The Genesis School buzzed with excitement when students returned this fall, making their way through lines of fist bumps and welcoming cheers to get through the front door.
It’s a familiar hum of back-to-school festivities, but it was a little more spirited this year — because it almost didn’t happen. The school of around 200 students lost its charter earlier this year, and families left for summer break not knowing if they could return.
Tekila Cunningham was at Genesis on the first day back in August with her four children in tow.
“We like Genesis, we don't want to try to have to find another school to reenroll,” said Cunningham. “Especially trying to re-place four kids somewhere else.”
The Missouri Charter Public School Commission cited low test scores that lagged behind Kansas City Public Schools when it voted in February to revoke Genesis School’s charter.
What followed was a drawn-out appeals process — first to the state’s department of education and then to a judge. In his ruling, a Cole County judge sided with Genesis, allowing the school’s charter to be reinstated.
Genesis has reopened, but the question of what a charter school can be and who it serves remains.
Charter schools are independently operated schools that receive public dollars. They were legalized in Kansas City and St. Louis public schools in 1999, and were later permitted elsewhere in the state under specific circumstances.
Charters have seen exponential growth in both cities since opening, with students enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade at charters in Kansas City overtaking the number at Kansas City Public Schools.
Universities have a long history of sponsoring charters in Kansas City, but in recent years, many have either dropped their relationships or had them removed by the state. An increasing number of charters in Kansas City are now sponsored by the public school district or a state-created commission.
A mission to serve at-risk youth
Genesis School has long served at-risk students in Kansas City, first operating in 1975 as a program to help people get their GED or high school diploma. When Missouri passed legislation allowing charter schools, Genesis was one of the first schools on board.
Foster said becoming a charter helped the school get public dollars to operate as a public alternative high school. It did so until 2010, when it became a kindergarten through eighth grade school to try to help younger students learn how to read and cope with the issues that had brought older kids to Genesis.
If a sponsor grants three or more charters, state law requires at least a third of those schools to actively recruit high-risk students. Another law allows charter schools to give admission preference to high-risk students when they target them through their mission, teaching or services.
Genesis has three mental health professionals in its building who provide kids individual and group therapy. The school operates in the Thornberry Unit of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Kansas City and provides free before- and after-school care through the program.
That’s a big draw for many of the school’s working parents, like Cunningham.
“I don't have to worry about ‘OK, well, I gotta hurry up and rush and get off work by this time so I can get them,” Cunningham said. “I can actually come from school and just walk right across the hallway to after-school care.”
Self-governance, and the flexibility to operate in different ways to serve different students, is one of the selling points of charter schools. Charters don’t have to navigate as many bureaucratic layers to make decisions, which they say makes them more responsive to student needs.
What does accountability look like for charter schools?
Noah Devine, executive director of the St. Louis-based advocacy group Missouri Charter Public Schools Association, said the trade-off for charter schools’ autonomy is a multi-layered process for accountability.
The state legislature, the state board of education, charter sponsors and a charter’s governing board all have a say. The state legislature passes laws governing public education, including charters, that define what they are and where they can operate.
The state board of education is the chief accountability agent, granting final approval over a sponsor’s decision to renew a school’s charter contract. Renewals are typically issued on a five-year basis.
“They have to defend, sort of, their existence every five years, and they have a contract that is beholden to that,” Devine said.
Sponsors are responsible for negotiating and holding schools to their charter contracts, which lay out the expected outcomes, measures for success and performance consequences. The contracts also include a performance contract defining academic expectations for students.
Devine said sponsors can take into account whether a school serves specific populations – like those who experience housing instability or have disabilities – when setting goals and expectations.
“It's working with them to be really precise on what is their performance contract? What are the goals that we're trying to meet on behalf of those children – that are not a low standard – but are actually an appropriate standard?” Devine said. “Then when we hit those, we feel good about it, and when we don't, the right measures are in place.”
If charter schools don't meet their contract goals, sponsors can place them on probation or not renew their contract.
How does a school lose its charter?
Losing a charter mid-contract, like Genesis did earlier this year, is rare.
The Missouri Charter Public School Commission voted 6-1 in February to revoke the school’s charter, leaving it unable to reopen in the fall. Antoine Lee, a commission member from Kansas City, was the lone “no” vote.
The commission took over as Genesis’ sponsor in 2022 when the University of Missouri - Columbia lost its authority to sponsor charters. By the end of the year, the commission had sent a letter notifying Genesis of its intent to revoke the school’s charter.
Genesis was first sponsored by the University of Missouri - Kansas City, which put it on academic probation in 2015. In 2020, the state put Genesis on academic probation again but approved its contract renewal for another five years.
Robbyn Wahb, executive director of the MCPSC, said revoking a school’s charter is an “extraordinary act.”
“We try to understand the students they're serving, and we understand the strategy that the school is using to see outcomes. We look to see if those things are actually true, and are they lined up,” Wahb said. “Then we take a look at whether this organization has the capacity and will to do better.”
