A downtown charter school is scheduled to close Wednesday — two weeks before the end of the school year — after a deal struck with another charter school network fell through. Now, the School for Arts In Learning, or SAIL, is asking D.C. school officials to bail out the K-8 school at a cost of about $75,000 to $100,000, so that its approximately 150 students can finish the school year.
The Office of the State Superintendent for Education confirmed that officials are meeting with the public charter school board and SAIL leaders to find the money — but the debacle has raised questions about the oversight of charter school finances and alarmed parents, who were notified at an emergency meeting last week.
“The immediate tears and emotion were proof of the utter devastation of all in attendance, including our children,” April Goggans, whose daughter is in the seventh-grade, wrote in an email. “I watched my daughter weep, I watched parents weep in disbelief while being comforted by staff, also weeping.”
In a financial hole, SAIL — which has a large special-education population — had struck a deal with Friendship Public Charter Schools to take over the Ward 2 campus as an arts-integrated Friendship school. Thinking the matter settled, SAIL relinquished its charter as Friendship employed construction companies to inspect the school building.
But that’s when Friendship officials realized that the school wasn’t a sound investment, said spokesman Barnaby Towns.
“They determined with the construction people that the campus wasn’t structurally safe enough to be used, and were advised that it would require $1 million in construction this summer with no guarantee that it’d be up to code,” Towns explained.
Among the violations, Towns said, was that SAIL’s student body exceeded the building’s capacity.
SAIL officials declined to comment.
SAIL is not the first D.C. charter school to close this year because it couldn’t keep afloat financially. In March, Thea Bowman Public Charter School relinquished its charter because of low enrollment and high costs, just three years after opening. Towns said SAIL had a mortgage of about $7 million.
An official in the superintendent’s office with knowledge of SAIL said he questioned the charter school board’s monitoring of the situation.
“Why didn’t [the board] have an idea of the financial stability of a school that’s going bankrupt in the middle of the year?” said the official, who asked to remain nameless. “What are the implications — do they want us to bail out a charter school that fails every time it happens? That’s a concern to us.”
