Due to a budget shortfall, a charter school that has been operating in Garden City since the fall of 2006 will close its doors on Friday, school officials said.
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.
What it is: The state Department of Education yesterday released its letter to the 100 Legacy Academy Charter School in Newark, informing the school that its state charter had been revoked after just seven months of operation...
COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - The Richland One School Board voted three years ago to revoke the charter of the Midlands Math and Business Academy. During the appeals process, the school has been operating without a charter. Now the courts have sided with the district, forcing the school to close next week...
[Benjamin Mays Preparatory School] is one of four charters in transition this year. The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted in December to strip the school of its charter because of low academic performance. Three other charters, Pride College Prep, Crocker Arts and Technology School and Intercultural Charter School, also were not renewed. But other operators agreed to run those schools, giving enrolled students priority. Though another school will be at the Mays site next year — Akili Academy — Akili is moving from its former location, not expanding, and it will enroll its own students first. That means Mays’ students will be dispersed to schools across the city...
A charter school in the Milo-Grogan neighborhood is giving up its legal fight to stay open and will hold its final day of classes today.ScholArts Preparatory and Career Center for Children dropped its appeal in Franklin County Common Pleas Court yesterday...The school has received “F” ratings for student performance from the state Department of Education for the past five years. The closing ends legal wrangling that began in October when ScholArts’ sponsor, Kids Count of Dayton, told the school that it would be terminating its sponsorship.
ROCKLIN (CBS13) – Six weeks into the school year a charter school in Rocklin is closing its doors. Four hundred kids were told Friday that their school would close, and Tuesday was their last day.But many parents say the Horizon CEO is making up false excuses for why he’s closing the doors at Horizon’s Accelerated Learning Academy campus. Fired up families were fuming even more Tuesday over what many consider a lame excuse for the shutdown...
STOCKTON - With enrollment less than one-third of what was expected, a charter high school that opened only last week in temporary space at Sherwood Mall will shut its doors for the final time Friday after a 10-day run.The imminent closing of troubled Velocity International Science and Technology Academy leaves about 70 students looking for new schools and six teachers looking for new jobs as September reaches its late stages...
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.
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.
SAN BERNARDINO - More than 100 students who had been attending a charter school for at-risk children stayed home Wednesday, and they won't be going to Crown Ridge Academy ever again.Neither will the school's teachers, all of whom the charter school director says are owed months of pay without a clear path to collect that money.The board of the San Bernardino City Unified School District, which allowed the school to open in 2009, revoked the charter Tuesday night after determining that there was no realistic way for the school to dig itself out of a deep financial hole...
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.
As they move to close down a network of St. Louis charter schools over the next several weeks, state education officials face a task as monumental and complicated as dismantling an entire school district...In fact, the decision this week by Missouri's Board of Education to shutter six Imagine charter schools in St. Louis will likely result in the largest charter school closure of its kind nationwide, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools...
Temecula’s Context Middle School was billed as a small learning environment where teachers would emphasize how lessons related to the real world.When it opened in August, the charter school set out to focus on technology and the arts, with dozens of laptops for students and music lessons during and after school.Less than six months and more than $800,000 in taxpayer dollars later, Context was gone.It joins a list of 26 other Inland charter schools that have closed or had their charters revoked in the past 20 years. Charter schools, created to foster innovation and freed from some state rules, sometimes struggle with the administrative tasks and finances needed to run a campus, experts say...
Students from General John Vessey Jr. Leadership Academy are hunting for new schools after their 8-year-old charter high school abruptly closed over Christmas break after running out of money.
The mood was glum at the small West St. Paul school Tuesday, what should have been the first day back, as students hugged and said goodbye. It was their last chance to collect belongings before trying to find a new place to attend classes and finish out the school year.
"It sucks," said Mara Jafar of Richfield, who helped her son Cody clean out his locker Tuesday. "It is not exactly an easy transition in the middle of freshman year."...
School officials cited a combination of factors that forced the closure. Leadership and staffing turnover caused enrollment to fall from more than 100 students in 2007 to about 50 this school year...
Vessey had a small niche. It was known for its Junior ROTC program that primarily served students who didn't fit into a traditional school setting because of behavioral or other issues, said Mary Bright, Vessey executive director...
The Bethlehem Area School Board tonight accepted the voluntary surrender of the charter of a city-based charter school that the board spent months trying to shut down.Vitalistic Therapeutic Charter School of the Lehigh Valley spent months fighting charter revocation proceedings initiated by the Bethlehem Area and Allentown school districts.But then in October the charter school announced "with profound sorrow" that it plans to shut its doors Jan. 25, which marks the end of the first marking period for the sending districts. A revocation hearing scheduled for Nov. 29 was canceled in light of the voluntary surrender of the charter...
Already under two investigations, Vitalistic Therapeutic Charter School of the Lehigh Valley is facing mounting financial pressure that has led trustees to raise the specter of closing the school, which serves mostly poor children with learning, emotional and physical disabilities.Records obtained by The Morning Call show money issues led the Bethlehem school to stop offering legally mandated speech therapy while nearly $9,500 in food vendor bills have gone unpaid and part of a federal education grant was used to pay a utility bill.More pressing, the school can no longer afford to pay more than $17,000 in monthly rent and maintenance costs at its building on Fourth Avenue in Bethlehem and is looking for cheaper quarters in Allentown, records and interviews show. The Bethlehem building is for sale.In a March 24 email on moving, board President Joyce Thompson wrote that she and another trustee "were talking about the possibility of having to close the school."...
The top administrator of a troubled Bethlehem charter school resigned Wednesday, alleging that school officials continue to mismanage tax dollars even as two local school districts investigate its finances and loss of a state license to provide students with mental health care.In her resignation letter, Nancy Egan, chief executive officer of Vitalistic Therapeutic Charter School of the Lehigh Valley since 2010, said the board of trustees and other administrators have undermined her attempts to correct years of fiscal mismanagement...
