ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The head of Executive Education Academy Charter School asked Allentown School Board this week raise the school's enrollment cap.
Executive Education Chief Executive Officer Bob Lysek asked the board to increase its enrollment 90 students.
- Executive Education Academy wants Allentown School District to allow 90 more students to attend the school
- It estimates it has about 1,400 on the waitlist
- A recent report cast doubt on whether charter schools were vastly outperforming public schools
The center serves kindergarten through 12th grade and currently has 1,383 students, with 920 of them coming from Allentown.
Lysek said it is covering 10 of those students, at a cost of $100,000.
Cianie Alvarado said two of her younger children have been able to attend Arts Academy Elementary Charter School. But she said her older daughter, Jesslynn Ortiz, has been stuck on the waiting list for the Arts charter school since kindergarten and is about to go into middle school.
"I'm a mom of four, so all my kids are different. They all have different personalities. And I should be able to choose if they should be able to go to different schools than the one that they're mandated to go to."Parent Cianie Alvarado
"I'm a mom of four, so all my kids are different," she said. "They all have different personalities. And I should be able to choose if they should be able to go to different schools than the one that they're mandated to go to."
One of her younger daughters, Luna Ortiz, attends Arts Academy, but she used to go to Central Elementary School. Alvarado said after a bad experience there, Luna started having severe anxiety before going to class every morning, even running away from the school.
The mom said her daughter's mental health symptoms vanished after the move to the Arts Academy.
"My daughter just went back to herself," Alvarado said. "No child and no parent should have to go through what we went through."
Sought for years to lift cap
Executive Education Academy has for years asked ASD to lift the cap. Lysek said there are about 1,400 parents on the school’s wait list for their kids to attend there next school year.
Allentown School Board Director Lisa Conover said she would not vote against raising the cap. She said she has been questioning whether the school district is going in the right direction.
"I will not hold our students hostage from getting whether that's 50, 20 or 90 slots to Executive Education," Conover said.
"I'm not going that route because we lost a superintendent, there's a lot of turnover in his district. There's a lot of stuff that's going on that myself as a board member sitting here on this board for the years that I've sat here, I can't explain myself."
Director Andrene Brown Noelle suggested the charter school could split the cost to the district for raising the enrollment cap. General education students' tuition rates in 2021-22 were $10,986 and the district expects those rates to rise to $11,418 or more.
Special education students cost the district $27,866; for 2023-24 they will cost $29,980.
Comparing failure rates
A recent report by Children First, a nonprofit child advocacy group, looked at statewide test scores for Allentown school district schools and charters.
In the Allentown district, 65-67% of all public school students —including Black and low-income students — were failing English on the Pennsylvania System of State Assessments, known as PSSAs. Between 85% to 88% of students are failing math.
There's a lot of stuff that's going on that myself as a board member sitting here on this board for the years that I've sat here, I can't explain myself.Board Director Lisa Conover
The data for Executive Education Academy showed 77% of low-income students are failing English and math, compared with 74% of low-income Allentown students.
For Black students who attend Executive, the report said 71% are failing, compared with 76% of Black Allentown students. But it also noted that math scores have improved 18% over the past five years for Black students who attend Executive Education.
Representatives from Allentown and Bethlehem Area school districts gathered with community members in March as part of a statewide news conference to demand more money from state lawmakers for poor students and school systems.
One complaint is that charter schools get more money to educate students with less severe special education needs than public school students with more severe disabilities.
Bethlehem Schools Superintendent Joe Roy said that means charters get funding that should go to the students who require more funding to educate.
