A public hearing will be held on Tuesday to hear comments and questions about a proposed charter school that could open in Leflore County during the 2019-20 school year if approved by the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board.
The hearing starts at 6 p.m. at New Green Grove Church of Faith’s Fellowship Hall, 4053 Browning Road. All interested citizens are invited.
Leflore Legacy Academy, for grades 6 to 8 within Leflore County, has made it through the first phases of the charter application process — putting together a board and demonstrating its plans for staffing and developing the middle school and its college preparatory curriculum.
Two other applicants in the county passed the first stage of the application process but were eliminated in the second stage, leaving Leflore Legacy Academy as the only remaining potential charter.
If the school makes it through the state’s authorizing process, it would become the first public charter school in the county.
The public hearing, held by the Authorizer Board, is the next hurdle the school and its leadership have to clear before being approved to receive state funds to operate.
The hearing is designed to let the applicant, Dr. Tamala Boyd Shaw, speak to the public about her group’s plans and for the public to make comments about the proposed charter.
Written comments may be mailed to the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, 239 N. Lamar St., Jackson, MS 39201 or emailed to charterschool@mississippi.edu. Written comments received by the Authorizer Board prior to the public hearing will become part of the public hearing record.
Shaw has held two community engagement meetings over the summer to introduce Leflore Legacy to interested parents and students and to raise community interest.
A graduate of Amanda Elzy High School, Shaw went on to Tougaloo College for her bachelor’s degree, Jackson State for a master’s and the University of Memphis for her doctorate in instruction and curriculum leadership.
Her experience working in public schools in Memphis, especially as assistant principal at White Station High School, inspired her to develop a quality charter school concept for charter schools in the Delta, beginning in Leflore County.
“We want our purpose to be the city’s promise,” she told the Commonwealth earlier this year. “We propose to give kids a quality education so they can go to college, engage in the world and learn, then come back to the community to serve.”
The proposal for Leflore County’s first charter school comes as the city and county school districts are beginning the process of consolidating. Their budgets and student bodies will merge, creating one district with around 5,000 students when the 2019-20 school year begins.
Students within the Greenwood-Leflore Consolidated School District would take their state allotted funding with them to the public charter should Leflore Legacy be approved to operate.
There are currently three charter schools operating in Jackson and one in Clarksdale.
In September 2017, Mississippi became one of nine states to receive a five-year, $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help develop future charter schools and to provide technical assistance to existing ones. Mississippi’s funding targets students who attend D- or F-rated schools.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
