VICTORY PREP NORTH:
300 students must find other campuses after low enrollment forces shutdown
Victory Prep North, an in-district Houston ISD charter school, will close on Friday due to financial issues, forcing about 300 students to relocate to campuses in the middle of the semester.
The charter’s executive director, the Rev. Lisa Berry-Dockery, said unexpectedly low enrollment following Hurricane Harvey led to a budget shortfall at the school.
“We had students who simply did not return or did not enroll,” Berry-Dockery said. Typically “around Labor Day we see a huge boost in enrollment, and we did not receive that because of the hurricane.”
The announcement left some parents fuming about the timing of the closure and short notice given to parents.
Gregory Lamb said his daughter, a seventh-grader at the campus, brought home a
letter from the school on Friday announcing the decision. The school didn’t personally notify him or his wife about the closure, he said.
“If they had come to us when school was out for the winter break, I could have went to another school and she could have started fresh at the semester break,” Lamb said. “We’ve got three months left in school, and you’re going to make a change like this? Move a child and expect them to get acclimated? I feel like my daughter is either going to get ate up or caught up.”
Parents of displaced students can enroll their children in HISD campuses or charter schools with available space. HISD staff will be on-site all week to help parents, district officials said. Victory Prep officials were expected to meet with parents at a community gathering Monday evening.
Victory Prep South, a high school campus governed by the same nonprofit responsible for Victory Prep North, is expected to remain open. That campus serves about 250 students.
“We kept hoping beyond hope that we would be able to close the shortfall.” the Rev. Lisa Berry-Dockery, Victory Prep North executive director
Ordered to close in 2016
The decision to close Victory Prep North comes nearly two years after HISD threw a lifeline to the fledgling Victory Prep charter network.
The Texas Education Agency in 2016 ordered Victory Prep to shut down after receiving three straight “improvement required” ratings for poor academic performance. But HISD’s school board voted to make Victory Prep an in-district charter, allowing it to stay open for its roughly 500 students.
Under the arrangement, HISD took on some oversight responsibility for the school, but the charter network’s nonprofit board retained control over governance. Victory Prep North’s governing board decided to close the campus.
Victory Prep North is located off Interstate 69, a few miles north of downtown Houston. Its student population last year was about 92 percent black and 95 percent economically disadvantaged, according to state demographics data. Most of its students came from the city’s northwest side, HISD data shows.
After serving about 300 students last year in kindergarten through the eighth grade, Victory Prep officials planned to increase enrollment to about 500 students at their north campus. The charter’s leaders added classroom space for elementary and middle school students by moving about 150 high school students from its north campus to its south campus.
‘Hoping beyond hope’
But following Hurricane Harvey, the enrollment bump never materialized, Berry-Dockery said. School leaders waited until after the winter break, another period when they typically add students, to see if enrollment would increase, and they unsuccessfully sought donor help.
“We kept hoping beyond hope that we would be able to close the shortfall,” Berry-Dockery said.
Victory Prep’s high school students met state academic standards last year, while its K-8 students were deemed “improvement required.”
Districts across the region experienced a decline in enrollment after students were displaced by Hurricane Harvey. State officials are providing funding based on pre-hurricane enrollment projections and totals, meaning districts won’t be punished financially for losing students.