School Shuts Its Doors

A wrinkled California Charter Academy banner with one edge loose hangs on a weathered white church that was -- just days ago -- home to an Inglewood school. Soon the banner will be packed and shipped away, along with globes, textbooks and computers.

The 450-student Village Elementary School is one of more than 60 charter campuses across the state shut down just weeks before the new school year. The Victorville-based charter organization that operated them collapsed this month under financial turmoil, pressure from new state laws and a California Department of Education investigation into its academic and financial practices.

Students are now scrambling to find new campuses.

“For us to be shut down is disheartening, it’s a blow,” said Principal Melody Parker. “We were just blindsided by it.”

Village was the brainchild of Parker, who saw the school as an oasis for her children and other students from overcrowded and underperforming public schools in the area.

Before it became a charter school, Village was a 20-child day-care center run out of Parker’s garage. When her own two children reached school age, Parker decided she wanted to enroll them in a family-oriented campus.

She had an idea for a school where students learned in small groups and wore uniforms. The school would require parents to volunteer at the campus 40 hours a year and do cultural projects with their children, such as visit museums or homeless shelters.

A friend introduced her to California Charter Academy in July 2000. Two months later, Parker, 32, had a school. In the beginning, she said, the organization “looked out for us.”

As a charter school, Village was publicly funded but exempt from many state regulations, and it was small enough to employ personal teaching techniques. “It’s not that big, so you can learn,” said Marquise Foster, 12, who started at Village in second grade.

The school’s name was inspired by the proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child.” It opened with 25 students. By the second year, enrollment had jumped to 150 students -- and it kept growing.

So did California Charter Academy.

In five years, it expanded from 11 campuses to nearly 70, with almost 10,000 students.

It ran its campuses under the auspices of four charter schools sanctioned by three California school districts. That arrangement allowed it and districts to receive a portion of tax revenue for those schools. The academy has collected more than $100 million in state funding since 1999.

Village immediately became a standout in the academy’s fledgling charter system. California Charter administrators often referred superintendents, state officials, politicians and journalists to the Inglewood campus as an example of the organization’s success.

During the first two years, Parker said, Village got almost everything it wanted: furniture, photocopier paper, field-trip stipends.

It hired 15 teachers and eight teaching assistants. Many of the employees enrolled their own children in the school.

Parker never saw a penny of state money. Everything the school needed, it received by filling out request forms. The Victorville offices also handled payroll and textbook orders.

Parker said she rarely saw California Charter administrators, but every few months they would stop by and tell her the school was “exceptional.”

But last year, Parker said, the extra supplies and stipends virtually stopped coming. Parents raised money to supplement the loss. Textbooks were late.

For months, Parker didn’t know why. Then she started hearing news reports.

In March, Jack O’Connell, the state superintendent of public instruction, launched an investigation into the academy after an advisory panel alleged that the organization was charging its campuses millions of dollars in administrative fees and was inadequately overseeing its campuses.

In addition, long-distance charter school oversight, which the academy widely practiced, was banned by state law. California withheld $6 million from the organization after it illegally opened 10 campuses after the law took effect.

And the state began investigating California Charter Academy’s founder, C. Steven Cox, for his dual role as academy board member and president of a for-profit company that managed the academy’s school sites.

Academy officials did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

For Parker, the reports were alarming. But, at the time, she had more serious concerns. In March, her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving her as the family’s sole provider. Parker took time off to grieve.

When she returned to work this month, she had hundreds of e-mails from other worried academy campus directors. Some campuses had already closed. Administrators were being laid off.

Every time Parker called the Victorville campus to ask if her campus would survive, she received the same response: “You guys will be OK.”

It wasn’t until Aug. 9 that Parker learned the truth. Her campus would be shut down, immediately.

“We all just broke out crying,” she said.

Then came the hardest part: telling her teachers, students and parents.

Miya White, mother of a 7-year-old Village student, found out Aug. 13 as she watched the opening Olympic ceremonies at home. “What?” she recalled saying. “I can’t believe this.”

White told her daughter, Christina, “Your school is closing, something bad has happened.”

Christina worried about meeting new people. White worried about finding a new school. They chose a Los Angeles charter school, Cornerstone Preparatory Elementary School, which had extra space.

But they made the decision in a rush, and White said she wished they had had more time to weigh options.

“We have to start all over again, basically,” White said.

As she picked up Christina’s records from Village, she told Parker: “When you get your school open [again], when it happens, we will be right back.”

That Wednesday was scheduled as Village’s orientation day to welcome new parents and students. Instead, staff spent the day packing and distributing student records to parents and hugging them goodbye.

Parent Karen Stewart stopped by Village to pick up transcripts. Like most, she learned the school was closing late last week. Devastated, Stewart and her husband quickly made a life-changing decision: to move to Maryland.

“We’re done with the school systems here,” she said. “The reality is inner-city schools are going downhill.”

Though some of the Inglewood Unified School District’s elementary school campuses have high test scores, many are crowded and under-funded, Stewart and other parents said.

Parker and others boast of Village’s high test scores, but there are no individual state records of the school’s performance because California Charter Academy lumped Village’s scores with other campuses.

Parker has enrolled her own children in public school, and plans to fight to reopen her campus.

“As much as I could just lay down and not get up, I know I can’t,” she said.

“It’s hard. This has been a very tough year. My passion was my school, and now I don’t have my husband and I don’t have my school.”