DCPS gives Charter School with 8 percent graduation rate a 3 year extension.

And that is up from a little over one percent the year before.

Lone Star Charter School is what is called a drop back in academy for students who had basically dropped out. In years past they would be working on their GEDs if anything but now charter chains see a revenue stream and an opportunity to make easy money.

You are probably wondering if the district would do a better job and the answer is yes. Where far from great the graduation rate for the kids in the Duval County over age academy is 14 percent.

From the Times Union: Either boost graduation rates or face non-renewal of contracts and possible closure: That’s the deal Duval’s School Board recently struck with operators of Lone Star High and two related charter high schools.

The ultimatum came in the form of a contract extension that the School Board approved unanimously, allowing Lone Star to stay open at least three more years.

Lone Star is a charter school operated by Accelerated Learning Solutions, an Orlando company that also manages Biscayne High and Murray Hill High, two more charter schools in Jacksonville.

All three are dropout retrieval schools, sometimes called “drop back in” academies, which focus on students who have quit regular high school or were planning to. Generally, dropout retrieval schools try to help students quickly recoup class credits, so that they can graduate with a regular diploma by age 21.

But most drop-out retrieval schools have graduation rates that are a fraction of traditional high school graduation rates.

For instance, Duval’s average graduation rate was 74 percent last year, but Lone Star High’s was 8.74 percent, an improvement over 1.23 percent the year before, and Murray Hill’s was 7.8 percent, up from 2.78 percent the year before.

Biscayne High’s rate was not available.

The state pays charter schools at least $5,400 a student. Last year that amounted to $2.83 million for Lone Star, but this year it’s expected to be $3.27 million.

Lone Star, a 5-year-old school serving 325 students, recently asked the School Board to extend its contract by five more years.

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2015-04-13/story/charter-high-schools-challenged-boost-grad-rates

Now that’s chutzpah, a graduation rate in the single digits and here they are asking for a five year contract, but friends it gets even worse.

In 2010 they spent 452,034 dollars on school administration costs and that’s out of a 1.325 million dollar budget. Combined they spent just 515,000 on instruction and pupil services.

During the 11-12 school year they spent 445,000 on the school administration and then chipped in 275,400 in management fees or 13.5 percent of their overall budget. And remember friends this is for a school operating out of what looks like an abandoned Winne Dixie.

It was about the same during the 12-13 school year and last year their school administration fees went up to 673,000 dollars or about a third of their overall budget. And before you think, well they must include facilities, meals, and up keep in their administration costs, nope, nope and nope. Last year we got a discount as the fees dropped to 524,000 dollars

Follow the link and have your mind blown: http://www.jaxlonestarhs.com/

The bottom line is we are paying tons of money to a charter school with crazy high management and administration fees that is doing a crappy job and the school board renewed their contract for three more years.

F-ING-A