Keystone School Board Rejects SV Charter Renewal
MILL HALL — The Keystone Central School Board, on a 7-2 vote, has again moved to deny a renewal of the charter for the Sugar Valley Rural Charter School in Loganton.
The vote to deny the charter renewal came after a presentation from two outside consultants hired by the district; their report detailed what they said were a series of shortcomings in the charter school’s operations, noting student testing results were “lower than any of the schools” in the Keystone district.
They also reported that the Sugar Valley school’s board of trustees in December of both 2013 and 2014 approved one-time stipends of $125 to all school employees. Consultant Alex Dubil said the stipends “are considered questionable expenditures under the School Code and Charter School Law.”
Board members Roger Elling and Debra Smith were the two board members who voted unsuccessfully to renew the Sugar Valley charter. There was a sizeable contingent of Sugar Valley residents present but there were no comments from audience members at the Thursday night meeting at Central Mountain Middle School.
Charter school officials have the option of appealing the district turndown; this has been done twice in the past and each time a state charter appeals board ultimately approved another 5-year renewal for the school.
District officials meanwhile have been made aware by their consultants a state court last year overturned a charter renewal in York County because students at the New Hope Academy in the City of York had failed to meet academic performance standards. That Commonwealth Court decision was filed in April of 2014 and that school subsequently closed down.
The Keystone Central School District has no day-to-day control over the charter school, but must provide funding on a per student basis. It is costing the district an estimated $3 million towards charter operations this year.
The charter school had opened in 1999, established by valley residents unhappy with the district’s closure of Sugar Valley High School a few years earlier, preparatory to the establishment of the consolidated Central Mountain High School.
