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private schools

The ‘education machine’ made this educator leave teaching – then she founded her own school

Special to redefinED July 19, 2021

Special to redefinED

HYPE (Helping Young People Excel) Academy is a private school in New Orleans serving fifth through 12th grade students who benefit from a low student-teacher ratio. The school accepts income-based scholarships available through the Louisiana Department of Education and the ACE and ARETE scholarship programs.

Editor’s note: Denisha Merriweather, director of family engagement at the American Federation for Children and founder of Black Minds Matter, recently interviewed Arianne Craig Jolla, who had dreamed of being a teacher since she was in fourth grade. Frustrated with school administrators who expected her to “teach to the test,” which wasn’t working for students who needed help with basic math and reading skills, she left the system and started her own school, HYPE Academy, in New Orleans. Here is an excerpt of Merriweather’s interview.

Merriweather: Where did the vision to found HYPE Academy come from?

Craig Jolla: My mom was a para-teacher (teacher’s assistant) for about 23 years, so education was a big deal. Even though she was a single mother who lived in poverty, she made sure to help us in every way she could. My mother would take us to the library where we would do our book reports and other school related work. That really helped to develop my love for learning, but the bug to teach and educate was born in my fourth-grade teacher’s classroom.

When I walked into Mrs. Weber’s classroom and she put her name and phone number on the board, it felt different. We did not think teachers were human; We looked at our teachers as superheroes. So, when she put her number on the board it just made her feel so much more accessible.

I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I really want to do for other kids what she did for me.” She made me feel safe, cared about, and she made me feel like I mattered. I knew then that I wanted to go into elementary education. So, I attended Dillard University here in New Orleans and got my bachelor’s degree in elementary and special education. I started teaching immediately that summer and I also started working on my master’s degree.

I started teaching and I absolutely hated it. I hated waking up in the morning. I hated going into the classroom and it was mainly because I felt like a failure. I felt like my vision of teaching was to go in and do for those kids which she had done for me. However, the reality of it was that I was hired to teach a test. I was hired to prepare kids for standardized testing.

It was also difficult to take in account all the other things these children had to overcome. Many of them came to me without having a foundation. For a lot of them they had no basic math or reading skills. To be honest, there was this humongous gap between what I was expected to do, perform miracles in my opinion, and what the reality was. These kids were not equipped with the basics. I did that for about five years before I decided to go to a different parish to teach.

I started teaching in the top parish in the state. I thought that this parish would be better. When I started teaching there, I was one of maybe two African American teachers in the school and most of my kids were not African American either. In the back of my mind I thought, “It must be us.” For a moment I thought it must be an African American problem.

However, when I started teaching there it was the same as my last parish. That is when I realized it was a system problem. I believe that our system is set up for kids to fail.

At this time, I was teaching at a middle school. I remember one day we were called out of our planning periods to have a department meeting. This happened very often. The principal started to chide us because our children had not reached their benchmarks. I remember one of my colleagues said, “How in the world do you expect us to teach these kids how to pass this test when many of them cannot do basic math or reading?”

I will never forget what the principal said, “I don’t care what you do. Just get them out of here and let them be high school’s problem next year.” This happened around October. By Christmas I had put in my two weeks and by January we started HYPE Academy.

To read more, click here.

July 19, 2021 1 comment

Demographic Research Education and Public Policy Education Equity Education Polling Featured News Parental Choice Private School Scholarships School Choice

Louisiana families strongly support state scholarship program

redefinED staff July 13, 2021

redefinED staff

St. Michael the Archangel High School in Baton Rouge is one of 128 private schools that participate in the Louisiana Scholarship Program. The program enrolled 6,141 students in 2020-21.

A new poll from the state of Louisiana’s voice for educational choice has found widespread support among families who participate in the Louisiana Scholarship Program.

Nearly 93% of families who utilize the program to provide their children with additional opportunities to attend the school of their choice say they are happy with their children’s academic progress. Ninety-one percent say they are satisfied or very satisfied with their child’s current scholarship school, and nearly all – 97.8% – say their child feels safe in his or her scholarship school.

Additionally, 54.8% are pleased with how their scholarship school handled the COVID-19 crisis.

The Louisiana Federation for Children conducted the survey from March 18-March 31 to evaluate the level of parental satisfaction with the scholarship program formerly known as the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program.

“Facing extreme obstacles, Louisiana Scholarship Program schools created safe learning environments for parents who prioritized in-person learning,” said Ann Duplessis, Louisiana Federation for Children President and American Federation for Children Board Member. “At the same time, families who preferred a virtual education for their children were accommodated.”

