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Charter Application Filed Without Blue Ribbon Committee’s Knowledge
August 12, 2008
The Century Blue Ribbon had no idea that an application for a charter school was filed with what appeared to be their name at the bottom; committee members said they never saw the application until after it was filed.
The application for the Charter Magnet School at Century was prepared by the “Century Blue Ribbon Committee on Education and The Century Community Development Partnership, Inc”, according the bottom of 80 of 81 pages of the application.
Members of the Century Blue Ribbon committee question the application filing by Irvin Stallworth at a meeting Monday night. Stallworth is president of the Century Community Development Partnership (CCDP), and he is also chairman of the town’s Blue Ribbon Committee.
“We had our last meeting the Thursday night before he filed the application,” Blue Ribbon Committee member, and Carver/Century K-8 Principal Jeff Garthwaite said. “Why did we not see it?”
“The charter was not discussed,” he said. “If our name as our committee is going to go on a document, the committee should have seen it,” he said.
NorthEscambia.com was the first media to break the story that the application had been filed by Stallworth and the CCDP on behalf of a corporation to be formed to run the charter school, if it is approved by the school board.
Century Mayor Freddie McCall said he has spoken with Stallworth on Monday and was told “I will explain it when I can sit down and talk to you”.
“It seems he (Stallworth) is operating under the name of the Blue Ribbon Committee without the Blue Ribbon Committee knowing anything about it,” McCall said. “I wonder if he is just writing off the school and going ahead with the charter.”
The listed organizer of the charter school, James Sutton (pictured left), was present at the Blue Ribbon Committee’s meeting Monday night at the Century Town Hall.
Sutton said he was contacted Thursday night before the application was submitted on Friday and asked by Stallworth to sign it on Friday morning, August 1.
“As far as I knew, it was this Blue Ribbon Committee,” Sutton said. When asked by the mayor who wrote the document, Sutton replied “Jack Moran”. Moran is a Century businessman.
“That charter will not fly as it is written,” Garthwaite said. Previously in his career, Garthwaite actually worked in the school district’s Department of Alternative Education, the department that reviews charter applications. “There are so many missing pieces to that document. There are some serious gaps. There are several issues that are left very vague. If our name is attached to it, you don’t want junk going forward. You want a quality document.”
“I would have appreciated it if we had seen it that night before it went in with our name on it,” he said.
“We still had not seen it until today,” Blue Ribbon Committee member Laura Nelson said. “It if is stamped that we prepared it, we should have seen it. Why did he (Stallworth) not mention it the night before at the meeting?”
“This committee on there, is it us, or is it Mr. Moran, or Rev. Stallworth, or who is it?” Nelson asked. “And who will pay the expenses with this application?”
“Mr. Jack (Moran) will probably pay for it,” McCall answered.
“The effort should have been more visible,” Garthwaite said. “I don’t know Mr. Moran very well, but what did he have to do with the committee?” Moran was not named to the Blue Ribbon Committee as appointed by the Century Town Council.
The 81 page application does not indicate the exact address where the charter school would be located. It simply lists the address as “Hecker Road, Century, Florida”. NorthEscambia.com poised a hypothetical question to the Blue Ribbon Committee: “Could the application allow the Century Community Development Partnership to actually get approved for their own charter school at their legal address of 700 Hecker Road, the old Century High School? If the school board did not close the current Carver/Century K-8 School, could there actually be two schools?”
“That could happen,” Garthwaite said. “There could be two schools.” He said the way the application was written that it was not clear that it was filed to take over the current Carver/Century K-8 School if it should close.
Garthwaite continued several times during the meeting to express his displeasure over the entire application.
“It’s missing any required letters of support or financial plans,” he said. “I just have great problems with the committee named on this document having never seen this document. The people that have wrote this document are not on this committee.”
“The first step would be to sit down with Pastor Stallworth,” Sutton said. “I don’t think this was intended for anything.”
The charter application must undergo a lengthy review process before being considered by the school board.
To read more about the Century Community Development Partnership, click here.
NorthEscambia.com has been unable to contact Stallworth since we began trying Sunday afternoon; our phone calls have not been returned. We were unable to contact Moran Monday night due to the late hour the Blue Ribbon Committee meeting ended. We will attempt to contact both men again on Tuesday.
Pictured above: Blue Ribbon Committee members Rev. Willie Carter (left) and Jeff Garthwaite (right) listen to committee member Brenda Spencer Monday night. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
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