A charter school that educated more than 600 children when it opened last year has missed what was likely its last shot at opening its doors again this fall.
Prospects for Peachtree Hope Charter School dimmed Wednesday when the president of the school's board of directors failed to file a petition for a new charter application by the noon deadline.
The mishap capped weeks of confusion for parents at the school who were banking on sending their kids there and now must scramble to find other schools that will accept them just weeks before the start of the fall semester.
The school's director, Kendra Shipmon, sent parents an email Wednesday evening informing them that the school's board was still petitioning for a special state charter, the only alternative to a charter from the local public school system. She said the application would come up at a state board of education meeting on Aug. 10.
But by the time she sent the email, the issue was moot.
"The school missed the deadline and there is no chance of them being on the August 10 agenda," Louis Erste, a Georgia Department of Education official, said in an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Erste, who is the director of the state charter schools division, said Peachtree Hope "will not be on any other future agenda unless and until" it gets the DeKalb County Schools system to either accept or reject a local charter request "in some future year."
Peachtree Hope inexplicably withdrew its second application this summer for a DeKalb charter that was up for a local vote on Tuesday. Lonnie King, president of the Peachtree Hope board, refused to comment to the AJC that night. He also wouldn't explain the decision when reached by phone Thursday, but he did talk about Wednesday's setback.
"The petition was not submitted by the deadline because our lawyer told us all the paperwork was not in place," King said. "I was outside waiting to turn the petition in. All the things he needed from a legal point of view were still in a state of flux."
King blamed Peachtree Hope's predicament on a May ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court. The school was among 16 that lost authority to operate when the high court ruled that the charters granted them by the Georgia Charter Schools Commission were unconstitutional.
Peachtree Hope assembled a last-minute charter application to DeKalb and on June 13 the county granted it. But the next day the approval was rescinded when county officials learned that Peachtree Hope's board had split with its private management company, Minnesota-based Sabis International Schools Network.
Sabis attorney Raipher Pellegrino said the Peachtree Hope board fired the company in a June 3 letter. King informed parents of the split in a letter three weeks later.
"They weren't forthright as far as what was going on," said Walter Loyd, whose 5-year-old twins were to enter Peachtree Hope in a few weeks. Now, his wife is applying to a couple other DeKalb schools.
"They could have been more truthful about what was going on and then we could have had more time to make a decision," Loyd said, adding that his wife hoped to avoid attending the local public school, which he said was failing.
DeKalb officials said they would accommodate all the displaced students at their local schools.
Mark Peevy, the former executive director of the state charter schools commission, said Peachtree Hope was a successful school in its first year. He said he worked closely with Sabis and that there were no complaints about the company's management or curriculum. The collapse of the school was "disappointing" and unnecessary, he said, and speculated that the Peachtree Hope board withdrew its charter request with DeKalb Tuesday because it didn't have enough time to replace Sabis' curriculum and figured the county would reject their application.
"The timing of the decision by the board to sever their management agreement really created a difficult situation," Peevy said. "The painful part here is that it was self-imposed."
About the Author
