Keystone Academy serving 30 more students than expected

“We have 30 more seats filled than approved of,” said Keystone Academy school board president Vesta Losen at the board’s regular meeting Jan. 11.
Losen referred to the report that the school has 768 official offered seats, but has 798 students.
Keystone Principal Keturah Godfrey explained that it’s no more than two students per classroom over which isn’t difficult for the classroom teacher.
She said the usual “erosion” planned for didn’t occur. Erosion refers to the students who are accepted and then don’t show up on the first day of school.
Extra students are allowed because of the expected erosion but when that didn’t happen, they were left with extra students.
And, they didn’t have a lot of families leaving, which they often do.
This year two sisters came into the fifth grade and left in the fifth grade. Their family said Keystone was too structured, with too many rules.
“That’s OK. We’re not for everybody,” Godfrey said.
There are 118 students on the waiting list.
Godfrey said last year the school had 29.4% of the students at free and reduced lunch and this year it’s 37%.
“I love the diversity in the school,” Godfrey said, noting it has a growing Romanian population and a Polish population.
The board approved 768 as the number of seats to be offered in 2018-19.
In other business at the Jan. 11 meeting, the board:
• Approved naming Plante Moran for its 2017-18 audit;
• Tabled action on attendance at the 2018 National Charter Schools Conference in Austin, TX;
• Took no action on the reappointment of Carol Manley to serve an additional board term, since Manley has submitted a letter asking not to be reappointed as a parent representative. Her son is now at Flat Rock High School and she is active with him in that district;
• Approved the 2018 Children’s Internet Protection Act Form 479;
• Approved the 2017-18 amended budget after a discussion about how the board members do not like the way National Heritage Academies moves figures around. Keystone got a clean audit last time, NHA representative Jeff Henders pointed out, adding the previous year NHA did a thing that didn’t work and the amended budget last year was too conservative. The line items are condensed. The board agreed NHA was not going to change its procedures in 81 schools because Keystone doesn’t like it. It is a good procedure in place that works for volume, they noted. “That’s how they keep the costs down,” Losen said; and
• Discussed the scores for tests NWEA and MStep. Godfrey said NWEA is “low-hanging fruit” because it is easy to teach to. She said you can have a high-performing classroom because it monitors growth, but that is not predicting of proficiency. Henders of National Heritage Academies said NWEA is the test the school’s authorizer cares about and MStep is changing but its scores are important. “If we work on MStep, NWEA won’t be as high, but you are exceeding your goals,” Henders said. “You are splitting your time in half and if you’re concentrating on MStep, you’ll do fine.” Board vice-president Susan Meland asked, “Michigan ranks what in the country?” and Henders replied, “Michigan could take a step forward.”