The Louisiana Department of Education reported 6,141 students were enrolled in the Louisiana Scholarship Program during the 2020-21 school year. Every child in the program, which was enacted in 2008 by a bipartisan group of legislators, comes from a low-income family, and 85% of students in the program are minority students.

Louisiana lawmakers recently expanded school choice options with the approval of HB 85, which established a statewide reading scholarship program named for the late state Rep. Steve Carter, a former Louisiana House education chairman who died in January from COVID-19 complications.

The program, approved on a unanimous bipartisan vote, was modeled after a similar one in Florida. You can read more here.

To view complete poll results, click here.

July 13, 2021 0 comment

Advocate Voices Commentary and Opinion Education Choice Education Equity Featured Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice

Pharrell Williams’ new private school will serve low-income students at no cost

Special to redefinED June 15, 2021

Special to redefinED

Pharrell Williams’ nonprofit plans to open a group of small private schools for students from low-income families, the first of which will be in Norfolk, Va.

Editor’s note: This commentary from redefinED guest blogger Denisha Merriweather, director of Family Engagement at the American Federation for Children and founder of Black Minds Matter, appeared last week on project forever free.

This month, Pharrell Williams joined the club of Black celebrities who’ve launched K-12 schools. YELLOWHAB, a new network of private schools in Norfolk, Virginia, will serve lower-income students at no cost. Pharrell’s choice to use his brand, influence, and resources to create private schools will give him 100% autonomy to customize each school for the needs of his students.

Pharrell can hire his own teachers, customize curricula, and implement support services for students. Tuition is the biggest barrier of entry into private schools for parents with limited means in Norfolk; so, Pharrell has marshalled his resources to provide a tuition-free learning environment for families. Every child deserves access to a high-quality education of their parents’ choice, and I am thrilled to see Pharrell adding to the education options in Norfolk, despite the sometimes polarizing political nature of school choice.

Last year, I founded a national movement called Black Minds Matter to bring attention to the inequities in the education system that eerily resemble the institutional injustices of our criminal justice system. Lower-income families, many of whom are Black, are too often shackled to the public school-to-prison pipeline with no hope for relief. While I cannot presume to know precisely what motivated Pharrell to launch this venture, I’ve yet to meet a Black man or woman who doesn’t recognize the existing system fails too many kids.

I like to think of the celebrities who’ve launched schools in America as an army committed to making a real difference in the lives of students. Many have rags-to-riches stories that have inspired us all to persevere through the hardships and struggles we’ve faced. The impact their schools make will last far longer than celebrity apparel or sports programs.

To continue reading, click here.

June 15, 2021 1 comment

Advocate Voices Education Choice Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship News Features Private School Scholarships School Choice Student spotlight Tax Credit Scholarships

American Federation For Children future leader Hunter Hickson on consistent action, service to others

redefinED staff June 3, 2021

redefinED staff

Editor’s note: This profile is the fourth in a series featuring former Florida Tax Credit Scholarship recipients who are included in the 2020 cohort of the American Federation For Children’s Future Leaders Fellowship.

Despite growing up as one of four children in a single-parent household, Hunter Hickson had no idea his family was poor. His mom, who worked at a series of jobs, explained to him only recently how hard she tried to make everything seem normal.

“It was the first time I realized life had been difficult for her,” said Hunter, now 21. “She told me, ‘I would never have let you know that.’”

A large part of his mom’s efforts to make things seem normal centered around finding the right educational setting for each of her children. For Hunter, that meant sending him to a Christian school from kindergarten through 12^th grade. She had attended D- and F-rated public schools and wanted something different for him. So, she applied for an education choice scholarship that allowed her to send him to Victory Christian Academy in Lakeland.

“Because of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, I didn’t know I was a poor kid living near the poverty line,” Hunter said.

In hindsight, he knows the scholarship – and Victory Christian – set him on a course he wouldn’t have followed otherwise. Small classes meant his teachers knew his name. He was surrounded by role models and mentors who took an interest in him and understood his family’s situation. He was aware in middle school who his high school teachers would be, so he knew their expectations ahead of time.

From his vantage point as a soon-to-be graduate of Southeastern University, a Christian school in Central Florida affiliated with the Assemblies of God, Hunter perceives a more subtle benefit.

“Some people lower the standard for minority students,” he said. “They expect really high standards from white students, but they put minorities on a lower level. If the standard is an A+ for white students, it’s more like a B for you.”

At Victory Christian, he says, all students were treated equally. And no teacher “had it out” for him.

