Avondale schools help out

Sudden midyear closure had left families in lurch

The Avondale Elementary School District welcomes students displaced by the sudden closure of the Discovery Creemos Academy public charter.

The midyear closure of Discovery Creemos Academy, a Goodyear public charter school, was an unusual occurrence in Arizona. And it’s left parents and nearby schools scrambling to find new classrooms for what could be hundreds of displaced students.

School leaders emailed parents late Monday night notifying them that the academy was shutting down “effective immediately” and would not be open Tuesday morning.

The note apologized to parents and alluded to the school’s poor finances, “an endless barrage of adversities,” and recent “hateful online threats” to staff members.

The letter to parents was unsigned and did not specify why, exactly, officials decided to close the school more than halfway into the academic year with no notice.

According to the Arizona Department of Education, Discovery Creemos Academy’s last day of instruction was on its 100th day of school — a consequential date in Arizona school finance that determines how much money is reimbursed to schools.

Daniel Hughes, president and CEO of Discovery Creemos Academy, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools emailed nearby charter schools Tuesday offering assistance to schools that might have enrolled displaced students.

The Avondale Elementary School District, the district Creemos academy is located within, first learned of the charter’s closure Tuesday morning

when a family tried to enroll their children at one of its 10 schools.

It quickly posted on its Facebook page “to extend a warm welcome” to families and staff members who’d been displaced.

Betsy Hargrove, superintendent of the Avondale district, and district staffers visited the Creemos campus later that morning to reach out to parents. Already there were Creemos teachers — now jobless — greeting confused parents and students who came to school unaware of its closure or the latenight email notice.

The displaced teachers, Hargrove said, “wanted to ensure someone was there to greet them and let them know that while there are no answers, ‘We care about you.’ “

Hargrove said about 40 displaced students had directly enrolled in Avondale schools as of Wednesday afternoon, and dozens of other families had requested registration information.

The district has no reliable estimate as to how many other former Creemos students might enroll, Hargrove said, adding the influx of new students in the middle of the school year “happened incredibly quickly without notice.”

The charter school had enrolled 652 students in the 2016-17 school year, according to the Arizona Department of Education. It is unclear how many students attended the school when it closed.

One parent showed up at the Avondale district’s central office at 9 a.m. Tuesday. The man had driven his first-grader and seventh-grader to Creemos academy to drop them off like he would any other school day, but they arrived to a shuttered school.

The parent was pressed for time. He was taking classes at Estrella Mountain Community College and had a test at 10 a.m. Hargrove said an Avondale school immediately enrolled the students, who were in their new classrooms with new teachers and classmates later that morning.

“There is a tremendous amount of trust that is passed from the parent to the school, because they’re your most precious person in your world and you’re allowing someone else to have them for a long period of time every single day,” Hargrove said.

“And when that was taken away... then that becomes a shaky foundation.”

Hargrove said the district was focused on “making sure that students, families, staff who really had quite a shock ... know that there’s a community that welcomes and embraces them.”

But the effort to accommodate displaced students most likely will come at a financial cost for Avondale Elementary School District and others.

How Arizona district and charter schools are reimbursed by the state mainly depends on the number of students they enroll each school year.

The state “counts” schools’ students on the 100th day of school, to help determine how much money schools will receive. That date had recently passed, and so Creemos had already received the money to educate those students.

Hargrove said she did not expect to see any state money to cover the students they are taking in this year.

“That is just the reality,” she said.

Hargrove did not anticipate having to hire more teachers as a result of the charter school’s closure, but said the district “had to deplete our reserves” to buy computers for the new students so they could access Avondale’s online curriculum.

Avondale was able to secure grant funding from the state Department of Education to accommodate Creemos preschool students.

Parents of displaced preschool students can contact the Avondale district for admission information at 623-7725004 or at cortega@avondale.k12.az.us.

Discovery Creemos Academy, formerly known as the Bradley Academy of Excellence, for years has raised numerous red flags for its failing financial and academic performance.

In 2014, the state charter board gave the school an academic performance rating of “Falls Far Below Standard.”

Last year, Creemos academy was among 54 schools that received an F letter grade, the lowest mark possible, from the Arizona State Board of Education.

Reviews by the state charter board for the 2013-14, 2014-15 and 201516 school years found the school did not meet its financial performance recommendations.

A January 2017 internal audit submitted to the state charter board noted “significant decreases in unrestricted net assets, has a deficiency in net assets, and has limited cash and cash equivalents to meet its current obligations that together raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue.”

The audit found that the school had a deficit of $3.34 million in net assets at the end of June 2016.