A south Fulton charter school will close next year.
Hapeville Charter Middle School recently announced it will shut down June 30, 2022, making the upcoming school year its last.
The middle school opened in 2004. Last fall, it enrolled 532 students in sixth through eighth grades. The school will seek a charter renewal from Fulton County Schools to continue to operate its high school.
Executive director Mike Ramos said several factors played into the decision to close the middle school, including the cost to upgrade its building, an aging church. He said the facility has served the school well, but there’s a “continued need for improvement” and repairs.
“It was just not fiscally and academically sustainable staying in that building,” he said.
Ramos also said future enrollment could be limited because of increased competition if the Fulton district opens a kindergarten through eighth grade school in the area, as the superintendent has discussed.
“We didn’t see a path forward,” Ramos said.
Just over 45 employees work at the middle school. Ramos said officials will try to find positions for as many as possible at the high school, but he acknowledged they won’t be able to retain everyone.
The school announced the pending closure in a letter posted on its website.
Also in April, KIPP Metro Atlanta Schools announced it would delay plans to open an elementary school in south Fulton.
The charter school network planned to launch KIPP South Fulton Primary School with 110 kindergarteners later this year and then expand each year up to fourth grade. Now, KIPP will wait until the fall of 2022 to open for kindergarten and first grade students.
Spokesman Dave Howland said in an email the decision was made after learning that the per-pupil funding KIPP stood receive from the Fulton district was less than what it budgeted for.
“While delaying the opening of this school is incredibly disruptive to the families who intended to enroll and the staff members we have hired, we know that the rate provided by FCS will not allow us to run the program we believe our scholars deserve,” he wrote.
He said KIPP plans to use the next year to find a “workable solution” with the district “or determine an alternative path to open the school.”
The Fulton district said in a statement that it continues to fund charter schools “in the same manner as previously set out in their charter.”
“We look forward to continuing our partnership with KIPP and supporting their efforts to expand their offering to the primary grades K-4,” the statement said.