One teacher who impacted his life was his 10^th-grade English instructor, Jennifer Perez. She had assigned the class “Pride and Prejudice,” but Hunter, not thinking it was a good choice for a 15-year-old boy, didn’t give it his best shot. Perez failed him. The second time around, she allowed him to choose which book he wanted to read, something he’s sure would not have been an option in a public school.

And then somewhere along the way, Hunter picked up on a quote attributed to Aristotle, which became his mantra: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

That sentiment kindled within Hunter a respect for consistency and authority, which in turn led him in 2019 to enlist in the U.S. Army. After returning home from basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina, he began pursuing a degree in legal studies at Southeastern.

His budding commitment to serving others attracted him to the American Federation For Children’s Future Leaders Fellowship. When COVID-19 curtailed the fellows’ ability to travel around the country telling their stories, Hunter started simply talking to other students at his school. When his legal studies professors assigned research papers, he wrote about civil rights cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. And when he had the time, he wrote op-eds about education choice for local and national media outlets.

He sees law school and a career in public service in his future. He sees a life-long commitment to education choice in his future as well.

“I want more kids to have the same experience I had to choose what school to go to,” he said. “If you’re at the wrong school, with the wrong teachers who don’t care about you, it’s unfair. It’s not logical.”

He’s convinced that having a positive educational experience is especially important to students of color.

“Most public schools focus young Black men on sports, to be famous, to make it to the league,” Hunter said. “People can’t believe the kid who played basketball on an outdoor court had these goals and aspirations to do so much more than anyone ever thought I could.”

For more information about scholarship programs administered by Step Up For Students, click here.

June 3, 2021 0 comment

Customization Education Choice Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship News Private Schools School Choice

New private school will focus on helping students fighting addictions

Lisa Buie March 9, 2021

Lisa Buie

River Oak Center in Jacksonville, established as an independent, non-profit in 2014 by concerned parents and addictions experts in the community, served as a model for Victory High.

To Tina Levene, a pickle represents more than just garnish on a sandwich plate.

Pickles remind her of the day 23 years ago when she drove from her college town to her parents’ home and begged her father for help with what she recognized as a problem with alcohol.

“I told my dad, ‘I used to be a cucumber, but I’d had too much juice, and so now I’m a pickle,’” said Levene, who proudly wears a pickle pin her father gave her to commemorate the day she said farewell to alcohol and drugs.

Tina Levene

Levene has come a long way since her college days when life was an endless party. She and her roommates kept a full beer keg on their front porch. She could chug wine for hours and not feel drunk and smoke marijuana laced with other drugs that to this day she can’t identify.

When the pain of it all brought her to her knees, she felt there was only one way to stop it.

“I thought, ‘I’m done, I might as well just kill myself and get it over with,’” she recalls.

Thanks to her subsequent recovery from alcohol and drugs and her training as a social worker, Levene now realizes that her addiction, which she says started with smoking cigarette butts she plucked from the floor at age 9, resulted from a combination of genetics and trauma.

Now, she wants to help teenagers who are dealing with traumas of their own by opening a school just for them inside a church located in a northern suburb of Tampa, Florida.

A customized education for recovering high schoolers

The private, nonprofit school, to be called Victory High, aims to provide an education tailored to young people who are leaving treatment programs and re-entering school. It is modeled on the state’s first such school, River Oak Center, which opened in Jacksonville in 2014.

The nation’s first recovery high school, Sobriety High, opened in Minnesota in 1987, according to a 2008 study by the National Institutes of Health. Sobriety High announced its intention to close at the end of the 2012-13 academic year, due in part to dwindling enrollment due to on-campus drug use, despite the school’s no tolerance policy.

The Association of Recovery High Schools directory shows 43 schools operating in 21 states. Levene hopes to be the 44^th.

She held a ribbon-cutting in January and has completed the process required to accept state scholarships, including the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog. With 16 students are on a wait list, she expects to open later this year. Enrollment will be capped at 50 students to ensure small class sizes.

According to Levene, who first conceived the idea for a Tampa Bay area recovery high school in 2017 while working for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, relapse rates are significantly lower in a recovery school.

“In traditional school, there is a 70% chance in six months but a 30% relapse rate in recovery school, so it goes down quite a bit,” she said. The typical student attends for about 150 days before returning to a more traditional educational environment.

A fusion of academics and recovery care

The new school couldn’t open at a better time. Teenage substance use, which declined in the two years leading up to the pandemic, began rising again in 2020 with the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Before COVID, 28.6% of more than 1,000 Canadian teens surveyed by National Center for Biotechnology Information reported that they had used alcohol. During the pandemic, that number rose to 30.4%. Before COVID, the teens reported using alcohol about twice per month. That nearly tripled since March 2020, while the number of days of marijuana use increased from 3.28 every three weeks an average of 3.76 days during the pandemic.

