‘They’re not educating’: Missouri board closes Kansas City’s Genesis charter school

The Missouri State Board of Education on Monday unanimously agreed to close Genesis charter school on Kansas City’s East Side, saying it has failed to properly educate students for years.

“If this were a standard public school, we would have shut it down long ago,” board member Peter Herschend said. “We are in the business of education. Caring for kids, of course, but you care for kids from an educational perspective by seeing to it that they know how to read, or know how to do math. And this school simply has not done that.

“I appreciate that they care for their kids. But they’re not educating those kids. And for that reason, it would be criminal neglect if we just said, ‘that’s OK, continue as you are.’”

The state board’s vote is the final step in a months-long process to close the school, starting with concerns voiced by its sponsor, the Missouri Charter Public School Commission. Though the board’s vote was unanimous, state education officials acknowledged they had concerns over the commission’s process for revoking Genesis’ charter.

The charter school commission in February voted 6-1 to revoke the school’s charter on June 30, citing 15 years of low academic performance and “broken promises.” In the 2021-2022 school year, for example, the commission said only 13 out of 100 students performed at or above grade level in English and math.

Genesis appealed the decision in March, with the backing of dozens of families who said the school effectively serves some of Kansas City’s most at-risk students. School leaders said the state commission’s decision to close the school is “not supported by the data,” arguing that Genesis has seen student performance improve since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The school also has argued the state commission did not follow the law in its revocation process.

But state school board leaders agreed that the school’s educational failings are so severe that it must close.

State school board member Carol Hallquist, of Kansas City, said during Monday’s meeting that Genesis is “beloved by the community. It has stellar relationships with parents, it’s unmatched. And their wraparound services are so helpful for the students there. It’s a challenging group.”

“This is a really tough decision. But our duty on the state board is to ensure that every Missouri student gets a quality education,” she said.

Without a sponsor, the school will now begin the process of closing and transitioning students to other schools, such as one within Kansas City Public Schools or a different charter school.

“We are extremely disappointed in the decision,” Genesis Executive Director Kevin Foster told The Star on Monday. “I’m also disappointed in what the decision appeared to be based on,” saying he was upset that board members did not discuss the data or information provided by the school before voting.

“Our board has followed the process that is in place and tried to use that process to get a fair hearing about the work we do and whether we should be a public charter school,” Foster said. “And they’re going to consider what options remain, which will include exploring all legal options.”

‘Process was deficient’

In 2015, Genesis was placed on academic probation when its charter was renewed by the University of Missouri-Kansas City, its first sponsor.

The school was later sponsored by the University of Missouri in Columbia, which lost its authority to sponsor Genesis and two other charter schools. In 2020, the state agreed to renew Genesis’ five-year charter, but put it on academic probation once again. The next year, the state school board voted to make the Missouri Charter Public School Commission the school’s sponsor.

Last year, the commission notified Genesis that it was not meeting standards, and then created improvement goals for a new contract, signed in July. Within two months, Genesis leaders say the commission informed them it would begin revocation proceedings unless it voluntarily closed.

Genesis refused. And in December, the commission notified Genesis it intended to nullify its charter.

Foster argued the charter commission was in breach of the contract because it did not provide Genesis with enough notice or calls for corrective action, as laid out in the agreement, in advance of announcing its intent to revoke the charter.

“The Commission apparently believed its job is not to support Genesis, but to close it,” school leaders wrote in their appeal. “From the beginning of the relationship, the Commission was not interested in learning about Genesis or collaborating with Genesis school leadership and Board on improvement planning.”

The contract says the commission would regularly monitor the school to determine if it met performance standards. The commission would require corrective action if the school’s annual performance results in three of the last four years fell below KCPS, and the school was “identified as persistently lowest achieving.”

“The Process followed by (the commission) is not consistent with the law,” school leaders said last month. “The Commissioner’s first vote regarding any action with Genesis was the vote to close the charter. Processes in the statute governing charter schools mandate schools and sponsors work progressively to improve, with transparent benchmarks. These processes were not available to Genesis.”

Missouri Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven on Monday said, “It is clear the charter commission revocation process was deficient.”

But, she said, “Genesis has a long history of failing to provide quality education for its students. And intervention by the state board to place it with a new sponsor was unsuccessful.”

Vandeven said while “there are concerns about how the charter commission proceeded with the revocation, there are more significant concerns with allowing the school to continue to remain open when it’s threatened the educational security of its students and has for a number of years.”

Foster argued that, “Any fair look through the process that is required in statute would say that our school has room for growth just like any other school, but there are not grounds to close us. I don’t understand it.”

Years of low performance

Genesis, at 3800 E. 44th St., operates in the Thornberry Unit of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Kansas City and serves roughly 200 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Genesis has served families on Kansas City’s East Side for 47 years, since 1999 as a charter school. It is now one of the state’s oldest charter schools.

Foster calls it a “true community school,” with 84% of students living within three miles of it.

He said Genesis regularly enrolls students transferring from other charter schools, most of whom are scoring below basic on state assessments, called the MAP test. In 2022, Genesis enrolled 78 new students, with 1 out of 3 coming from other charters. Out of those students, 64% scored below basic in English and 74% scored below basic in math.

“Enrolling these transferring students negatively impacts Genesis MAP status, but, providing these students with strong academic support is a core value of Genesis,” leaders wrote in the appeal.

The school has failed to meet academic performance standards for the past 15 years, according to the state commission. During that time, Genesis’ test scores have regularly lagged behind the state average and Kansas City Public Schools.

The commission said that in the 2015-2016 school year, the charter school saw 27% of K-5 students scoring at proficient or advanced levels in English. Five years later, that fell to 2.6%. The students’ math scores dropped from 24% to 8%.

“We could not find a single time from 2007 to 2022 when Genesis performed better than KCPS in either English or math. Not a single year for 15 years,” Robbyn Wahby, executive director of the state charter commission, said during a hearing.

The commission said the school has not adequately prepared students “for success in high school or beyond.”

But Foster argues that the school navigated through the pandemic better than most, keeping students in person and mitigating learning loss. The school says 2021 state assessment data shows growth in both English and math, as well as a 15% reduction in the amount of students scoring below basic in English.

But Wahby previously argued that the school has had years of warnings without solid proof of consistent improvement.

“Two sponsors, two probations, multiple warnings of academic performance,” Wahby said. “We are the third sponsor. The third time not meeting standards is enough.”