The charter school commission cited low performance and limited growth for students over several years in its decision to close Genesis. In its revocation letter, the commission said 27.2% of K-5 students scored proficient or advanced in English. Five years later, it said that number dropped to 2.6%.
Kevin Foster, the school’s executive director, said it felt like the commission moved the goalposts on data — and didn’t adequately consider other factors in the students’ lives.
“I would appreciate an argument that just stands up and says, ‘Look, we don't think that the charter school law is designed to serve an at-risk community,’” Foster said. “‘We only want high quality charter schools that are setting the bar for learning.’”
“Then let's talk about that, and if that's a reasonable position that you can take.”
Wahb said the judge ruled the data the commission used to make its decision was inconsistent with state statute. The commission considered four years of test scores to evaluate Genesis, but those years weren’t consecutive – in part, the commission said, because there was no data for 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 was not to be used for accountability purposes.
Wahb said the commission looks at performance data for all of a school’s population and then those in federally defined groups, like students of color, those with an individualized education plan or participants in the free and reduced lunch program.
That way, she said, they can compare the school’s results to the state average of students in the same groups. Wahb said state laws also require sponsors to make the same comparisons with a charter’s local public school district.
If schools want non-academic goals, Wahb said, they are encouraged to include those. Genesis’ performance plan includes goals for reducing lost instruction time for students receiving therapy services.
Still, she said they have to primarily look at academic outcomes, and are expected to outperform public schools on a “like-student to like-student” basis.
“A district school might provide all sorts of enrichment and support and wraparound services, and the charter may not, that does not go into our equation,” Wahb said. “We don't look at the inputs, we look at the outcomes.”
How to measure growth for at-risk students
Noah Devine with the Missouri Charter Public Schools Association agrees that charters’ performance should be compared to the local school district as well as state averages.
But he also says the state needs a better system to measure growth when students are extremely behind — especially after the learning losses of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Let's say you move them really far, and in fact, you move them 1.5 grade levels in a year – so you did great work, but they still didn't get a grade level,” Devine said. “We should be honoring that as well. We really should, I would argue, be honoring it more so.”
Madilynn Kettle, a teacher at Genesis, said state test scores don’t accurately reflect the improvement she sees day-to-day from her students.
“There is no box on a standardized test to check for the unfinished learning and trauma in our students' lives to be considered when looking at their score,” Kettle said at a public hearing for Genesis’ charter revocation. “Even if there were a box checked for those reasons, there could never be a box to check off that is big enough to justify the high needs of our students.”
Kevin Foster, the school’s executive director, said the school has begun to show more growth in the years since the pandemic. He credits this rebound to the school's quick return to in-person classes during the pandemic.
In its revocation appeal to the judge, the school said its 2021 test scores show growth in English and math and a 15% reduction in the number of students scoring below basic in English.
Accountability to the community
Devine said community oversight is an essential piece of accountability.
“A school, at its core, is a community,” Devine said. “We've got to do a better job in Kansas City and across the state of just helping folks feel like these are our kids, how are they doing?”
That’s where Genesis says it’s succeeding. School leaders said 75% of their original student population returned from last school year and they have a waiting list of just over 20 students.
Another reason school leaders say Genesis is a “true community school” is because 84% of students live within three miles of the school and 70% of Genesis students live within two miles.
Foster said that’s why they think it’s important to bring community resources in to help families, whether it’s bring literacy programs to the school’s weekly family nights or holding a Halloween party for kids to trick or treat within the building.
Kansas City Council member Melissa Robinson said the school is an important piece of the city’s educational landscape, especially in the third district — which she represents. For decades, she said Genesis has kept its approach of taking in all kids regardless of their attendance, behavior or other challenges.
She said social determinants of education, like parents working multiple jobs, mental health challenges, and trauma are more prevalent for students living in her district.
“We have to take care of those things so that when they show up in front of the teacher, that they're ready to learn,” Robinson said. “But there has to be the support services within the system to address some of those critical needs — and Genesis plays a very strong role in that.”
Now that Genesis will keep its doors open, she said it needs more support so it can get students where they need to be.
Foster said that as Genesis finishes out the next two years of their charter term and pushes for renewal, it has to continue attracting families — and he said Genesis is always looking for an accountability system that measures the value given to students.
“I just asked that organizations do that with a view from, ‘Why are parents choosing that school? What is the work that they're doing?’” Foster said. “We hold ourselves accountable. I know, and our staff knows, the students who are going to school, we have high expectations for them academically and so every child is a story.”
That approach continues to bring families to Genesis.
Theresa Ward enrolled her two children at Genesis for the first time this year. At a back-to-school event in the fall, she said she was already amazed at her daughter’s progress. She said her daughter, who has an individualized education plan and is non-verbal, was beginning to speak in full sentences.
“The fact that the teachers, the principals, and everybody in this community is involved and knows each student by who they are and what they need,” Ward said. “I think that's the best part when it comes to Genesis and how they are going to succeed when it comes to charter schools.”