Levene’s program will fuse regular academics with recovery care for students in grades 9 through 12. Each day will begin with students choosing one of three color-coded bracelets based on their mood: red to signify high anxiety, green to signify a more relaxed state. Students can change their bracelets can as their moods shift, with therapies available to soothe those who are feeling stressed.

Counseling and other mental health services also will be provided throughout the day as needed. The school will offer art therapy and other ways to control anxiety. Levene also plans to start a young person’s Twelve Step group.

Levene’s goal is to offer the same hope that saved her from her dark place more than two decades ago. On her knees, face to the ceiling and praying for a way out, she recalls how her CD player came on “from out of nowhere.” A reggae song, “Upful and Right” blared through the speakers.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, God’s on your side. You are healthy and wise.”

She wants to make sure her prospective students know that, too.

March 9, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Legislation Featured Parent Voices Parental Choice Private School Scholarships School Choice

Word for Word: A parent’s plea for education choice

Special to redefinED March 5, 2021

Special to redefinED

Among parent and educator advocates speaking Thursday before the Senate Appropriations Committee in favor of legislation that would streamline scholarship programs for Florida’s schoolchildren was Jerold Maynard. The firefighter and father of two spoke in favor of SB 48, which would eliminate the requirement that students applying for a Family Empowerment Scholarship or a McKay Scholarship must have attended a public school during the previous year.

Here are Maynard’s remarks:

Hello, I’m Jerold Maynard. I’m from Apopka and live with my wife and daughters in Senator Bracy’s district.

My wife, Jessica, and I are firm believers that every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, and that is why I am here today.

We have made great sacrifices, including taking second jobs, to send our daughters to Trinity Christian, a school we felt was best for them.

But the pandemic created financial difficulties that made it impossible for us to afford the tuition.

Our daughters were heartbroken when we had to withdraw them from a school family they loved so much.

I’m not sure if any of you are parents, but I can tell you that predictability is a stabilizing force for children, and in a time when depression rates for our youth are at an all-time high, commitment to this is critical.

Ironically, now that the girls are in public school, they meet the prior-year requirement for the Family Empowerment Scholarship. But no family should have to pull their kids out of a school that works for them.

I’m glad Senator Diaz’s bill eliminates the prior-year public rule. Please pass this bill so future parents do not have to go through the struggles my family experienced trying to give our daughters the best education we could afford.

Thank you.

March 5, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Educator Voices Featured Private Schools School Choice

For this educator, relationships are the reward

Lisa Buie January 14, 2021

Lisa Buie

About a third of the 435 K-12 student at The Rock School use state choice scholarships, including 108 who use the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students and 15 who use Gardiner Scholarships for students with special needs.

Editor’s Note: At the end of 2019, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared 2020 “The Year of the Teacher,” championing a $47,500 starting salary and a new bonus program for K-12 educators. In June, DeSantis signed into law a bill allocating $500 million for teacher pay, boosting Florida from 26^th to fifth for minimum teacher pay.

That boost applied only to district schools, causing some private school administrators to wonder if they would lose teachers. Alicen Crane, a teacher at The Rock School, a faith-based school in Gainesville, is among those who chose to stay. Here, she explains why the intangibles of her job are more rewarding than a bigger paycheck.

Alicen Crane

My experience at The Rock School is unique.

I attended The Rock as a student in elementary school and then for a while in high school. I spent some time in public school and was also homeschooled, so I have a little experience in various settings. But there was something about The Rock School that always drew me back.

As a student, I felt cared for spiritually, personally, and academically. So, when it came time to apply for my first job after graduating from high school, there was no question; it was The Rock Preschool I wanted to apply to. Now I was on the other side of education – I was a teacher.

I worked at The Rock School while getting my bachelor’s degree in elementary education and was able to substitute. I loved the small class sizes and being able to connect with the students, including some whose parents or siblings had been my classmates. I was able to learn from the teachers and get experience in a classroom. The Rock still had that community feeling I felt as a student.

After graduation, I knew I wanted to spend my first year as an educator at a school where teachers had the opportunity to focus on individual students’ needs and where the administration supported unique learning environments. So, I applied to The Rock School as an elementary teacher and was accepted.

That first year teaching, I learned so much. With a smaller school, I was able to grow professionally and personally. The administrators and my fellow teachers guided me through one-on-one training and professional development. I was able to learn so much from veteran teachers, including those who taught and inspired me. I was also able to grow by sharing with others the skills I was learning.

