High-Profile Charter Becomes Non-Starter
By BARBARA MARTINEZ
A prominent charter school made the list of underperforming schools that the Department of Education plans to close, and the school said it intends to fight for its survival.
The Ross Global Academy Charter School on the Lower East Side was founded in 2006 by Courtney Sale Ross, the widow of Steven J. Ross, former chief executive of Time Warner.
The school's test scores for 2009 show it's one of the city's three worst-performing charter schools. Only about 30% of its students were proficient in math or English. It has had four principals in five years, and 77% of its teachers and 25% of its students left last year.
In an interview before the DOE's decision, Ms. Ross, 62 years old, said last year's test scores were an aberration and that some of the contributing factors were beyond the school's control. "This was a start-up riddled with turbulence," she said, pointing to the DOE's decisions to relocate the school three times. She added that the school had already begun a process of turnaround with a new principal.
On Monday, the DOE dismissed Ms. Ross's version of the school's tenure. "This was not a one-year problem," the agency said in a statement. "The school has received four notices of concern