Ivy Preparatory Academy May Open DeKalb Campus

It's been a roller coaster ride for head of school Nina Gilbert since the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Ivy Preparatory Academy, an all-girls charter school in Peachtree Corners could no longer operate as a commissioned charter school.

Ivy Prep's future was finally decided this month when the school's board accepted Gwinnett County Public School's offer to operate as a Gwinnett Charter school. That was the good news, the not so good news was that the funding per student was cut substantially from what it received as a commissioned charter school. And there would be no funding from the Gwinnett school system for nearly half of its students.

The school currently enrolls some 480 students of which 190 live in DeKalb County. Under the Gwinnett Charter, funding would not be provided by the county's school system for the DeKalb students.

For Ivy Prep, the logical step would be to look for another campus in DeKalb County for those 190 students. It made application for a State Special Charter School to open two schools, a boys and girls school.

Friday the Charter Committee of the State Board of Education met to discuss the application. "The staff analyzed everything, we had a Special Charter School meeting and agreed to make a recommendation to approve the two schools as state special charters," said Mike Royal, the state school board member for the 7th district which includes Gwinnett County who was involved in the meeting.

The State Board of Education will meet on Monday, Aug. 1 at 10 a.m. in a called meeting "to take action on the charter schools," according to a Georgia Department of Education press release.

"The charter committee is recommending approval to the full state board," said Royal.

Royal said that the fact that a DeKalb campus was available for Ivy Prep to move into immediate was a large factor in the approval process.

"A lot of ground work had to be done very quickly," said Royal.

If approved it would be just in time for the 190 DeKalb students to make plans to begin the 2011-12 school year at the new campus.