State officials have offered to help the Allentown and Bethlehem Area school districts with their joint investigation of Vitalistic Therapeutic Charter School of the Lehigh Valley.Bethlehem Superintendent Joseph Roy said Friday his staff "received a very supportive call" from the Pennsylvania Department of Education concerning Vitalistic. He said the state has offered to help the districts analyze the charter's financial and special education records...The districts' investigation stems from a story in The Morning Call on Nov. 27 that examined Vitalistic's finances and its loss of a state license that served as the cornerstone of its chartered mission to provide poor students with intensive mental health therapy.Using public records and interviews with state and Vitalistic sources, the newspaper found Vitalistic had improperly lent taxpayer money to its nonprofit sister school, had problems documenting students' special education services, and had repeat violations of its licensed mental health program. Vitalistic billed the state for more than $200,000 in services from the preschool and charter school that auditors could not determine if children and their families had received...The newspaper's investigation found Vitalistic's board of trustees offered little to no oversight of those funds or management decisions. The story showed Vitalistic had problems administering and documenting whether students received services under a welfare department license to provide outpatient partial hospitalization care, according to audits conducted by Magellan Behavioral Health Inc., a Connecticut-based private managed care company that monitors treatment for people on Medicaid with mental health issues...The state auditor general's office is also investigating Vitalistic.
The founder of a proposed Portland charter school was able to spend $450,000 in federal funds with little to show for it by choosing the least-regulated route to creating such a school and papering over problems when overseers checked in.
Erica Jayasuriya, a Portland mom with visions of opening a recording arts-based high school that would transform education for disengaged teens, presided as the team she assembled spent the money on planning, promotion and curriculum design -- without ever mustering enough curriculum, materials, students or equipment to open a school.
No one at Portland Public Schools, which approved Jayasuriya's proposal to open REAL Prep Charter Academy, or at the Oregon Department of Education, which awarded the nonprofit she created two $225,000 grants, took steps to stop her and her team until late August.
By then, 17 months after the money began flowing, the school was weeks from its scheduled opening and the money spent. Jayasuriya's pay took at least $68,000 of it.
State and school district officials say they understand why the public questions their failure to notice problems earlier. But they say failings were hidden from them, in part by misleading information from REAL Prep leaders and in part because Congress specified that charter school starters be allowed control over their grant spending.
"There was nothing that was said and nothing in what they submitted to us that brought our attention that they were not progressing toward opening a high quality charter school," said Susan Inman, the state's director of learning opportunity options.
Three days before school was to start Sept. 12, district officials shut REAL Prep, forcing students to scramble. More than 120 students filled out paperwork showing they wanted to attend, including 48 who officially enrolled.
Now, eight days into the district's school year, only half of the 120 students are in school. Thirty-seven are trying to get into a school that fits them and has room, while the status of 28 others is unsure because officials haven't been able to reach them...
Jayasuriya signed a detailed agreement, including to preserve financial records and get state approval if spending changed from the school budget. Unknown to state regulators, however, she was at odds with most of her own board over spending.
Eric Ensley, president of the board from its founding in May 2009 until he resigned in June 2010, said he tangled with Jayasuriya over her desire to immediately begin paying people -- including herself -- rather than first get a firm financial plan and seasoned administrator in place.
"There were manipulative tactics to try to get things approved and paid for that I didn't think should be paid for," he said. "I can't tell you how heated the debate got in the boardroom. ... To pay Joe Schmo to advocate for the school just because he knows this deejay is no way to run a school."
Ensley insisted, for example, that for Jayasuriya to become a paid employee of the school, she must step down from the board and apply for the job. In the end, Ensley and three other board members resigned, leaving Jayasuriya and two others on the board. Jayasuriya then helped hire herself and the board treasurer as paid contract employees of the school...
On Sept. 1, the problems became starkly clear. In a meeting at school district headquarters, four top school officials began arguing. The treasurer said she was ill-equipped and would resign that night. The co-director resigned during the meeting. A third leader walked out in disgust after learning there was no money left for furniture and equipment. And the list of seemingly qualified board members the district had been given was a fiction...
WEST SACRAMENTO, CA - The California College, Career and Technical Education Center has shutdown in West Sacramento leaving teachers and students and staff scrambling to find somewhere else to go.Some parents apparently found out about the charter school's unexpected closure when they arrived for an orientation meeting Thursday and found the school's doors locked...
UPLAND - The large banner and signs outside Mercury Online Academy's learning facility says it's still enrolling students, but that's far from the case.Due to a lack of enrollment, the free K-6 charter school closed its doors Friday, one week into its school year.
State officials scrambled Friday to salvage the rest of the school year for students at a small Hartford charter school that will close its doors Monday because it has run out of money.
Officials of the Cross-Cultural Academy of Arts & Technology, an experimental school that opened last fall, told parents this week the school could no longer afford to pay its teachers and would be closing with six weeks left in the regular school year…
The Cross-Cultural Academy -- an arts-oriented program that relied on collaborations with local and regional museums, theaters and other institutions -- ran into budget problems related to busing, special education, rent and other costs, said Augustine Cofrancesco, one of the school's founders.
``For eight or nine months we made a difference,'' Cofrancesco said, ``but financially it was just too much for us. ... The needs of our students were such that we had to have small class sizes and had to have aides,'' Cofrancesco said. That, however, also strained the budget.
``We were trying to run a Cadillac program on what it costs to run a Ford,'' he said.
In addition, the school, which gets a per-pupil grant from the state, could not enroll enough students to support itself. The school had hoped for as many as 100 students but opened with only about half that number. By this week, it had only 35 students…
