A federal judge has ordered that the Reaching Academy for Girls can stay open another year.
U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Stark granted a preliminary injunction requiring that the charter school remain open.
The state Board of Education had ordered the closing of the New Castle-area school at the end of the academic year, citing academic problems. The school has suffered from administrative, financial and academic issues since its founding in 2011.
“An important and immediate result of this ruling is that DOE is prevented from allowing Reach’s charter to expire at the end of the current school year; therefore Reach indeed is available as a choice option for the 2014-2015 school year,” Reach Board President Rev. Lloyd Casson wrote in a letter.
Casson, a retired Episcopal priest, has worked to turn around the oversight of the school . Reach has remained under close scrutiny by the state since its founding. At one point, the entire board of the school resigned.
In a Facebook post, Casson went on to note that Stark granted the injunction based on the fact that the closing would not be in keeping with Title IX, which grants equal status for girls in academics and other areas.
Reach is the only girl’s only charter school in a state, which also has a boy’s charter school.
“This action also gives us a window of time in order to make academic and other improvements necessary without changing the wonderful environment and educational experience in which your girls are thriving academically and maturing as self confident, aspiring young women,” Casson wrote in the letter.
A number of charter schools in Delaware have closed, due to multiple issues over the years that include finances and school leadership that is often found to not be capable of supervising an educational institution.
Charter schools have to come up with their own start-up costs, but later get per student school aid equivalent to the amount spent in their home public school district. The start-up costs often cripple schools that serve less affluent populations.
Schools, such as Reach, often work to help disadvantaged or at risk youth with innovative programs, but often academic performance is poor.
Supporters of charter schools claim special interests, such as teachers unions, have worked to undermine the schools. Critics of charters claim that the most successful charter schools “skim the cream” of top students and weaken public schools.
