A Tampa public charter school for the performing arts that serves solely minority and economically disadvantaged students could shutterits doors midyear after receiving a letter from district officials about \u201cserious security deficiencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s letter, dated Friday, blindsided top officials at Walton Academy for the Performing Arts in Seminole Heights.<\/p>\n
Parents received a letter from the district shortly after Walton\u2019s principal and board chairperson learned that district superintendent Van Ayres planned to recommend the charter for the school \u201cbe immediately terminated\u201d at Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
The letter pointed to an investigation conducted last Friday in which district officials found an unlocked front gate, areas used for shelter during safety drills that were not clearly marked, and some rooms \u201ccluttered with bookbags, desks and other debris.\u201d The letter also said an emergency system to communicate with first responders could not be activated during a test.<\/p>\n
Top officials at Walton pushed back, pointing out on Tuesday that they\u2019d passed routine inspections for more than 20 years and that the issues highlighted had been remedied before the letter was sent.<\/p>\n
Walton Academy opened its doors in 2004. Since then, enrollment in charter schools has boomed across Hillsborough County. Last year, there were more than 35,000 students across 56 charter schools in the county.<\/p>\n
Sam Walton, a composer, producer and musician foundedthe school with his wife Tanika, a dance instructor, choreographer and performer who is the school\u2019s principal.<\/p>\n
The school was Hillsborough County\u2019s first charter dedicated to dance, theater and music. At one point, it served 180 students.<\/p>\n
The school currently has 118 students, all of which are economically disadvantaged, according to school data, and more than 85% of which are Black. It has seven teachers, most of whom are working towards certification.<\/p>\n
Walton was the only school in the district to receive an F grade based on testing assessments this year. But it has had up-and-down ratings over the years. It received two A grades and a B from 2006 to 2009, and was an A as recently as 2022.<\/p>\n
Last year, the school received a D. It closed for two weeks due to flooding from Hurricane Milton and its floors were largely removed.<\/p>\n
The school last week presented its improvement plan to the district, a requirement for underperforming schools.<\/p>\n
Tanika Walton told the district that while its recent third grade achievement and English language arts scores were low, the school had developed an improvement plan around improving attendance, parental involvement, after-school tutoring and teacher feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a difference between this charter school and a private school, where the private school could say, \u2018Gee, Mrs. Jones, your kids are not participating and not following our rules. So you\u2019re going to have to consider a different facility,\u2019\u201d Walton board vice chairperson Ross Harrop said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have that ability, right? \u2026 They\u2019re ours. The best you can do is try to inspire them.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the district meeting, Hillsborough School Board member Nadia Combs questioned the school\u2019s finances. She asked the principal how much she earned and why the school couldn\u2019t afford to fix its floors yet.<\/p>\n
The school\u2019smost recent audit shows it has a budget of more than $400,000 for administration and more than $800,000 for instruction, the majority of which goes toward teacher salaries.<\/p>\n
Combs said she was concerned by the lack of teachers with certification.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look at your number of students, 100% of those are disadvantaged financially, and you\u2019re not going to break that cyclical poverty with what you\u2019re doing,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, those students are now at the lowest level, and it\u2019s very concerning to me that they\u2019re not going to have a great opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanika Walton questioned the move to shutter the school at the school\u2019s board meeting this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can you think about terminating a school that has been a well-established school for 22 years, has had no (negative) findings prior to this school year, has had inspections year after year with no (negative) findings, with financial stability?\u201d she asked. \u201cAnd our grade happens to fall to a failing grade this past school year, and all of a sudden you want to terminate. I don\u2019t know. I had to think, is there somebody that we upset that we don\u2019t know about?\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida law says sponsors may terminate a charter immediately if they find \u201can immediate and serious danger to the health, safety, or welfare of the charter school\u2019s students exists.\u201d The school has 10 calendar days to request a hearing, and the final decision must be made within 60 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Tampa public charter school for the performing arts that serves solely minority and economically disadvantaged students could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3776,3778,629,3777,135,137,136,3779,3775],"class_list":{"0":"post-3122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-charter-school","9":"tag-district-officials","10":"tag-hillsborough","11":"tag-sam-walton","12":"tag-tampa","13":"tag-tampa-headlines","14":"tag-tampa-news","15":"tag-tanika-walton","16":"tag-walton-academy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}