She was Erie Rise's 'biggest cheerleader.' And then the charter school started to stumble
Ruth Lanzo was once one of the biggest supporters of the Erie Rise Leadership Academy Charter School.
She enrolled her children at the school shortly after she arrived in Erie from Buffalo in 2013, two years after the school opened.
She told anyone who would listen about Erie Rise.
School Board's vote:Erie School Board invokes 'surrender clause,' votes to close Erie Rise charter school
She recruited other parents to send their children there.
She ended up working at Erie Rise as a classroom aide and then a bus monitor.
And in 2019, when the Erie School Board threatened to shut down Erie Rise because of poor student performance, Lanzo was among the parents who packed the auditorium at East Middle School in support of Erie Rise, located at West 10th and Cascade streets.
Lanzo held a sign, shaped like a heart, that said, "I am Erie Rise."
She waved the sign at the meeting, and she posted the same signs throughout her house in Erie. The front porch of her house was dotted with so many signs that walking up to the door was like entering a shrine to Erie Rise.
Her oldest child graduated from Erie Rise in 2016. She then sent her three other children there.
"At one time, I was the mom who was out there," Lanzo said of her boosterism. "I was Erie Rise."
In the summer of 2022, Lanzo, 49, pulled her three other children out of Erie Rise: two boys and a girl, now 10, 8 and 9 years old, respectively.
Her concerns included how the school handled special education for two of her children. She sent all three to the Erie School District's Grover Cleveland Elementary School.
Lanzo threw away all the heart-shaped signs. She took the last one down from her living room wall on Wednesday. She placed it in the trash.
A week earlier, on Jan. 18, Lanzo and her family had attended another Erie School Board meeting on whether the school directors should close Erie Rise due to poor test scores. Lanzo did not wave any signs in support.
She attended this meeting to back the School Board members, who voted unanimously to force the closing of the school — with about 300 students in kindergarten through eighth grades. It must shut down by June 30.
Lanzo did not speak at the meeting. But her husband, James Black, stood at the lectern.
"This Erie Rise is the worst school I have ever seen," he said.
Lanzo agreed.
"It is upsetting how the school got to this point, letting the children down," she said in an interview.
"I was their biggest cheerleader," Lanzo said. "All that went away when they treated my children and me wrong."
The long process that led to the vote on Erie Rise
Just as Ruth Lanzo's disillusionment was gradual, the Erie School Board's vote to close Erie Rise was the culmination of a long process.
In a letter to parents on Monday, Erie Rise's board members and administration said "these recent events were sudden and unexpected." But Erie Rise always knew that the Erie School Board sometime in 2022-23 could vote to force a shutdown.
The possibility was written into the contract that Erie Rise signed with the school district in November 2019. The school district agreed to hold off on seeking closure of the school — on which the district spends about $3.4 million a year in tax dollars — as long as the standardized test scores of Erie Rise's students increased to levels that both Erie Rise and the district negotiated as part of an improvement plan.
The state Department of Education also provided input, said Neal Brokman, the assistant Erie School District superintendent who monitors charter schools.
The improvement plan included a "surrender clause" that requires Erie Rise to forfeit its charter automatically, and "without protest" or recourse to the courts, if the school fails to meet the benchmarks in the improvement plan. The benchmarks are based on Erie Rise's scores on the 2021-22 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests.
The results of the 2021-22 PSSA tests became public in the late fall, about the same time that the school district sent Erie Rise a letter asking for information as the district evaluated the improvement plan.
"The purpose of this letter is to do a periodic check in with the goals of the plan," Brokman wrote in the letter, dated Oct. 5. The improvement plan was attached to the letter, which the Erie Times-News obtained from the district through a request under the Right-to-Know Law.
In response to the letter, Erie Rise did not contact the district to try to renegotiate the improvement plan to prevent the School Board from voting to close Erie Rise, Brokman said in an interview. Based on the PSSA scores, he said, Erie Rise had failed to meet the benchmarks.
The PSSA tests classify students as performing at below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. According to the Erie School Board resolution to close Erie Rise:
For English and language arts — The improvement plan required 32.8% of the Erie Rise students to be proficient or advanced. The school's students recorded a rate of 16.1% in 2021-22, based on the PSSA scores.
