The charter school pulled roughly $149,000 in local taxes - Best School Kumbakonam
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Johnson’s vision for the school has it serving about 675 children. That size would let Clarksdale Collegiate “impact change outside of our own school,” she said.
Over the next decade, it also would amount to as much as a quarter of Coahoma and Clarksdale’s current public school enrollment, and siphon off a lot of money that might otherwise go to the regular public systems. The charter school pulled roughly $149,000 in local taxes from the Clarksdale district in its first year alone, Cocke said, “and each year it will go up.” During Clarksdale Collegiate’s first year, 29 students who chose to attend the school would have attended Coahoma County public schools, according to school data.
The charter may not be siphoning out white students as the old segregation academies did, but to many critics of the school, pulling resources from the traditional public schools is just as unforgivable. Retired former superintendent Harrell, sitting at McDonald’s where he meets with a group of retirees in the mornings, said he might have supported the charter school had the district been adequately funded. The Mississippi Legislature has fully funded the state’s public education system only twice in more than 20 years. “Ninety-and-something percent of your kids are going to have to go to public school, and [those schools] have to teach everybody,” he said. “I think at some point choice would be appropriate, but don’t shortchange public schools.”
In theory, as a public school, Clarksdale Collegiate’s finances should have been about the same as the local districts. In 2017-18, Coahoma spent $9,279 and Clarksdale $8,424 in state and local per-pupil funds. The charter school received $1.2 million in per-pupil funds for its 145 students for 2017-18, or about $8,200 per child, the school’s financial manager Stacie Landry said. Best internationsl Schools in Kumbakonam
However, Johnson increased the amount she could spend on her students by raising a lot of private money. Clarksdale Collegiate recorded almost $820,000 in philanthropy for the past school year, Landry said. Funders have included the Louis Calder Foundation, the Charter School Growth Fund and the Walton Family Foundation, the last of which gave significant funds to the Clarksdale and Coahoma districts as well. The school is also getting $900,000 over three years from the federal Department of Education’s charter school grant program. In total, Clarksdale Collegiate had revenues of $2.5 million for 145 students in its first year, Landry said — roughly $17,000 per student.
Critics like Harrell and Rhymes said the money would be better spent supporting schools in the district. Even A-rated Kirkpatrick Elementary, next door to Clarksdale Collegiate, is hurting for funds. When the district’s magnet school grant came in, it brought Kirkpatrick a health sciences focus and a rush of excitement. Principal SuzAnne Walton said she hired a health instructor and instituted a health lab. Kids learned about medicine using CPR dummies on gurneys and “Little Organ Annie” medical-teaching dolls donated by the extension service. Walton bought workout equipment and installed a climbing wall; she paid health professionals to come in for “Fun Fridays” to lead classes in activities like karate, cheer, yoga, tumbling and dance. It motivated the kids to work harder during the week, she said.Johnson said that much of that money went to one-time startup costs, such as stocking the library. The largest slice went to personnel: She paid teachers about 5 percent more than the Coahoma County system average, and paid her instructional aides almost double the state minimum of $12,500 because, she said, “I can’t even fix my mouth to give someone that salary.” Her own salary was $90,000 during the school’s first year, she said.
Now, Principal Walton is fighting to keep her school afloat. When the magnet grant ended, she could no longer afford the health teacher and Fun Fridays staff. The school also couldn’t afford a full-time librarian. “There’s just no money available,” Walton said. Last year, the district spent $8,079 per student at Kirkpatrick, according to the state report card, more than $400 below the state average. The school still has the equipment, largely disused except for an occasional class. On a winter visit, a medical doll lolled on a gurney in the back hallway as if waiting in the world’s slowest emergency room.
Kirkpatrick kindergarten teacher Teresa Scheider implemented some of the same rules followed at Clarksdale Collegiate: Be nice, do your very best. She had the same high expectations: The state required that students write their numbers up to 30, she said, but her students furrowed their brows writing their numbers up to 100. Their classmates did math on iPads under clouds that were painted on the wall decades ago. “She’s the best teacher,” kindergartener Raniya Berry said. “We be doing rhyming words and we be doing compound words and we write stories.”
Still, Scheider seemed ground-down. Standardized examinations were something to be endured, not celebrated like across the street. “Education is not what I want it to be anymore,” she said — too much testing, not enough focus on kids’ social development, to their detriment. “You can’t expect anybody who comes from a chaos-filled, drama-filled house and expect them to succeed.” Scheider used to visit the homes of her students; she no longer does. “I’m afraid to now,” she said. In September 2019, the school office said she had retired.
When Ricky first came to the Dears he sat alone in his room for hours, barely speaking. When he finally opened his mouth, it was to talk about things like airplanes: “He would just say, propeller, wings, tail,” Sakenna Dear said. In kindergarten, he had a substitute teacher all year, who sent home bad reports about Ricky’s academic progress. Yet at dinner, Ricky described days of coloring and watching movies.Clarksdale Collegiate special education teacher Sakenna Dear knows the frustrations. She and her husband Keithan are Coahoma-born and -bred, and they want to stay in the area. “If you were born here, you want to succeed,” she said. “You CAN be something if you come from here. A lot of people think you have to go somewhere else to be someone.” Sakenna Dear said she became a teacher and did the best she could working at a traditional public school, even though the leadership rarely provided meaningful professional development or transparency. Then their foster son Ricky started kindergarten, and she saw how deep the problems went.
Keithan Dear, the Coahoma system’s Web Developer and Computer Technician,* worried a bit about “the conflict of interest” when they applied for Clarksdale Collegiate. But “being a parent now, it’s whatever’s best for the kid,” he said. “Around here we need to try something different.”
When Sakenna Dear brought Ricky in to register, Johnson invited her to interview for a job. She did, and took it. She wanted something different for herself, too.
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