As if Charter schools don’t get enough bad press already in the media, another local school has been making headlines. Recently TEACH Charter School has been in the news after the Director was forced to resign after countless complaints against her. The school was recently shut down for several days, concerning both families and staff.
TEACH has a number of things in common with Sage. Both Vegas charter schools are partners with Red Hook Capital, a private company based out of California that has been making big money off of creating new charter schools across the country. Red Hook creates a campus for the schools to work off of, but their focus is on property and building, not the critical element of educating students.
Much like TEACH, Sage Collegiate also is performing well below state averages in terms of education, both schools are currently suffering dismal English Language Arts and Mathematics scores. One area where they are scoring much higher than the state average is in chronic absenteeism, with more than half of both schools’ students missing more than 10% of school days.
Interestingly, Sage Collegiate Director, Sandra Kinne is looking at the possibility of merging with TEACH. This raises concerns among the community, if Kinne can’t work to improve her own failing school, why should she take on another? It seems like greed is more of a driving factor in this situation than providing education to her existing struggling students.