For math — Improvement plan target was 23.9% of students proficient or advanced. The PSSA rate for 2021-22 was 2.7%.
For science — Improvement plan target was 38.8% of students proficient or advanced. The PSSA rate for 2021-22 was 23.1%.
At its meeting Jan. 18, the Erie School Board referred to Erie Rise's failure to meet the standards that the school had helped set. The board unanimously voted to invoke the surrender clause, which cleared the way for Erie Rise to close by June 30.
When the board voted, Erie Rise's official enrollment was 286 students, according to Erie School District records. As of Thursday, the enrollment was 302 students due to adjustments, the district said.
In 2019, when the Erie School Board considered closing Erie Rise, the enrollment was 436 students. The school has 134 fewer students today.
Lanzo: 'It went further downhill these last couple of years'
Ruth Lanzo's problems with Erie Rise centered on the need for special education for two of her three younger children. She said she had a difficult time getting the school to follow special education requirements, including abiding by an individualized education program, known as an IEP.
Lanzo said the problems started in 2020, after Erie Rise abruptly fired its CEO, Terry Lang, who had negotiated the agreement that averted a shutdown of Erie Rise in 2019. Lang took over as CEO in June 2015. He succeeded Greg Myers, who opened Erie Rise in 2011 and was CEO until the Erie Rise Board of Trustees fired him in February 2015.
Erie Rise has yet to hire a new CEO, and Lanzo said she grew tired of having to deal with different administrators to address the IEP for one of her children. She said she could never meet with the administrators.
"All I ever wanted was an hour," Lanzo said.
"I feel they let the wrong people take over," she said. "It went further downhill these last couple of years."
Lanzo ended up losing her job at Erie Rise. She started as a part-time classroom aide in September 2019 and after several months she took a job as a part-time bus monitor. She said Erie Rise let her go this past May because of her complaints about the IEP and other issues.
"It was retaliation," Lanzo said.
Lanzo is pursuing action against Erie Rise over the loss of her job and her concerns about special education.
She filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the loss of her job. The EEOC sent her a right-to-sue letter on Jan. 3.
Lanzo also filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education.
In a letter on Nov. 22, the Department of Education told Lanzo it had declined to investigate her retaliation claim because Lanzo had also filed it with the EEOC. But the department said its Office of Civil Rights had opened investigations into the other claims, involving special education.
Erie Rise's director of education, David Krakoff, and its solicitor, Thomas Fitzpatrick, a lawyer from Philadelphia, did not respond to an email seeking comment on Lanzo's claims.
The federal investigation remains open.
Lanzo said she is pursuing her claims even after she moved her children out of Erie Rise. She said she wants federal authorities to know about the issues at Erie Rise, and she has told the Erie School District about her concerns.
Erie Rise could end up paying for supplemental education programs for Lanzo's children if the authorities determine the school mishandled the children's special education.
"I would like to be heard," Lanzo said.
Is the pandemic to blame for Erie Rise's poor PSSA scores?
Erie Rise said its poor test scores are due to circumstances beyond its control.
At the Jan. 18 Erie School Board meeting, Erie Rise blamed the pandemic. The school argued that the school district was holding it to an unfair standard in light of the once-in-a-lifetime global outbreak of COVID-19.
"The academic goals established in the agreement with the Erie School District were established in 2019, prior to the Covid-19 Pandemic," Erie Rise said in its written statement to the Erie Times-News. "The pandemic caused learning loss in schools across the country."
Erie Rise also pointed out that many Erie School District schools performed poorly during the pandemic.
In response, the Erie School District administration said Erie Rise's test scores failed to improve during and after the pandemic even as the scores at the Erie School District schools got better.
"The achievement gap between the two entities has not been closing," Brokman told the crowd at the Jan. 18 School Board meeting.
Brokman also said the Erie School District considered how the pandemic affected test scores, and looked to the state Department of Education for guidance. But he said Erie Rise would still fall short of meeting the benchmarks in the improvement plan even if the plan accounted for adjustments the state Department of Education has proposed for gauging overall student achievement in light of the pandemic.
Does Erie Rise have any options to fight dissolution?
