Montessori Academy of Northern Palm Beach

CLASSES DISMISSED: 2 CHARTER SCHOOLS TO REMAIN CLOSED; August 22, 2007; Palm Beach Post 

Two Palm Beach County elementary charter schools will remain empty today when classes resume across the district, officials said Tuesday.

Montessori Academy of Northern Palm Beach in Palm Beach Gardens and Good Schools for All Leadership Academy, located last year in Delray Beach, have both closed, according to administrators at the two schools.

Montessori Academy's location in the former media center for H.L. Watkins Middle, 9482 MacArthur Blvd., was too small for the number of students school administrators hoped to serve, said Joseph Orr, the school's founder and former chief academic officer for the school district…

An audit earlier this year found that the charter school, which opened in 2005, was in a state of "financial emergency," a term defined by the state to mean failure to pay creditors and loans for 90 days or more.

An investigation of the charter school last year by The Palm Beach Post found many examples of financial and procedural mismanagement. The school was forced to send back $114,000 of a $300,000 federal start-up grant after failing to submit proper financial reports and, at that time, had no teachers or administrators trained to be Montessori educators and no functioning board of governors…