School Board ends deal

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 16, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board on Thursday formally ended a long troubled partnership with a Texas-based charter school group, which created three related programs to educate hundreds of teenagers who are two years or more behind their peers in school.

Instead, the school system will take over the program. It will house the program at the former home of Baton Rouge Preparatory Academy, educating overage students from grades six to 12. Those students are currently educated at three sites, including Glen Oaks and Prescott Middle schools, which next year will be under private management.

Superintendent Charlotte Placide said she hasn’t decided whether the overage program will continue using the methods pioneered by America CAN!

“We have a decision to make,” Placide said.

The CAN! academies of East Baton Rouge were part of a new autonomous school network that included CAN! as well a small high school, the East Baton Rouge Laboratory Academy, that shares space with Istrouma High School. The small schools were funded in part through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The new school, however, quickly ran into trouble. Two administrators were replaced, teacher turnover was high, some students fled, and budgets were cut midyear.

At the high school academy, students in September even held a protest demanding a better education. One of the school’s sponsor, Advance Baton Rouge, quit working with CAN! academies and removed references to the group from its Web site.

Still, the program carried on. The school system held CAN! to its one-year contract, and even successfully obtained substantial after-the-fact waivers from the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Richard Marquez and Yolanda Cruz-Wilder, both executives with America CAN!, said the board for their nonprofit is ending its programs outside Texas, namely its schools in Baton Rouge and one in St. Louis.

Marquez handed the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board a resolution to that effect.

“It is what it is, and it says what it says,” Marquez said.

Marquez apologized that the partnership didn’t last long. He urged Placide to continue the expensive model CAN! initiated, namely ample use of mentors and social workers.

“We regret that this day has come, but Ms. Placide, we know how much you care about these children,” Marquez said.