Five years after I first started working at The Rock Preschool, I was teaching my first elementary class. When I received my roster, I realized some of the students were the same ones I’d taught as pre-schoolers. I was thrilled! I had built relationships with these students and their parents. The relationships with families have continued year after year, at school events, in the car line, or in after-school care.

I know I could make more money at a public school, but I won’t be leaving The Rock School. It’s more than just an 8 a.m.-to-3 p.m. school. It’s a place where students, parents and teachers can be seen and heard. My administrative team is phenomenal, working with us to customize instruction to each student’s needs. The small class sizes give me the opportunity to use creative strategies to help my students succeed.

But the most rewarding thing about The Rock School is the opportunity I have to give back to my community. As I’ve pursued a master’s degree in educational leadership, I’ve had the chance to teach these students that their voice matters – that they all can make an impact in a world that needs them.

At The Rock School, I’m able to partner with parents and fellow educators. I’m able to teach the whole child, spiritually and academically, as each one continues to teach me. I wouldn’t trade that for anything, even a bigger paycheck.

January 14, 2021 0 comment

Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Education Legislation Featured News Private Schools School Choice

Dual enrollment bill would ensure equal access to college courses to all high school students

Lisa Buie January 12, 2021

Lisa Buie

A recently filed bill that would shift the cost of dual enrollment from private schools to the state would benefit schools like Center Academy in Pinellas Park, one in a network of 10 schools across Florida that serve students with learning differences.

The staff at Center Academy used to encourage eligible high school students to enroll in classes through Florida’s dual enrollment program. Not only did it pave the way for those students to get a head start on college; it boosted their confidence and allowed any with reservations if college was the best fit after graduation.

But a loophole in state law that made dual enrollment prohibitively expensive for private schools forced Center Academy and others to limit participation – or not offer the program at all.

“Our students would have a chance to be successful, but we don’t want to offer dual enrollment because the cost makes it difficult for us to operate our school, especially if every student took advantage of the program,” said Steve Hicks, vice president of operations for the Pinellas Park-based network of 10 schools across Florida that serve students in fourth grade through high school with learning differences.

Recent figures from the Florida Department of Education show the inequity that the loophole created has worsened over time, with the number of private school students participating in dual enrollment declining 60% over the past 10 years. District schools, meanwhile, more than doubled the number of dual enrollment students during the same period. Home schoolers also saw their dual enrollment numbers more than double.

At the same time, the number of lower-income students attending private schools on Florida Tax Credit Scholarships more than quadrupled, putting more lower-income students at an even greater disadvantage.

“For years, private school students have had this stumbling block,” said Michael Barrett, who oversees education policy issues for the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Everyone should have equal access to education. We have 30,000 students on state scholarships and over 22,000 on (income-based) scholarships who could benefit from accelerated college educations while in high school.”

The high cost has forced many Catholic high schools to limit dual enrollment participation to college courses that their own faculty members are certified to teach, Barrett said.

Dual enrollment access first became an issue in 2013 when a change in the law shifted the cost of dual enrollment programs from colleges to school districts. Because school districts are state funded, the state picked up the cost. But private schools, which couldn’t pass the cost on to their students, had no alternative but to limit their dual enrollment offerings.

New provisions for dual enrollment that were expected to address the issue were included in a wide-ranging bill, HB 7055, which then-Gov. Rick Scott signed into law in 2018. One of those provisions removed the requirement that articulation agreements – the documents that allow students to take certain classes at nearby colleges — must specify whether the private schools are responsible for tuition. But educators were not clear on whether colleges or the schools would pay dual enrollment costs.

Private school officials waited for clarification from the state Department of Education, but a memo on the bill did not address the provisions. Lawmakers have tried for the past few years to clarify the issue, but proposed legislation never made it to the governor’s desk despite bipartisan support.

Last year, state Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, sponsored SB 1246, which would have established a state scholarship fund to cover the costs incurred by private schools and homeschool students. (The law already bars colleges from charging homeschool students who take dual enrollment courses.) An analysis estimated the cost at $28.5 million.

The bill won approval from the Senate Education Committee but died in the Senate Appropriations Committee. A companion bill filed by state Rep. Ardian Zika, R-Land O’Lakes, also died in committee.

Supporters haven’t given up hope. This year, lawmakers are making another run at changing the law to shift the cost from private schools to the state. SB52, filed last month by state Sen. Ray Rodrigues, R-Fort Myers, is nearly identical to previous versions.

School leaders hope this attempt will prove successful.

“We have always believed that our students who attempt dual enrollment classes will be more likely to attend college and pursue a degree,” Hicks said. “It is great for their self-esteem to take a college course and find success.”

January 12, 2021 0 comment