A vote by the Cobb County school board Thursday evening sent 11-year-old Armani Singh out of the meeting room with tears in her eyes.
The board had just rejected her impassioned plea to save her charter school, voting down its application for renewal.
The 4-3 decision ended a weeks-long emotional trial for Armani and more than 500 other children at the Imagine International Academy of Mableton.
Parents rallied earlier this month after the staff of Cobb school Superintendent Michael Hinojosa recommended denying the 5-year-old school's application for a new two-year charter.
Their emotional case, including speeches by Armani and other students, swayed some board members. But others held their ground, saying they had a responsibility to safeguard public money.
Charter schools are supported by taxpayer dollars, and several board members said they were influenced by financial problems at the school and by unimpressive test results.
"When we issue charters, they actually cost our system more money," said school board Chairwoman Alison Bartlett, before casting her vote with the majority. She criticized the school -- and by extension the parents -- for a lack of leadership over past years. "Your passion's great at the charter time, but we have to see your commitment for the length of it."
Afterward, Armani's mother, Holly Bridgewater, a former parent-teacher organization president at the school, said parents would appeal the decision. She said Armani thrived at the school by comparison with her previous experience at her neighborhood elementary school.
When Armani spoke to the board, "all she asked was an opportunity to help correct the problem," Bridgewater said, referring to the school's lackluster test results.
The k-8 school failed to meet test performance goals outlined in its 2006 charter, officials said. It met five of 63 benchmarks, they said.
Parent Jeff Shirley said before the meeting that the school district's assessment was inaccurate, but he acknowledged that all the test goals weren't met. Even so, he said, the school did better than the regular neighborhood schools in the area.
The school's principal, Marcus Barber, has argued that the decision by parents to send 564 children there this year was evidence of superior service.
That argument swayed board member Tim Stultz, who voted with the minority. He called charters an "open market solution."
But board member David Morgan, who represents the area where the school is located and once worked at a charter school, said he couldn't let the parents' passion override his responsibility to enforce the charter school's contractual performance goals.
"My position," he said before voting with the majority, "is based upon a lot of deliberative thought and research."
The board also voted 6-1 to approve the application for a charter renewal by the International Academy of Smyrna, which was managed by the same company -- Imagine -- as the Mableton school but broke away from the company.
The STEAM Academy of Cobb withdrew its application for a charter before the meeting, and the board voted 7-0 to reject the application of a fourth school, Turning Point Charter Leadership Academy School of Excellence.
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