The Orange Park Performing Arts Academy in Orange Park, Florida, on August 15, 2017, the day it opened as a private school. It was previously a public charter school, but after it received two failing grades from the state, its charter contract was terminated.
Credit: Charlotte Kesl/ ProPublica
This past June, Florida’s top education agency delivered a failing grade to the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy in suburban Jacksonville for the second year in a row. It designated the charter school for kindergarten through fifth grade as the worst public school in Clay County, and one of the lowest performing in the state.
Two-thirds of the academy’s students failed the state exams last year, and only a third of them were making any academic progress at all. The school had had four principals in three years, and teacher turnover was high, too.
“My fourth grader was learning stuff that my second grader was learning — it shouldn’t be that way,” said Tanya Bullard, who moved her three daughters from the arts academy this […]
