Nonprofits to revamp school operations

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 2, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:10 a.m.

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Longer days and smaller classes, new teachers and weekend tutoring are just some of the changes planned for students at four Baton Rouge area schools taken over by the state and being run as charters by two nonprofit groups, officials said Tuesday.

Glen Oaks and Prescott middle schools in Baton Rouge and Pointe Coupee Central High School in Pointe Coupee Parish are now under the control of Advance Baton Rouge. The 100 Black Men of Metro Baton Rouge is now running the Capitol High School, which houses the Capitol Pre-College Academy for Boys and Capitol Pre-College Academy for Girls.

John Rice, a spokesman for Advance Baton Rouge, said the group will start with a collaborative planning approach to teaching.

Groups of 75 students to 125 students will have the same five teachers for math; English and language arts; history and social studies; and foreign languages, Rice said.

“Those teachers will follow those same students for three to four years,” he said.

Rice also said classes for core subjects will be longer — from 80 minutes to 90 minutes long versus the standard 45- to 50-minute classes.

Advance Baton Rouge asked all the teachers at the new charter schools to reapply for their jobs, Rice said.

Citing Pointe Coupee Central High School, a sixth- through 12th-grade school, as an example, Rice said the school had 38 to 40 teachers before the takeover. Of those, 15 reapplied for jobs at the charter school. Eleven of those 15 have been offered teaching jobs.

Rice said teachers who reapplied for their jobs had to submit a writing sample, pass an eighth-grade general content test and turn in a 20-minute video of themselves teaching.

The teachers will earn five percent more than what they were being paid to compensate for the longer days, Rice said.

“And we are still in the process of hiring teachers and enrolling students,” he said.

Following years of low student academic performance, the Louisiana Department of Education decided in February to take over operations of the Baton Rouge schools from the East Baton Rouge Parish school system and operation of Pointe Coupee Central High from the Pointe Coupee Parish School Board.

After submitting requests for proposals, Advance Baton Rouge and 100 Black Men of Metro Baton Rouge were awarded charters to run the schools in May by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. The money that will fund the new charter schools will continue to come from the state and the schools will have to show progress and excel in the state accountability program, which is largely based on the results of standardized testing, attendance and dropout rates.