S257 - Appropriations Act of 2017. (SL 2017-57)

Overview: Sec. 7.26E of S.L. 2017-57 renames the Achievement School District to the North Carolina Innovative School District (ISD) and makes conforming changes through the statutes. It clarifies that the ISD is a local school administrative unit for the purposes of federal law and for the administration of State law and moves up the timelines by one month for the selection of the schools to be included in the ISD. The section delays the timeline by one year for the implementation of the ISD and the evaluations of the ISD, including all reporting requirements.

The section further allows a local board of education that transferred a school into the ISD to ask the State Board of Education (SBE) to create an innovation zone for all of the low-performing schools in its local school administrative unit if 35% or more of the schools are low-performing. This innovation zone authorizes the local board of education to operate schools within the innovation zone with the same exemptions from statutes and rules as charter schools. A low-performing school in an innovation zone becomes a school in the ISD if the low-performing school does not exceed expected growth in the last two years of the five consecutive years in an innovation zone.

This section became effective July 1, 2017.