Imagine School ceases operations
EL CENTRO — Imagine Schools at Imperial Valley has ceased operations, after it elected on Thursday to withdraw its petition requesting the State Board of Education to overturn denial of its charter renewal.
The decision to withdraw its petition was made jointly by the local and parent company’s board of directors, after discussions with education officials indicated the SBE would likely deny the petition, said Rhonda Cagle, Imagine Schools chief communications and development officer.
“It became clear that the appeal would not have the support to overturn the denial of the charter renewal petition,” Cagle said.
The petition had sought to overturn the El Centro Elementary School District and the Imperial County Office of Education’s previous denials to renew the campus’ five-year charter.
The petition’s withdrawal came a day prior to the SBE hearing in Sacramento where the board was scheduled to consider and take action on the campus’ petition request.
Thursday’s decision also stood in contrast to the Aug. 14 recommendation for charter renewal by the state’s Advisory Council on Charter Schools ACCS, and the campus’ recent announcements and actions that signaled it was preparing for the belated start of its school year.
“We had been very hopeful that the momentum that was seen following the [ACCS’] decision in August would carry forward in the appeal process with the State Board of Education,” Cagle said. “Unfortunately, that momentum did not carry forward.”
Imagine Schools at Imperial Valley faculty and staff were notified of the decision on Friday morning, as were parents. The charter school plans to further notify its campus community of the decision through its website, social media and letters sent to former students’ homes.
The ISIV Board of Directors has plans to meet this coming week to address a list of items that must be fulfilled now that the eight-year-old campus has closed, Cagle said.
Imagine Schools, the parent company, will also work with property’s landlord to determine if its current lease can be put to other uses. As soon as ISIV personnel are cleared out, the building will remain vacant, Cagle said.
“Imagine School can only operate if there is a charter allowing it to do so,” she said. “There currently is not an opportunity for us to consider reopening.”
At the close of the 2017-18 school year, the campus had more than 800 students enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade, and employed about 90 at-will faculty and staff members. Of those, four faculty members currently have contracts in place that will keep them employed through the end of the month, Cagle said.
The parent company is also working with its former personnel to ease the transition into their next career options, Cagle said.
On Friday, the El Centro Elementary School District announced that it was working with other local public school superintendents to ensure former Imagine students are welcomed at the Valley’s school districts.
The bulk of Imagine Schools’ student body was comprised of students who resided within the ECESD’s boundaries. Currently, enrollment within the ECESD has increased approximately 425 students from the same time last year, when it had nearly 5,000 students.
“As of a few days ago, about 280 of those (425) students came from Imagine School,” LeDoux stated in an email Friday.
Consultation with other local superintendents revealed that at least 85 percent of all Imagine students who still reside in the Valley have enrolled in their neighborhood schools this year, LeDoux said. That figure may ultimately be higher since some parents do not immediately inform the schools where their child last attended.
“This indicates that our local school districts did not have a problem finding room for these students,” LeDoux said.
The closure of the Imagine Schools campus places a limit on a local parent’s ability to choose which school their children attend, said ISIV board member Darletta Willis.
Last week, Willis had made the reluctant decision to enroll her daughter, who formerly attended Imagine, in the Seeley Union School District. Willis said she is not happy with that choice and is afraid her daughter will not receive the same level of instruction she had received at Imagine.
“She’s bored to death,” Willis said.
Willis also expressed sadness about the turn of events that led to Thursday’s decision by Imagine officials to withdraw the petition for charter renewal, and questioned why ECESD officials hadn’t raised any concerns prior to the district board voting in January to deny the campus’ charter renewal.
“It’s sad for our students that their lives were disrupted like this due to political reasons,” she said.
During its Jan. 31 board meeting denying the charter renewal, several ECESD trustees had explained that their no-vote mainly stemmed from ISIV’s continued inability to demonstrate academic progress.
That decision was subsequently appealed to the Imperial County Office of Education, which recommended that its board of trustees also deny ISIV’s charter renewal, based on similar findings. The ICOE board on April 25 ultimately chose not to take any action on the matter, which effectively denied the appeal.
Similarly, the California Department of Education had recommended that both the ACCS and the SBE deny Imagine’s petition to overturn ECESD’s revocation of its charter.
“ISIV does not perform, overall, at least equal to its comparable district schools where the majority of ISIV pupils would otherwise attend,” the CDE stated in a recent petition review form.