PACE Academy charter not renewed by State Board of Education

When she heard her school might have to close, BreAnna Lee put her foot down.

The 16-year-old high school junior, who struggles with speaking in front of others, wrote an informal speech to perform for her fellow students for the first time Friday.

Lee was upset — it was the morning after the State Board of Education voted not to renew the charter for PACE Academy in Carrboro.

PACE is a charter school founded in 2004 for students who do not feel comfortable in a regular school setting — not as a result of behavior issues, but because they’ve been bullied, have mental health issues or need one-on-one attention from teachers.

“I’ve got a sister who has struggled so much that when she got here, her whole person changed so much that it made myself want to change,” Lee said. “And if PACE closes, we’re going to suffer.”

The state board annually votes to renew North Carolina charter schools’ charters based on their compliance with state regulations.

The Office of Charter Schools found PACE struggled with noncompliance in the areas of accountability, criminal records checks, governance and finance, according to a presentation given to the Board of Education Thursday.

“Charter schools are given autonomy in exchange for accountability, and there is no guarantee of renewal – it has to be earned,” Joel Medley, the director of the state Office of Charter Schools, said in an email.

Medley said the office contacted PACE to warn the school about compliance issues prior to the renewal cycle and made five or more visits to the school in 2012.

“If a school struggles or closes, it is not the fault of the students but rests on the adults that have received the charter,” he said.

PACE will have 60 days to appeal the vote.

“These decisions are never easy, but the unanimous votes by both the Charter School Advisory Board — which is comprised of charter educators themselves — and the State Board of Education says quite a bit,” Medley said.

PACE principal Rhonda Franklin said school officials have spent the past year working on compliance issues.

She said the school had solved all its issues apart from some testing accountability issues prior to the school’s Dec. 10 presentation to the Charter School Advisory Board.

“At the meeting we were introduced with 10 to 12 minutes of negativity. Some of the statements were not true.”

Franklin said the teacher licensure issues cited at the meeting were the result of slow correspondence by the state’s licensure department and the school’s efforts to solve its issues were not acknowledged.

The school currently enrolls 169 students. Each student receives one-on-one interaction with teachers, and school officials help students find internships, said Jamie Bittner, PACE’s transitions coordinator.

“The transition is different for every single one of them, and we celebrate that for all of them,” she said.

The stress Louie Green was under when he attended a public high school caused him to have a seizure nine times during his tenure there.

That was before the film enthusiast started school at PACE, where he is now a senior and applying to colleges.

“For a lot of the kids that come here, this is really the only school that would truly accept them, where they would be accepted by others,” he said. “I think a lot of them, myself included, would not make it in a regular school.”

Cody Ellis is a PACE senior who has worked with the Carrboro Fire-Rescue Department. He now works as a personal care assistant and hopes to go to school to be a nursing assistant or a nurse.

Ellis said the small classroom setting at PACE largely contributed to his success.

“When I graduate, I will do whatever it takes to help this school stay open,” he said.

On Friday, Lee and some of her friends at PACE made signs promoting keeping the school open.

“This school is our heart, and we’re the beat of that heart — without the beat, there is no education,” she said in her speech. “PACE is our family. In order to keep your family, you have to fight for them.”

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