The Erie School District notified Erie Rise of the pending vote before the School Board on Jan. 13, five days before the board meeting on Jan. 18. Erie Rise did not contact the district to discuss the situation, Brokman said. Erie Rise administrators spoke at the board meeting to try to get the school directors to change their minds, a strategy that worked in 2019.
The strategy did not work this time.
After the vote, Erie Rise said in a statement to the Erie Times-News that "the Board of Trustees of Erie Rise will vigorously oppose this decision using all possible legal options," and said the school would not comment further "on any pending litigation."
Erie Rise reiterated that position at a Zoom meeting the administration held with parents on Wednesday. According to a document posted at the meeting, "The Board is currently examining all options available to reverse this decision, if possible."
Fighting the impending closure in court could be difficult because of the built-in language in the surrender clause in the improvement plan. Once Erie Rise failed to meet its benchmarks, and once the Erie School Board voted to close the school, the surrender clause gave Erie Rise no leeway, legal or otherwise.
What happens to the assets of Erie Rise?
Erie schools Superintendent Brian Polito has pledged that the district will help Erie Rise families place their children in any school they choose, including the three other brick-and-mortar charters that enroll students from the Erie School District.
They are the Robert Benjamin Wiley Community Charter School, the Montessori Regional Charter School and the Perseus House Charter School of Excellence. They are all public.
Providing such assistance to charter school families is not a requirement of the state Department of Education nor the state law that governs charters, including their dissolution.
The law mandates several requirements for a charter school that is dissolving. Among them is that the charter school designate an official to be in charge of the winding down of the school's operations. The charter school law also requires Erie Rise, as a dissolved charter, to allow the state Department of Education to review student files.
And the law requires Erie Rise to allow the Erie School District "to conduct on-site visits to review student files and obtain copies of student records as necessary to ensure student records are retained and protected," Brokman wrote to Erie Rise on Jan. 20, two days after the School Board's vote. As of Thursday, nearly a week later, Brokman said he had yet to hear from Erie Rise on whether it had designated a person to be in charge of overseeing the closing of the school.
The charter school law also requires that the assets of a dissolved charter revert to the public school districts where the charter's students live. The distribution of the assets, according to the law, is based on the percentage of the students from each district. Most of the students at Erie Rise live within the boundaries of the Erie School District, but a few students might be from other districts, Brokman said.
Erie Rise leases its building, the former Emerson School, from the Greater Erie Community Action Committee, leaving the school with no real estate to sell. The school owns its buses, which would have to be distributed to the Erie School District and other districts under the percentage formula in the charter law.
"If they don't have anyone" from other school districts at Erie Rise, "we would get 100% of the assets," Brokman said. "Buses, computers, whatever they own, we own."
Brokman, in his Jan. 20 letter, told Erie Rise that the school district "would like to begin a review of the Charter School's assets to ensure proper disposition thereof upon dissolution."
Lanzo: 'Children are what matters'
Ruth Lanzo is following the situation at Erie Rise. At the same time, she said, she is watching her children thrive at the Erie School District's Grover Cleveland Elementary School.
Her children, she said, "fit in."
"Once I made the transition, it was for the best," Lanzo said. "The youngest, who couldn't read at Erie Rise, he is now able to read."
Lanzo said she agrees with the Erie School District's position that closing Erie Rise, though it will cause turmoil for families, is necessary to prevent the charter school from continuing to deliver a substandard education.
"Children are what matters," she said. "If a kid can get a better education elsewhere, it is what it is."
Lanzo said she never regretted removing her children from the school she once championed. She said she — like the Erie School District — gave Erie Rise every chance to improve.
"I kept saying, 'They are going to get better. They are going to get better,'" Lanzo said.
"It went down," she said. "It changed. It just changed."
Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.
Erie Rise's Board of Trustees
The Erie Rise Leadership Academy Charter School has a board of trustees. But, unlike the members of school boards of school districts, charter school trustees in Pennsylvania are not publicly elected. They are appointed or elected based on the methods outlined in the school's charter, according to the state's charter school law.
These are Erie Rise's trustees, based on the board minutes from a meeting on Jan. 2.
Margaret Smith, board president
Shantel Hilliard
Michael Hooks
Constance Ratcliff
Ed Williams
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: As Erie Rise slipped, charter school alienated one of its biggest fans
