Durham School Board to KIPP Management: We Don't Need You Here

From the Herald-Sun:

Tammi Sutton, executive director of KIPP-ENC, a regional charter school organization in the eastern part of the state, hoped to win friends and gain influence at a school board work session on Monday.

 It didn’t happen.

 Instead, Sutton was peppered with tough questions by a mostly unfriendly board and some members made it clear that they wouldn’t be rolling out the welcome mat when KIPP Durham opens in August.

“There’s very mixed research on your methodology, on your programs and on your attrition and it makes me concerned for the community you are coming into,” said school board member Natalie Beyer. “I wish you would still consider not opening in Durham because we don’t need you here.”

Beyer and other board members questioned KIPP’s discipline practices, fund-raising methods and plans for further expansion into North Carolina and complained that the school would take resources from struggling schools near it.

KIPP, which has won state approval to expand into Durham in August, hopes to open in the old Holloway Street School in North-East Central Durham. . . .