Lee Barratt Retires from the Charter School Institute

The retirement of Lee Barratt, Deputy Director of the Charter School Institute was recently announced. Lee plans to retire at the end of this month.

Lee was one of the first people hired after the formation of the Charter School Institute in 2005. At that point, he'd already created and was the director for the Colorado School Resource Center, a nonprofit that provided technical assistance to new and developing charter schools. Lee has been associated with the development of several charter schools, primarily in Jefferson County where his daughter attended a charter school.

Lee has a Masters in Economics, which he used to provide consultation to schools in regard to their finances. He also established business operations for the CSI. Lee served as the Interim Director of CSI between the resignation of Randy DeHoff and the hire of Mark Hyatt as Executive Director.

It's unclear at this time what Lee plans to do in the future. Knowing Lee, however, and his passion for charter schools it's highly likely he'll be volunteering his services for new charter schools.

CSI Prevails in Appeal from CDELA

The Colorado Education and Distance Education Learning Academy (CDELA) lost their appeal to the State Board of Education this afternoon. CDELA is managed by White Hat Management out of Ohio.

Board member, Randy DeHoff, recused himself from the hearing because he was Executive Director of CSI at the time the CSI board voted to nonrenew the CDELA contract.

CDELA attorney said the three primary issues of the appeal were finances, records and academics. The state board honed in on the lack of academic achievement from CDELA students. In addition, it came out that the CDELA student performance data was only based on 53 students who took CSAP for two consecutive years while with the charter school. CSI's attorney, Tony Dyl, pointed out that a very high percentage of students failed to return a second year therefore making a very small sample size to critique student achievement.

State board chair, Bob Schaffer, before he voted noted that he was a strong supporter of charter schools but he was an even stronger supporter of offering students a quality education and he didn't see that with CDELA. Several other board members also voiced concern about the lack of student academic achievement during the hearing, even redirecting the attorneys when they were presenting their cases.

The board voted unanimously to affirm CSI's decision to not renew the CDELA charter contract. The school is slated to close at the end of this school year.