them.
Dance questioned whether the proposed school would have local interests and a community focus. Each charter school operates under a governing board, which has yet to be identified for the proposed Flagler Charter Academy of Excellence.
“The lesson, I believe, learned in our past problems (with charter schools) is that we need strong board members who are properly qualified and have local interests and the local students in mind,” he said.
Dance said it might be helpful to create an agreement between Leona and the School Board that mandated that a certain percentage of the charter school’s board be local.
Malatesta said the company would bring two members from its company to serve on the board, but that it hadn’t made decisions about local board members yet because it was waiting for approval.
“I’m struggling right now because the original intention of the charter school movement was when local students’ needs were not being met, teachers and students who were frustrated by that came together to propose a solution,” Conklin said. “It was homegrown. It didn’t come from a corporation that came in and saw an opportunity.”
The School Board will make a decision about Flagler Charter Academy of Excellence at its next meeting, which will be 5 p.m. Nov. 7.
