NC charter review board questions need for accelerated applications

North Carolina’s Charter Schools Review Board is questioning whether the accelerated charter approval pathway it has used to fast-track new schools is working, and whether it should exist at all.

Board members raised the issue at an April 6 virtual meeting, prompted by three schools approved on an accelerated timeline last fall that are struggling to meet enrollment minimums ahead of a fall 2026 opening.

The debate comes as the application window for the next cohort is nearly closed. The state Department of Public Instruction has set an April 24 deadline for applicants seeking to open under the accelerated timeline in 2027 or the standard timeline in 2028.

“All you’ve got to do is say, ‘We have a facility,’” board vice chair John Eldridge said. “And then two or three months later say, ‘Well, something happened in that facility. We’ve got a second location to look at.’ And it’s no longer at that point an accelerated application.”

The accelerated application process was designed to condense the charter application timeline for schools that are nearly ready to open — with a facility secured and demonstrated community demand. The stepped-up process shaves months off the standard application approach.

Office of Charter Schools director Ashley Logue told the board the pathway was never written into state statute. Its origins trace to a State Board of Education policy later incorporated into an administrative rule. Those rules are now overdue for an update, she said.

“The language is outdated because we have not updated it to reflect the Charter Schools Review Board,” Logue said, referring to a change enacted by the General Assembly in 2025 to give the charter review board more authority. She added that any substantive revision takes a minimum of eight months.

All three accelerated applicants approved by the board last fall are below their enrollment break-even thresholds. 

“Our two lowest schools with the lowest percent of projected enrollment attained so far are two of our accelerated applications,” said board member Rita Hair in noting the pattern.

BH2 STREAM Academy, an Edgecombe County school approved in September, brought the problem into focus for board members. By April 6, the school had cycled through three proposed facility locations, lacked a completed traffic study and final fire inspection at its latest site, and had enrolled only a fraction of the roughly 250 students needed to break even. 

The board voted unanimously to deny the school’s request to relocate to a temporary site in Rocky Mount.

“The moment you don’t have a facility, you’re no longer an accelerated applicant,” Eldridge said. “Our board needs to strongly consider whether or not this application is still valid.”

Chair Bruce Friend, who made the motion to deny BH2’s request, said the school’s situation highlighted the gap between intent and readiness.

“I just feel like we’re at the same point today that we were in February, being asked to approve a new site when you don’t even have the information with a 100% guarantee that the site is a viable site,” he said.

The cases prompted board members to question whether the accelerated pathway should exist at all.

“I would tend to say, let’s let schools go into [Ready to Open status] and then come tell us when they’re ready,” board member Lindalyn Kakadelis said.

Friend went further. “Do we even need acceleration? An applicant does everything they need to do, and when they feel they’re ready to exit [Ready to Open] and come before us, convince us that they are ready. Maybe that’s in one year, maybe that’s in four years.”

Friend added that he plans to gather ideas from board members and stressed any rethinking should extend beyond the accelerated pathway alone.

“The idea of changing some of our procedures that are rooted in rules is not relegated to just accelerated applications,” he said. “I do think we should revisit the timeline for which applications are submitted and reviewed and approved.”

The board meets next on May 11.

“NC charter review board questions need for accelerated applications” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.