The Emerald Academy
Charter School Application submitted to and approved
by the Knox County Board of Education is signed by Steve Diggs, who is the Executive
Director of the Emerald Youth Foundation (EYF), a Christian ministry with some
of Knoxville’s and the State’s highest rollers onboard. This effort represents a prime example of corporate missionaries being joined by Christian missionaries to force-feed charters where no one wants them.
2013
Board of Trustees
Doug
Kennedy, Chair
|
CEO,
Johnson & Galyon General Contractors
|
Tim
McLemore, Vice-Chair
|
Attorney,
Gentry, Tipton & McLemore
|
Sam
Anderson
|
Retired,
City of Knoxville
|
Mike
Campbell
|
Board
of Directors Chair, Regal Entertainment Group
|
Steve
Diggs
|
Executive
Director, Emerald Youth Foundation
|
Doug
Harris
|
Member,
Knox County Board of Education
|
Dee
Haslam
|
CEO,
RIVR Media
|
Richard
Johnson
|
Special
Advisor to Governor, State of Tennessee
|
Jon
Lawler
|
Executive
Vice-President, Johnson & Galyon General Contractors
|
Bill
Haslam (Honorary Member)
|
Governor,
State of Tennessee
|
Larry
Martin (Honorary Member)
|
Special
Advisor for Human Resources, State of Tennessee
|
James
Swanson, Sr. (Honorary Member)
|
|
When the Board met
on June 4, there was no subtlety in the message the superintendent and Broad
Foundation stooge, Jim McIntyre brought:
you can vote down the Emerald Charter School if you want, but the
application will go the state, where the Governor will make sure that the
charter gets, uh, chartered. Note above
the Gov is an honorary member of the Board of Trustees for Emerald, as is his
wife, Dee, who is also the owner of the Cleveland Browns. The discussion started with four for the
charter, and the final vote was 7-1 for Emerald. Imagine that.
The Emerald Charter
School is somehow supposed to function as a non-sectarian branch of the Emerald
Youth Foundation (EYF). Here’s how their website
explains it:
As a faith-based ministry,
Emerald Youth Foundation will continue its Christian mission of helping urban
Knoxville youth grow as leaders. However, in its role of launching a public
charter school, Emerald Youth Foundation will begin a new, separate,
non-sectarian organization to manage the public charter school.
Now the EYF knew
nothing about starting a charter school until, by some unexplained
intervention, a small and lucrative chain from Cleveland was chosen to be the
model for the Emerald Charter Schools (ECS).
Note the plural: there is only one so far, but be assured that there are
more in the works if ECS can grind out higher test scores than the local
high-poverty public schools. They plan
to do just that by following the KIPP Model, with selective retention, longer
hours, fewer special ed and disabled, a chain gang zero tolerance pedagogy,
total focus on tests, and corporate infusions of more cash.
But KIPP is not in
the consulting business for knock-offs, so with the help of some Cleveland
connections (perhaps the owner of the Cleveland Browns could help), a
little-known outfit known as EPrep—itself a KIPP knock-off—became the
inspiration for and partner with ECS.
Here is a clip from the Cleveland
Plain Dealer on EPrep:
. . . E Prep, which recently
moved to East 36th Street and Superior Avenue, is in session from 8 a.m. to 4
p.m. five days a week, 10 months a year. Students receive an hour of
instruction every day in each of five subjects: reading, math, writing, social
studies and science. Those who lag sometimes have to go to school on Saturday.
And the rules are draconian.
Shoving another student triggers expulsion. Even an inadvertent jostle draws a
scolding to be more careful.
Students wear uniforms that
include black blazers bearing the school crest. A child who is missing
something as little as a belt ends up in the office until someone delivers the
item from home.
Parents are warned upfront about
the rigor, at their three-hour mandatory orientation. Recruiting director
Temeka Brantley gets out the message even earlier, at community events and
gathering places.
"The majority of my time is spent talking about the
commitment," she said. "I try to be explicit and say, 'You have to be
committed to send your children here.' " . . .
The founder of
EPrep and its variously titled Cleveland charters is John
Zitzner, whose small empire is now known as Breakthrough Schools. Zitzner is also the principal officer of another
nonprofit corporation, Friends of Breakthrough Schools (FBS), which was set up
for raising corporate cash for his venture.
The amount that Zitzner collects from his schools directly is not known,
but he pays himself $142,000 a year for raising money for his own enterprise.
FBS collected over $3
million from the feds in 2012, and Zitzner now has over $16 million in
non-profit in his bank account for Breakthrough operations.
One of Zitzner’s
strategies has been to collect and share the wealth, shall we say, through
close ties to Cleveland’s business elites.
Zitzner is now at work in Knoxville to create a similar network of
business, church, and public elites to push forward the same agenda of
chain-gang charter schools that he got up and running in Cleveland.
The chart below
that is copied from the charter application includes the Emerald’s collection
of new charter board members (asterisks indicate board members):
The charter application also includes scores from one of
Zitzner’s Cleveland schools, Village Prep—the one, of course, with the least
flaws to talk about:
Can’t imagine why Zitzner had nothing to say about some of
his other operations:
School Name
|
Indicators
Met
|
Performance
Index
|
Progress Bottom
20 Percent
|
Progress
Students
w/Disabilities
|
Annual
Measurable
Objectives
|
E Prep Woodland Hills
|
D
|
C
|
A
|
A
|
F
|
Citizens Lead.
Academy
|
A
|
B
|
B
|
F
|
F
|
Citizens Academy
|
A
|
B
|
C
|
F
|
A
|
E Prep Cliffs
|
A
|
B
|
NR
|
NR
|
A
|
Knoxille’s alternative paper,
MetroPulse, did a good story last January of some of Zitzner’s school
performances.
Meanwhile, the budget for public schools and teachers was
axed the same night that Emerald was approved. The $5 million that was cut happens to be in
the same ballpark as the amount that KNS will lose to pay corporate toadies to
get fat operating a chain gang school that no white parents in Knoxville would
ever consider for their own children :
The school board also passed an
amended budget, which withdraws an initial proposal for a 3.5 percent raise for
teachers across the district. Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett's initial budget
proposal only funded $427.8 million of the school system's $432,335,000
request. Funds for the school system were further reduced when the state cut
basic education program (BEP) funding for the schools.
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