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A charter school network that’s under investigation by the state attorney general likely won’t have any schools in its portfolio after this year.

On Monday, the city Department of Education announced it would close Williamsburg Charter High School, the flagship school in the Believe High Schools network. Today, the State Education Department announced today that it intends to revoke the charters of the network’s two other schools, Believe Southside and Believe Northside.

In each case, the authorizers cited significant management and financial improprieties. The schools did not have functioning boards of trustees, the management unit for charter schools, according to revocation notices the state sent to the schools today.

The assault on Believe’s management seems sure to doom the organization. But the closures would also force well over a thousand students in Williamsburg to find new high schools. Students will submit applications through a second-round admissions process designed for students who are not accepted to any school in the regular process, DOE officials said. The first-round process is already well underway.

The revocation notices mark a final stage in a series of attempts to bring the schools’ management under control. All three schools were placed on probation last fall and required to take a series of steps to improve — including dissolving the relationship with Believe, in the case of WCHS. Both the city and the state said the schools had fallen far short of meeting the probation requirements.

There is still a slim chance that the schools, which together enroll more than 1,500 high school students, could remain open. The schools can seek a hearing with members of the state’s Board of Regents to make their case for continued existence. (more…)

Department of Education announced today that it is moving to close two low-performing charter schools, including one whose network head earned nearly half a million dollars last year and is under investigation by the Attorney General.

The city announced today it would close Williamsburg Charter High School.

One of the schools, Peninsula Preparatory Academy, will close at the end of the year when its charter expires. The 346 students at the school, which has gotten four straight C’s on its city progress reports, will be dispersed among other Far Rockaway elementary schools.

“We have had some struggles but I think the school was definitely on a positive trajectory,” said Ericka Wala, Peninsula Prep’s principal.

The department is taking an even more drastic step with the second school, Williamsburg Charter High School, and revoking its charter midway through the five-year term. Unless the school completely cleans up its management within 30 days, it will close at the end of the year and its students will have to apply to other high schools.

In a letter sent to the chair of WCHS’s board today, the head of the city’s charter schools office, Recy Dunn, paints a picture of massive mismanagement and corruption.

Most of the charges center on founder Eddie Calderon-Melendez, who earned $478,000 last year as the CEO of the Believe Charter Network, which has run Williamsburg and two other high schools.

Citing financial and board improprieties, the city placed the school on probation in September. Chief among the terms of the probation was that the school’s board would sever its relationship with Believe. It did so in November, begrudgingly, but then hired Calderon-Melendez to join the school’s staff earlier this month, according to the letter, which said the school had met just one of 10 probation requirements.

Now, state auditors and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are investigating the school’s relationship with Believe under Calderon-Melendez’s leadership. (more…)

Though the Kingsbridge Innovative Design Charter School is less than a year old, state education officials have decided they have seen enough of its finances to recommend the school’s closure.

In a letter sent to the charter school’s founder and board earlier this week, state officials wrote that after putting the school on probation and reviewing its finances, they believe it should close at the end of this year. Ever since the school’s delayed opening in September, it has struggled to pay rent and cover the costs of educating its 150 students. According to a report on WNYC, the school laid off 11 teachers it could no longer afford.

Back in April, Julio Cotto, the school’s founder and executive director, told the Wall Street Journal that his school did not deserve to be closed.

“Our financial challenges are similar to those of any charter school moving into a private space in the first year,” he told the paper.

Officials from the New York State Education Department did not agree. In a letter to Cotto and the school’s board, Deputy Commissioner John King and Charter School Office Director Cliff Chuang wrote that they don’t believe the school has proved it can stay afloat financially even through the remainder of this school year. Their letter states: (more…)

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch visited a struggling Bronx high school today that is hoping to convert into a charter school in order to prevent the city from closing it.

A teacher at Christopher Columbus High School said that Tisch toured the school today, stopping into teachers’ classrooms and talking to principals at several of the schools that share the building. The teacher said that Tisch was there to discuss the school’s charter conversion aspirations.

Though city school officials have said that they have no intention of allowing the school to convert into a charter school, teachers took Tisch’s visit as a sign of hope that state officials haven’t ruled the plan out.

Tisch has personally campaigned for more charter high schools, calling on charter school networks to take a risk on older, more difficult students.

“It’s really time for charter schools to say to me, ‘I don’t want to just grow my own, I don’t want to operate in this zone where I am the darling,’” Tisch said at Hunter College in 2009. “I want them to dig in and say, ‘what can we do to help?’”

City Department of Education officials said today that Columbus should not be allowed to convert into a charter school — keeping its staff and students the same — because of its years of poor performance. (more…)

City officials are planning to replace a struggling Brooklyn elementary school with an unusual charter school next year — the first in the city to give admissions preference to students stuck in the closing school.

If the citywide school board, known as the Panel for Educational Policy, votes to phase out P.S. 114 in Canarsie, Brooklyn starting next year, two new schools will open in the building. One will be a typical zoned elementary school for all students in District 18. The other will be Explore Charter School — the first charter school in the city that will give admissions preference to students at the low-performing school it replaces.

