MANATEE COUNTY -- About 100 Manatee County students will need to find a new school for next year.After 13 years, the Bradenton Charter School is closing.Karen Carpenter Chair of the Manatee County School board said the school is closing because the school failed to meet standards particularly in the area of curriculum and governance.
NORTH PORT - The agreement came at 1 a.m. Thursday for the two sides fighting for Imagine School at North Port after nearly 16 hours of talks...It was an ending to the charter's contentious legal fight, which began in February when the North Port school tried to fire its parent company and become independent...In February, Matthews and the local officials complained about paying hefty management fees with public tax dollars every year to the nonprofit company. The board voted to break off from Imagine Schools — one of the largest charter school companies in the nation — and run its own school, a move that the corporation viewed as a coup détat.
Most of the 149 students at the Lee Alternative Charter School, off of Taylor Lane in Lehigh Acres, are in classes in other schools in Fort Myers this week.The students and their parents were forced to find other schools because the Lehigh school, which was owned by Richard Milburn Academy Schools of Southwest Florida, was forced to close due to financial problems.
... Dot Clark, the partnership schools coordinator for Pinellas, said that 23 children had been withdrawn from University Prep since the school year started.
It was clear to teachers at the Einstein Montessori School in Orlando that something was very wrong when school opened for business last fall.There were no computers for student use. And although the school focused on students with dyslexia, there were no reading texts.
The failed Orange County charter school that gave its principal a payout of $519,000 in taxpayer dollars after closing in June also paid her husband more than $460,000 during a five-year period, audits show.The payments to Steven A. Young, which averaged more than $80,000 a year, were for performing "certain management services," according to annual audits paid for by the school. The total included about $41,000 for services to be performed after the school closed, according to one of the audits.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Tallahassee police say that a former employee of a local middle school, accused of molesting a minor, may have had inappropriate contact with other children.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Over the past five years, the number of charter schools in Central Florida has climbed. These "nontraditional" public schools receive taxpayer money -- and 9 Investigates' George Spencer found some of the same lawmakers who are writing the rules for charter schools are also benefiting from them.Dayspring Academy Charter School in Port Richie is thriving, as evidenced by the "Another 'A' Rating" banner on its website. Last March, its business administrator, John Legg, made a special request to change admission rules...The school board did deny the request. But that didn't matter in the end as Legg, was also a powerful state representative, and the legislature soon changed laws to allow what Legg proposed."We, as taxpayers, need to be suspect about the motivation for pouring so many resources into charter schools," said Orange County public school parent Linda Kobert...9 Investigates asked Florida Sen. David Simmons about the concerns, and he said conflict of interest changes are already in the works...
In the looming battle for public education dollars, Jon Hage has launched a pre-emptive strike.His school management company, Charter Schools USA, has doled out more than $205,000 in contributions to political candidates and organizations this election cycle, state records show. That's more than triple what the Fort Lauderdale-based company spent on political campaigns in 2010, and seven times what it spent in 2008."If we don't support our friends in Tallahassee, they are left out there to take the enemy's bullet," Hage said.For-profit education companies are becoming serious players in lobbying the Florida Legislature. In the current election cycle, charter school companies, school management firms, online learning outfits and for-profit colleges have lavished more than $1.8 million to statehouse candidates, electioneering organizations and political parties, according to a Miami Herald review of Florida campaign finance data.
It's been a turbulent period for charter schools in the United States, with financial analysts raising concerns about their stability and regulators in several states shutting down schools for poor performance.The volatility has made it tough for startup schools to get financing.But an unlikely source of new capital has emerged to fill the gap: foreign investors.Wealthy individuals from as far away as China, Nigeria, Russia and Australia are spending tens of millions of dollars to build classrooms, libraries, basketball courts and science labs for American charter schools...
TAMPA -- A charter school principal with a history of drunken driving arrests has resigned, and the operators of the school will change a key part of their hiring process in the wake of a Tampa Tribune investigation.Todd Haughey resigned his job at Advantage Academy of Hillsborough after it was learned he had four DUI convictions in Indiana and Ohio between 1987 and 2002.Those legal problems were discovered by the Tribune after the 44-year-old's arrest this month in St. Petersburg on a drunken driving charge.... The board and Charter School Associates, operator of the school, say they were unaware of the incidents until a reporter inquired about them...
Sure, most kids love video games, but you don't see many schools encouraging them, much less buying them for students.But that's just what a charter school in Manatee County is doing. Over the last two years, enrollment at the Manatee School of Arts and Sciences has dropped by nearly 40 percent.So six weeks into the new school year, they ran an ad in the Bradenton Herald, offering what some call a bribe -- switch schools by Thursday and get a free Nintendo DS, one of the most popular gaming devices for kids...
Parents, students and teachers are unexpectedly scrambling to find a new school.
The abrupt end was punctuated by locked doors and silence at one school, and with a chaotic gathering of parents and students at another.But the story at three Broward charter schools was essentially the same on Friday: financial problems had led to closure, leaving parents and students to unexpectedly scramble to find a new place to enroll.
The Florida Department of Education has launched an investigation of K12, the nation’s largest online educator, over allegations the company uses uncertified teachers and has asked employees to help cover up the practice.K12 officials asked state-certified teachers to sign class rosters that included students they hadn’t taught, according to documents that are part of the investigation.In one case, a K12 manager instructed a certified teacher to sign a class roster of more than 100 students. She only recognized seven names on that list...The state investigation started in January, when a former K12 employee forwarded a series of emails to Seminole County Public Schools officials...
Parents, students and teachers are unexpectedly scrambling to find a new school.The abrupt end was punctuated by locked doors and silence at one school, and with a chaotic gathering of parents and students at another.But the story at three Broward charter schools was essentially the same on Friday: financial problems had led to closure, leaving parents and students to unexpectedly scramble to find a new place to enroll.“We should have had way more time to look for other schools for our kids,” said Nicole Williams, whose son Alfonso was a 10th-grader at Eagle Charter Academy in Lauderdale Lakes, one of the three schools now closed. Also closing this week were the nearby SMART Charter School (run by the same company as Eagle Charter), and Touchdowns4life Charter School in Tamarac, which was founded by former Miami Dolphins running back Terry Kirby.
Parents, students and teachers are unexpectedly scrambling to find a new school.The abrupt end was punctuated by locked doors and silence at one school, and with a chaotic gathering of parents and students at another.But the story at three Broward charter schools was essentially the same on Friday: financial problems had led to closure, leaving parents and students to unexpectedly scramble to find a new place to enroll.
STATE
|
# ACTIVE
|
# PENDING
|
# INACTIVE*
|
TOTAL
|
FL
|
8
|
5
|
3
|
16
|
The Downtown Miami Charter School knew that a seven year-old student was being bullied and sexually abused by an 11 year-old student and failed to prevent it from recurring. That is the gist of a lawsuit filed Monday in Miami-Dade circuit court on behalf of “John Doe,” the alleged seven year-old victim...
Established charter schools are able to tap into grants meant to help start-ups by nesting schools within schools. Sometimes the two schools share everything, from staffers to teachers to buildings.From the outside, it looks like a single school, with one main door, one security guard, one principal greeting students.But on paper, the Charter School of Excellence at Tamarac is actually two schools in one — a bookkeeping strategy allowing the school to collect an extra $250,000 in grant money from the state...
