Wake school board ends agreement with Saint Augustine's for leadership academies
Wake County Leadership Academy students won’t be taking Saint Augustine’s University classes much longer.
The school board voted Tuesday to end the agreement with the university at the end of the current school year.
That ends a 10-year agreement where Wake County students attended the university to earn college credit for free. The state paid for the program.
The university currently faces financial troubles and losing its accreditation.
Wake students have been taking classes online for months instead of in-person.
Students and parents told WRAL News they want a new university partner, and they told the school board Tuesday that was the only acceptable solution. They argued the board and school system should have been more proactive when they learned St. Aug’s accreditation was again on probation in December 2022.
“The lack of concern for our opinions and the failure to provide an adequate contingency plan leave us feeling abandoned and confused,” Iman Nazir, a junior at the Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy, told the school board.
Superintendent Robert Taylor plans to seek a new university partner for the leadership academies for the 2025-26 school year. He says they’ll arrange for students to take classes at Wake Technical Community College next year. It’s unclear which classes they’ll be able to sign up for or if they’ll mirror the classes students were expecting to take.
Before recommending termination of the contract, Taylor said the leadership academies have had tremendous success in the past decade with St. Aug, with nearly all students attending college, including 80% enrolling in a four-year college.
“While our partnership with Saint Augustine’s University has been a part of the success, recent struggles at the university… strains our ability to maintain this partnership and that college component of our students,” he said.
On Wednesday, Saint Augustine's University Interim President Marcus Burgess issued a statement saying he appreciated the partnership with the school system and supported the decision to end it.
"While we are disappointed because we will miss the Wake Young Men's Leadership Academy (WYMLA) and Wake Young Women's Leadership Academy (WYWLA) students on our campus, we also understand the gravity of the moment," Burgess said in the statement.
School system leaders will meet with leadership academy students and parents on Wednesday for a question-and-answer session.
The Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy and the Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy are early colleges whose purpose is to provide students with the opportunity to earn up to an associate’s degree — often specialized in an area — while enrolled at public schools. The North Carolina General Assembly approved the early college status.
Together, they enroll about 600 students, about 150 of whom will be affected by next year’s change.
Tuesday’s vote means the academies won’t be early colleges next year or until a new partnership can be approved.
Several students told the school board Tuesday they would only accept a transfer to another four-year college as an adequate solution. The school system has said that’s not feasible for next year, but the students doubt that.
“What we fail to understand is why this process can’t be expedited,” said Blair Miller, a junior at the Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy.
Miller’s mom, April Miller, said leadership academy students go “above and beyond” to earn nearly all of their high school credits by the end of their sophomore years and said the school board needed to go “above and beyond” to help them keep getting the college credits they signed up for.
School System spokeswoman Lisa Luten told WRAL News that the system likely can’t partner with another college or university by the next school year because there isn’t enough time to get approval under the cooperative program. The program requires an agreement with a university, an application to the state, review by the state, approval from the State Board of Education and then approval from the General Assembly. The State Board of Education meets monthly, and the General Assembly will meet in a short session later this spring.
Leadership academy students who wish to transfer to another high school can apply for a hardship transfer, which has limited criteria for allowing students to transfer.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges revoked Saint Augustine’s accreditation in December over financial troubles and improper accounting at the university, which has been late to pay staff and faces property liens and millions of dollars in debt. For now, though, the university is still technically accredited as it enters arbitration over the revocation.
Earlier this month, Burgess told WRAL News he didn’t expect the school system to stick with the university and said that was partly the university’s fault. He said he’s “hopelessly optimistic” about the university’s future and hopes to one day bring the leadership academies back.
If arbitration doesn’t favor the university, its accreditation could be lost by the beginning of the next school year, jeopardizing the university’s full-time students and the academies.
