At the August meeting of the State Board of Education, 8 charter school applications were voted on and approved. However, 16 charter schools were approved by the Charter School Advisory Board (CSAB).
CSAB members were angered and the group issued a resolution, requesting the State Board of Education consider each application approved by CSAB in the future.
Kari Travis at Carolina Journal has reported on this turn of events, capturing the frustration of CSAB’s vice chairman, Steven Walker:
“There was a lot of effort and a lot of time that was put into [the review process], and I think that was kind of frustrating to see,” Walker said, stating that all members of the advisory board are charter school experts with strong resumes. “We spent … about 30 hours in a room talking about these things and interviewing people.”
CSAB members sifted through more than 6,600 pages of applications, and traveled across the state to meet with applicants, Walker added. There was “all the time we spent reviewing the applications beforehand,” he said, noting that the state board spent much less time studying the charter proposals.
The process for the applicants is lengthy and costly — $1,000 for each application.
The Carolina Journal article details the schools which were approved by CSAB, yet not voted on by the State Board of Education:
The charter schools rejected by the state board were approved by the advisory board by significant margins: Addie C. Morris Children’s School, by an 8-3 vote; Bonnie Cone Classical Academy, 6-3; Emereau: Halifax, 6-4; Kaleidoscope Charter High School, 7-3; and Ridgeview Charter School, 7-2.
An attempt to reach both State Board of Education and David Machado, Director of the DPI’s Office of Charter Schools, for comment went unanswered.
LL1885 
I think this was the problem that House Bill 334 (S.L. 2015-248) was supposed to address:
The General Assembly has passed bipartisan legislation that takes away oversight of North Carolina’s charter schools from the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and places it with a newly created “Office of Charter Schools,” under the auspices of the Office of the State Board of Education (SBE)…
…But not everyone, including some in the massive education bureaucracy, is a fan of charter schools and the competition they represent to the traditional K-12 model. That, in a nutshell, is the reason for the legislation: it’s a direct response to the perception that many state education officials are less than supportive of — if not outright hostile to — these non-traditional public schools. Charter schools are clearly viewed by some as a deviation from the standard cookie-cutter government-run school — and by virtue of their very existence, they pose a threat to the old-guard education establishment. “From the outset, they have not liked charter schools,” said Senator Jerry Tillman, a Republican representing Moore and Randolph counties…
http://bit.ly/2bPcJ7b
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