The New School

SCHOOL IN FALLBROOK SHUTS DOWN FOR GOOD, RELOCATING EMPLOYEES, STUDENTS TO TEMECULA September 14, 2007 North County (San Diego, CA) Times 

TEMECULA - The board of directors of The New School, an embattled charter school that operated in downtown Fallbrook for three years but failed to locate a permanent site, voted Friday morning to disband the institution and surrender its charter.

The meeting was held at the Innovation Centre, a Julian Charter School site in Temecula where many of the 100 children who previously attended The New School are now enrolled, according to officials.

"We had one of the highest-scoring schools in the state, but we had trouble finding a facility," said Sue Miller Hurst, former director of The New School and the new director of the Innovation Centre.

Jennifer Cauzza, director of the Julian Charter School, said this week that three former New School teachers have been hired at the Temecula site to continue teaching students who transferred from the defunct Fallbrook campus.

Cauzza said about 50 students had transferred as of this week.

Complications with the county Department of Planning and Land Use also contributed to the school's demise, officials said.

In a complicated series of events, The New School was forced to leave its rented space in a building on the northwest corner of Elder Street and Main Avenue in June, and could not find another suitable location in the area.

Last year, the county notified the school that it would need a major-use permit to continue operating in an old house at 127 E. Elder, and while the school maintained that it was a public institution and did not require such a permit, county officials would not relent, said Miller Hurst.

County officials said The New School needed a major-use permit as a school of more than 60 students…

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Good Schools for All Leadership Academy

LOW ENROLLMENT CAUSES CHARTER SCHOOL TO CLOSE; September 12, 2007; Palm Beach Post (FL)

A week before classes were set to begin, Good Schools for All Leadership Academy chose to close its doors.

The K-5 charter school, which operated out of the second floor of Mount Olive Baptist Church in Delray Beach for the past three years, was supposed to open last month at its new location at the Wayne Barton Study Center in Boca Raton.

Gerard Consuegra, educational program director for Ed Futures, -- the San Diego-based company that managed the school -- said the decision to close came down to low enrollment and poor timing…

Student enrollment numbers over the past three years ranged from the mid-40s to the low 70s. Consuegra said he hoped to open in the 70 range at Wayne Barton, but a day before Ed Futures decided to close the school, only 46 students were enrolled…

"It was the whole uncertainty of the situation," he said…

"It was for parents looking for a different school environment, where their children could get more individual attention," Consuegra said. Some classes had as few as 10 students…

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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…

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