Natoria Carpenter says she chose to drive her daughter thirty miles each day to the opposite side of Memphis just to attend Vision Preparatory Charter School.
Carpenter says the educational experience her daughter received at the elementary school put her on the right path forward for middle school.
“She was one of those kids who had a lot of issues and because of Vision Prep she’s thriving now in her middle school,” said Carpenter. “Because they didn’t give up on her she now (has) an opportunity to be great in middle school and because of the loving teachers at Vision Prep that still follow her now.”
Carpenter was among the crowd of current and former parents who attended Tuesday night’s Memphis-Shelby County School Board meeting to provide support for the public charter school’s request for a new ten-year charter with the district.
“The culture is what my wife and I really loved about Vision Prep because it reminded us about when we were in school in elementary, just the respect those children had and that the teachers had for them,” said James Curry. “I think Vision Prep is definitely a school that should stay in the community.”
Board members nearly unanimously agreed with supporting parents and voted 6 to 1 in favor of renewing the school’s charter for another ten years. That vote came despite the district’s own charter school office recommending against providing the school another contract.
Assistant Superintendent of Charter Schools Brittany Monda told board members Vision Prep’s academics scored just under the standard for renewal on a five point scorecard.
“Academics was at a 2.85 which falls below that 3.0 standard for good standing,” said Monda. “The school has not met performance standards for renewal.”
That academic rating included the first 8 years of Vision Prep’s performance but didn’t include recently released state testing data.
Vision Prep founder and director Tom Benton made the case new performance data shows the school is on the upward trend after challenging results early on.
“Our academic struggle was early,” said Benton. “The trajectory over the past three years, especially coming out of the pandemic, have been from 1s and 2s to a range of 3 and up to the growth level of 5 of this year. So our trajectory is forward. And the reason why we have that trajectory is we’ve made a concerted effort to improve our curriculum, to improve professional development,” said Benton.
Benton also made the case that denying a new contract for Vision Prep would have sent most students to a school that’s performing below the public charter school.
A district analysis of the school’s students found just 16 of Vision Prep’s students would be zoned to attend a school that scored higher on the recently released School Letter Grades while 314 would be zoned to attend a school scoring lower.
Board Chair Althea Greene was among those who felt that disparity was a point in favor of keeping Vision Prep open.
“It (does) concern me that we would have to misplace student(s) and we would have 314 students to go to a D or F school is very alarming, said Greene.
