Neville Charter Association denied Type 3 charter application

MONROE, La. (KNOE) - The Monroe City School Board voted at a special called meeting on Jan. 14 to deny the Neville Charter Association’s application to convert Neville High into a type 3 charter school.

This means the school would have received state and local funding from the school board had it have been approved.

Stewart Shelby with the Neville Charter association gave his thoughts moments before the vote.

“All we want is to continue to uplift Neville to an even higher standards utilizing every member that walks in the hallways of Neville High School,” said Shelby.

Many members of the public came to the meeting in support of the conversion from Neville High to Neville Charter School, while others expressed their opposition.

“If you’re going to invest all this mental help and bring all these resources to Neville by being a charter school, why can you not bring that right now as Neville currently stands,” said Cliff Thomas, president of the Monroe-Ouachita NAACP chapter.

During the meeting, a third-party evaluator gave a review on the application and recommended the board deny the association’s application.

To view the review in full, click here.

In turn, the board went through with the recommendation.

Four votes in favor of the application were required in order for the school to become a type 3 charter school.

School board members Bill Wilson and Michael Sampagnaro voted in favor of the conversion, while Betty Ward Cooper and Brenda Shelling voted against it.

School board president Jennifer Haneline abstained from the vote, so the motion failed in a 2-2 vote.

Nerissa Bryant, a member of the charter association, explained what the next steps will look like after the failed motion.

“The charter board would be forced to do something that we would rather not do, and that would be applying for a type 2 charter directly to BESE,” said Bryant.

That means if the application is approved by BESE, funding would come directly from the state rather than also receiving funding from the school board.

Bryant explained one of the benefits of Neville becoming a charter school.

“We believe that as a charter school, we would receive more revenue to take care of the students at Neville High School than we are currently receiving,” said Bryant.

There is no word yet on when the application will be sent to BESE, but we will keep you updated as more information becomes available.

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