When most New York City charter schools open, they typically give admissions preference to students who live in a certain district. These districts usually encompass several neighborhoods and a handful of public schools, allowing the charter to draw students from all over the region.

But Explore plans to operate differently.

Current kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade students at P.S. 114 will be given preference in Explore’s lottery, which means they have the best chance of getting one of 224 seats. If there’s still room, second preference will go to students who are zoned for P.S. 114, but attend other schools (this is about half the students in the zone). After them, preference will go to students throughout District 18 who are attending schools that are being phased out for poor performance.

“What’s very different about this is we’re saying to parents and kids in a school that’s failing, here’s an option that does not ask you to relocate or leave your community,” said Morty Ballen, CEO of the Explore Schools network. “It’s about you and your community; we’re staying right here.” (more…)

The Manhattan charter school the city wants to close for poor performance will remain open at least through the end of this school year.

Yesterday, the Board of Regents voted to extend the charter of Ross Global Academy until June 30.  The move — made on the recommendation of Deputy Commissioner John King, following the wishes of the city — was made to avoid a mid-year school closure after the school’s original five-year charter expired on Sunday.

The extension also gives the school more time to fight its closure. City officials recommended last month that the state not renew the school’s charter, citing problems such as low academic performance and high teacher turnover. In response, the school sued the city, arguing that the city’s recommendation violated state law and its own protocol.

The city and state have refused to renew schools’ charters in the past, but the fight over Ross Global has drawn particular attention because of the lawsuit, which marks the first time a charter has challenged its renewal decision in court.

A Manhattan charter school in danger of closing is suing the city, arguing that officials violated state law and their own guidelines when they recommended that the state not renew the school’s charter.

In a report sent to the State Board of Regents last month, city officials documented a long list of academic and operational problems at Ross Global Academy Charter School. The Regents will vote next week on whether to renew the school’s five-year charter.

Among the complaints in the suit is that the city failed to provide the school with enough time to respond to its recommendation and failed to hold a meaningful hearing on the fate of the school — both included in the city’s guidelines for charter renewal.

Additionally, the charter school argues that it does not meet the legal criteria for not renewing a charter.

The school has struggled for years with questions of student safety and high teacher turnover. This year, the school received the lowest progress report rating of any school in the city. Last year, however, the school received an A, and the school is arguing that state law requires the city to base its recommendation on three years’ worth of academic performance.

City officials publicly announced that they hoped to close the school before they formally told parents or issued their final report, a move the school contends violates the city’s own standards of conduct.

The lawsuit marks the first time a city charter school has challenged a recommendation against its renewal in court, and could set precedent for future charters.

Department of Education officials would not comment today on the suit. (more…)

At a meeting with parents earlier this month, Principal Lisa Fuentes asked for their votes to convert the district school into a charter school.

Teachers and administrators at a Bronx high school are making a second attempt to fight the school’s possible closure by converting it into a charter school, something that is rarely done in New York.

One of the 19 schools the city’s Department of Education tried and failed to close last year, Christopher Columbus High School is again in danger of being closed this year. Unwilling to wait and hope that the city will grant it a reprieve, the school’s staff is trying convert Columbus into a charter school.

State officials turned down Columbus principal Lisa Fuentes’ first application in September, saying that the school didn’t follow the protocol for conversion. Now Fuentes is trying again. At a meeting with parents earlier this month where city officials explained that they are considering phasing out Columbus, Fuentes told parents they could save the school by voting for its conversion. (more…)

To save her school from closure, the principal of a large Bronx high school took a drastic step and applied to become a charter school. But her application, along with nearly a dozen others, was rejected by the state today.

New York State’s Education Department announced today that of the 24 New York City charter school applications it received earlier this month, 12 schools have been green-lighted for the next step of the approval process.

Christopher Columbus High School, which applied to become a conversion charter, is not among them. Columbus is one of nearly two dozen low-performing schools selected to be “turned around” with federal money, meaning that in the next year it will be closed and replaced by a new school or it will lose half its staff and its principal.

A Columbus teacher who helped write the application said she was disappointed and felt the school’s application had been strong. (more…)

Four prospective charter schools could force the state to define precisely how involved for-profit companies can be in the operations of charter schools.

When the legislature lifted the cap on charter schools in May, it also banned for-profit companies from managing or operating charters. But four of the schools applying to open next year are partnering with Arrow Academy, a Texas-based for-profit management organization.

Arrow’s ability to open the schools will come down to how close a for-profit company can work with a school before the state considers it to be managed by them.

The four are applying for charters from the state Board of Regents, and their applications are also currently being vetted by the city Department of Education. A city spokesman said today that Arrow’s relationship with the school would be like any other charter or district school that contracts with a for-profit company to provide school services.

Arrow Academy had originally intended to apply to manage the schools itself, the company’s head, Jim Christensen, said today. But when the law changed, the company altered its application so that instead, it will contract with the school’s board to provide curriculum and teacher training. (more…)