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Academy Allowed Extra Students

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By RONNIE BLAIR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 3, 2007

LAND O' LAKES - A reluctant Pasco County School Board agreed Tuesday to increase the enrollment capacity for Athenian Academy of Pasco, an action that amounted to an after-the-fact contract amendment because the charter school already had enrolled extra students.

'I brought this recommendation with mixed feelings,' Superintendent Heather Fiorentino told the board.

The board's vote allows Athenian Academy to enroll as many as 268 students in kindergarten through sixth grade, up from the 224 it was previously approved for.

In the charter school's view, though, the board had already approved Athenian Academy for 268 students.

'We didn't think we needed an amendment,' said Alice Rodriguez-Bower, vice president of Florida operations for the Leona Group, a management firm that runs the school.

This wasn't the first time the school board voted to let Athenian Academy enroll 268 students, but the circumstances had changed.

In a previous vote on July 31, the school board agreed to let the school enroll 268 students, but that had been based on the school adding seventh and eighth grade. At that time, the school district had asked Athenian Academy to add the two grades to provide another educational option for students from The Language Academy, a charter school that closed at the end of the 2006-07 academic year.

By the time of that vote, most of The Language Academy students had already enrolled in traditional public schools.

Rodriguez-Bower, contacted after the board meeting, said it would have been too expensive to open seventh and eighth grade for the few students interested.

The school had a waiting list for its lower grades, though, and began enrolling a few additional students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
School district officials didn't find out until later, and they weren't happy. Fiorentino said the charter school had broken its contract by going over 224 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.

Rodriguez-Bower said the July 31 vote that approved the school for 268 students hadn't specified how many students could be in each grade.

Board chairwoman Marge Whaley said it is becoming too typical for the board to find out about, and approve, a charter-school contract change after the fact. She said in the future the board may need to tell the charter schools the changes aren't going to be approved.

'At some point in time we need to stop doing this,' Whaley said.

The school district is forming a charter school task force to improve communications between the schools and the school board, and board member Kathryn Starkey said the task force should 'smooth this process.'

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