Financial questions swirl after Atlanta private school closure

An Atlanta private school that abruptly announced it was shutting down midsemester says it was so deep in financial jeopardy that it had to sell its building to avoid foreclosure.

Leaders of Midtown International School said they struggled to pay expenses, and tuition revenue couldn’t help cover the shortfall.

But questions remain over how bad the school’s financial position was to force a closure, what happened to the school’s assets, like proceeds from the building sale, and why details about the financial situation weren’t made public sooner.

Midtown International School’s board of trustees announced March 30 that the doors of MIS would permanently close four days later — about seven weeks before what would have been the last day of the 2025-2026 academic year.

In a statement, the board attributed the closure to reenrollment trends and the current economic environment. The statement noted the school had been experiencing a decline in reenrollment, making operations unsustainable.

It was all the notice parents of students at MIS said they were given to begin searching for alternatives for their children’s education.

“I was in shock,” said Andrew Hardin, whose 9-year-old son was in third grade at MIS. “I think everyone’s immediate reaction was, ‘Can they even do that?’ We’ve never heard of a school closing the year like this.”

Midtown International School opened in 2013 with an address on Amsterdam Walk near Piedmont Park. The following year, it moved to a bigger location at 1575 Sheridan Road, a 35,000-square-foot building on five acres just two miles from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters.

The school’s founder, Ande Noktes, previously told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she created the school to serve gifted and high-achieving students. When it started, MIS had 47 students, but enrollment doubled within a year.

In 2025, the school had nearly 160 students. But according to the board’s statement, the school had lost more than 20 students who attended MIS at the full tuition cost of $26,000. The loss of almost 13% of its student body would mean a reduction in revenue of roughly $500,000 in a year.

“Our retention rate was too low,” MIS board member Brett Curry said during a virtual town hall meeting for parents. “We realized that we were at a point to where, if we tried to push to next school year, we would be taking more money from parents and still have a high likelihood that we wouldn’t be able to have school in the fall.”

Longstanding financial challenges

Tax documents show Midtown International School had been facing financial problems for years and was consistently spending more than it was bringing in.

A tax form shows in 2023 the school made $3.6 million in revenue but had $3.8 million in expenses. Its net assets were in the red, by roughly $3 million.

Curry joined the school’s board last year, he said. During the virtual town hall, he told parents the school building was weeks away from being foreclosed upon at the beginning of October.

“As I was approached by (head of school Ashley Scott) to assist with being on the board, they had already explored a sale of the building,” he told parents. “They had an agent. The agent listed the building for sale.”

The school’s leaders had reached out to the building’s current mortgage holder and asked for a forbearance in an effort to keep the school operating without foreclosure proceedings starting.

Curry said the lender provided a forbearance through December with stipulations that the board must sell the property in order to pay the lender out of the mortgage. However, the board needed a buyer who would allow the school to continue operating on the land without moving.

So, Curry bought the building, the board said.

Public records show ownership of the property was transferred to an anonymous corporation called Midtown1575 LLC on Dec. 17, 2025. An early copy of the limited warranty deed shows Scott, MIS’ head of school, signed over ownership of the property.

The corporation, Midtown1575, was formed in late October and is registered in the state of Delaware. No owner or operator information is listed alongside the corporation. The sales amount shown is $5 million.

Curry told parents the school was given a lease to remain in the building, and ownership was transferred in order to gain operational funds. He said the entirety of the proceeds from the sale went to building operational expenses. It’s unclear how much those expenses cost.

An abrupt closure

During an enrollment period from January through March, school leaders took estimates of the upcoming school year to determine how much revenue they could anticipate from tuition funds.

Curry said the application rate for new students was about 30% lower than it had been in years past, and the tuition funds wouldn’t be enough to get the school through another year.

The board, which meets four times a year, was informed of the financial woes during its March 26 meeting and voted the next day to close the school.

Indre Stucker, who taught math at MIS, said when she learned about the closure, her first concern was her students.

“I thought, ‘What is going to happen to the kids and how can we best support them? What is going to happen to their grades?” she said.

Stucker said the problems MIS faced were unexpected and said teaching at an inclusive school centered around children with strong cognitive abilities was a dream position.

“It was really easy to create bonds with students,” she said. “Everyone knew everyone at the school. Even students who I didn’t teach, I knew at least 95% of their names.”

Some parents are making efforts to hire MIS educators to teach their children in small groups or homeschool pods until the end of the school year. It is not clear if that could count toward state-recognized classroom hours.

In an email to the AJC, board members said teachers “have been paid for their work.”

It remains unclear if parents who have paid tuition fees through the semester and/or for next school year will receive a refund and, if so, how much will be refunded.

“We have begun the process of liquidating MIS’ assets,” the board’s email said. “Once this process concludes, we intend to provide members of the MIS community (including parents) a comprehensive update, including on the status of refunds. We currently anticipate that we will provide such an update toward the end of May 2026.”

‘What can we do to help these families?’

Amid their efforts to move forward for what remains of the school year, many parents are wondering why they weren’t made aware of the school’s financial state sooner — and some question if they could have helped the school if they had more notice.

“That’s what’s so disappointing about this whole situation,” said Priti Patel, whose child was in the sixth grade at MIS. “The way in which the community is coming together to try to raise funds, for example, we could have done all of this earlier and could have kept the school open at least until the end of the year.”

Some Atlanta private schools have offered to help as MIS parents continue to look for options for their children’s education next year.

Leaders of Capstone Academy in North Druid Hills have waived tuition fees for the remainder of the 2025-2026 school year, with a commitment to enroll in 2026-2027.

“It’s my understanding that there’s a lot of uncertainty with some of these families and the money they will or will not get back,” Dean of School Lucy Pastore said. “We just wanted to rise up and say, ‘What can we do to help these families?’”