Stamford Academy to close
City’s charter high school cites financial difficulties
STAMFORD — Citing financial difficulties, the city’s only charter high school is set to close at the end of the school year.
In a letter sent recently to Stamford Academy families, school officials pointed to a drop in funding from Stamford Public Schools as the reason for their expected closure after 15 years in operation. The school served about 150 students.
Although run by the Stamfordbased nonprofit Domus, the Academy averaged about 20 percent of its operating budget from Stamford Public Schools throughout the school’s 15year tenure.
For the 201819 school year, the district contributed $644,000 to the Academy, but last May the Stamford Board of Education voted to cut its contribution by $50,000.
“I think they took the cuts more as a signal that we were limiting our support and their board, I think, made the decision about what direction they wanted to go,” said Stamford Board of Education Presi
The school “does not anticipate having the funding to operate beyond the end of this school year.”
A letter to Stamford Academy families
dent Andy George.
Academy officials did not respond to repeated calls for comment, but a unanimous resolution passed at the Dec. 4 meeting of the Stamford Academy Board of Directors suggests the funding cuts would likely lead to the school’s closure.
“Given this anticipated operating budget shortfall, and unless SA is able to secure the required funding through a commitment from the Stamford Public Schools, SA will be unable to operate during the 20202021 school year,” the resolution read.
The letter sent to families mirrored the resolution.
“Stamford Academy does not anticipate having the funding to operate beyond the end of this school year ( June 2020),” it said.
Besides the money from Stamford Public Schools, the Academy got the bulk of its $3.5 million budget from state and federal funding, plus contributions from corporations and private donors.
Funding was not the only challenge the Academy faced in recent years.
In 2018, the state put the Academy on probation, giving it one year to improve outcomes. According to data from that year, 42.3 percent of Academy students were not in attendance at school on any given day and nearly all met the definition of chronically absent — out more than 10 percent of the time.
Erica Stephens, who graduated from the Academy in 2017, speculated that chronic absenteeism contributed to the closure.
“The kids don’t go to school, so I guess that’s why it’s closing. But it was a really good school, the teachers were really caring and helpful,” she said.
The Academy’s plan to close comes on the heels of Domus’ announcement in July that Trailblazers Academy, its charter middle school in Stamford, was closing only six weeks before the start of the current school year.
“The school faced financial difficulties and lacked the necessary funds to operate,” Domus said in July.
The backtoback shuttering of Trailblazers and Stamford Academy is an anomaly and does not necessarily point toward a trend of charter school closures statewide. Charter schools, which first appeared in the state in the late 1990s, rose to 18 in 2010, and peaked at 24 schools in 2018.
When Trailblazers closed, Stamford Public Schools scrambled to take in the nearly 70 students from there who entered the district, opting to create an entirely new alternative education program in order to accommodate the Trailblazers students’ learning needs.
Stamford Public Schools
Superintendent Tamu Lucero said some of the students who come to the district after Stamford Academy closes will enter the alternative program while others will transition to the regular high schools.
“We’re excited to have a longer time to plan for that and that it happened before budget season,” Lucero said. “We already have a program in place. We’ll just be adding additional teachers because additional kids require additional teachers.”
The additional students, and teachers, will cost the district additional funds in the coming year, George said. While the state provides $11,000 for each student in a charter school, he said, it will not provide the same money for those students when they transition to the public system.