Shabazz Academy, charter school with Afrocentric curriculum, may be forced to close

LANSING - One of Lansing's oldest public charter schools may be forced to close if it doesn't find a new college or university to authorize its charter.

Central Michigan University notified the El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy board in a May 7 letter that it will end its long association with the school, which was named for slain civil rights leader Malcolm X and has an Afrocentric curriculum, when their contract ends on June 30.

Jason Mancini, public policy director for CMU's Governor John Engler Center for Charter Schools, said the biggest reason was the school's poor academic outcomes.

Academy board President Cordree McConnell said Shabazz needs to find another college or university to authorize its charter or convince CMU to change its mind. If one of those things doesn't happen, it will close, she said.

"Right now, we don't have a new authorizer," she said. "The timeline is very tight for us."

So far, there has been no indication CMU will reverse course, "but you have to stay hopeful," McConnell said Friday.

"It's very difficult because it impacts the children, it's affecting their parents and it affects the employees," she said. "We want to stay on. We have to deal with the hand we were dealt and make the best of it, while at the same time taking care of the children and the employees."

The K-6 academy opened in 1995 in a converted ice cream parlor. It offered a flexible learning strategy tailored to better suit the needs of African-American students. The school is now located on West Barnes Road at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Academically, Shabazz was in the bottom 5% of school districts statewide and last year entered into an agreement with the state Department of Education and CMU to make certain improvements. 

According to the most recent data released by CMU, just 6.1% of the Shabazz Academy students who took the M-STEP in the spring of 2018 scored proficient in English language arts. That’s compared with 43.9% statewide.

Only 3.7% scored proficient in math. The state average was 37.4%.

There also were budgetary concerns, CMU indicated in a 2018 performance report. 

In the 2016-17 school year, Shabazz spent $221,480 more than it took in, bringing its fund balance down from $475,000 to just shy of $254,000.

It spent more than it took in for two of the three years before that, CMU's report said.

Shabazz Academy has weathered a few crises during its 24-year history.

More:Malcolm X's daughter Ilyasah Shabazz to speak at MSU Thursday

More:Students unveil life-sized mural of Malcolm X

CMU placed it on probation in 1996, after it's inaugural year, amid a dispute involving administrators, board members and parents. But the school mended the rift and improved its public image.

In December 2010, school officials came under scrutiny after a teacher was charged with hitting students.

But just a year later, the school landed on a state education department list of 123 schools that were "beating the odds," despite educational risk factors such as a high percentage of minority students and high percentage of low-income families.

About 273 students in kindergarten through sixth grade were enrolled at Shabazz during the 2017-18 school year, down from 306 in 2014-15 but up from the previous two years, according to the CMU performance report.

Contact Ken Palmer at (517) 377-1032 or kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.