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Innovate Manhattan Charter School students at recess outside Tweed Courthouse

The three-month-old charter school that ex-Chancellor Joel Klein invited into the Department of Education’s headquarters is without a principal after Eileen Coppola resigned abruptly last week.

“I was very surprised,” said Miles Merwin, the vice chair of the school’s board of trustees who accepted Coppola’s resignation.

In a letter sent home with students yesterday, Coppola is quoted as saying that the job had proved harder than she anticipated. “As the mother of two young children I found the job to be too demanding on my time and it began to interfere with my ability to take care of my children,” the letter quoted her as saying.

Peg Hoey, the director of the nonprofit that operates Innovate Manhattan, will serve as the school’s head until a replacement for Coppola is found, Merwin said. Before working to open Innovate Manhattan, Hoey was the special education director at New Heights Academy Charter School and was on the founding teams at Opportunity and Equality charter schools.

Coppola, who had traveled to Sweden earlier this year to receive training about the school’s student-directed curriculum, did not respond to requests for an interview today.

But Merwin said the school year had shaped up to be full of surprises — for board members, students, and Coppola. (more…)