Enterprise, Westminster charter schools look forward despite shorter renewals (2024)

Leaders of Westminster and Enterprise charter schools were upbeat last week, even though neither received the long-term security they originally sought.

Their roller coaster ride for their schools – from the lows of threatened closure in 2021 to the highs of academic growth and potential full renewal this year – finally came to a halt when the Buffalo School Board unanimously passed resolutions recommending a four-year charter renewal forWestminsterand a three-year renewal forEnterprise.

The board in February had suggested five-year terms due to stipulations in a 2021 legal settlement, but the state Education Department's Board of Regents in its response letter urged shorter terms due to "insufficient evidence of academic success" by the two schools.

The Board of Regents will again have a chance to respond to Buffalo's latest resolution.

At the very least, representatives of the pair of charters – both with histories spanning more than two decades– were thankful to remain open and have a chance to meet a new set of goals, which they helped determine in recent meetings with leaders of Buffalo Schools.

"Obviously we would have hoped for as many years as possible, but we know we can be in a transformationally different place in three years," Enterprise Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Esposito said.

"There's only two K-8 schools in the 14215 ZIP code," said Teresa Gerchman, Westminster principal. "If we had not been allowed to continue, that would have been a big blow to that region. We've very happy to stay open to support those families."

Assessments of the two schools by the Board of Regents, the School Board and Buffalo Schools officials generally dovetailed: Westminster and Enterprise must demonstrate academic improvement in more formats than the internal growth metrics they were required to track when a judge permitted them to stay open two years ago.

Last week's presentation by Ebony Bullock and Bradley Barringer, from Buffalo Schools' Office of Shared Accountability, sharedspecific areas of progress for the two schools.

Instead of catching up to Buffalo Schools and the state in assessments for grades 3-8, Enterprise has fallen further behind during the last three years, excluding the two pandemic years.

The downtown charter fell from 18% proficiency in English language arts in 2018-19 to 12% in 2022-23, and from 13% in math in 2018-19 to 6% proficiency in 2022-23.

Buffalo Schools officials presented a list of the 58 elementary schools in the City of Buffalo: Enterprise ranked second-last in English and last in math. Esposito knows how crucial state testing will be to his school's future.

"We want to makedramatic progress for our kids," the CEO said. "Our goal is to make sure that the next round of testing shows that, so that when we put our numbers up next year, everyone is proud of the hard work of our students."

Enterprise's expectations go beyond test scores.Improving in science, student attendance and enrollment of students with disabilities and English language learners are also part of their corrective action plan.

Westminster, recommended to receive a term one year longer than Enterprise, hovers around Buffalo Public Schools' mid-20s proficiency average in both English and math assessments. It was their struggles to enroll and instruct students with disabilities that caught the district's attention. That did not come as a surprise to Gerchman, the principal.

"We had already looked at our special education population and said, 'What we're doing isn't working,' " she said. "We reevaluated the support system and how we're going to give support services. What we were doing wasn't an effective use of resources."

According to state Education Department data, Westminster enrolled 36 students with disabilities in 2022-23, about 8% of its student population. None of the students was proficient in math, while 5% were proficient in English.In Buffalo Schools, to contrast, roughly a quarter of its kindergarten-through-eighth grade student population has a disability.

Gerchman emphasized Westminster's growth with its English language learner population, which primarily hails from Bangladesh but also includes a few Spanish speakers and one who speaks Portuguese. She said her leadership team has worked hard to equip those students with two full-time English as a new language (ENL) teachers, who are attuned to state standards for the population.

"I don't have Bengali-speaking ENL teachers, but we're making a lot of improvements just with our communications with our parents in that region as well," Gerchman said. "Everything gets translated in Bengali– even my weekly newsletter goes out in students' native language."

Leaders of both charter schools expressed an eagerness to work with Buffalo's leaders. Buffalo School Board President Sharon Belton-Cottman noted an at-times frosty history between Westminster and Buffalo Schools, which was news to Gerchman, the school leader for the last three years. The Westminster principal said the working relationship has been strong during her tenure.

"I'm not sure why that is because we are in a Buffalo Public building, my teachers are part of the Buffalo teachers union, I'm part of the administrators' union, so we are closely intertwined with Buffalo," she said.

Gerchman and Esposito now know how long they have until they are evaluated again. Enterprise has the steeper climb, but one of the worst-performing schools in Buffalo at least has hope.

"We have had a lot of growth recently,"Esposito said, "that should lay the foundation for greater success in the future."