Citing continued shortcomings in academic achievement and governance, Missouri Baptist University said Monday that it was revoking the charter of one of the Imagine charter schools it sponsors in St. Louis and putting others on probation.
In a letter to Joan Hubbard, chair of the board of directors of the Imagine Academy of Academic Success, Jim French, who heads the education division at Missouri Baptist, said the university is revoking its charter as of the end of the current school year. The affiliated Academy of Cultural Arts, which technically is part of Academic Success though it operates at a different location, is also affected by the move.
Together, those two programs enroll more than 850 of the 3,750 students at Imagine schools in St. Louis.
French said the school and its board “have failed to meet the provisions of its charter, have failed to meet academic performance standards and generally accepted standards of fiscal management, and have failed to implement or work toward implementation of the Charter Improvement Plan” in several specific areas spelled out in the letter.
On academics, French said that “while we recognize that the gap between your students and other city public school students existed since the beginning of the academy, it is disturbing that the gap has continued and in some instances grown greater.”
Similar concerns were expressed in letters to the board chairs of the Imagine academies of environmental science and math as well as that of careers, which includes three schools – elementary, middle and college prep. Missouri Baptist did not revoke their charters but put them on probation instead, with the threat of revocation unless significant improvement is made by the end of the school year.
Alan Olkes, the Imagine executive brought in last month to help the failing academies, said in an interview from Miami Monday that the actions of the university were no surprise.
“I wouldn’t have been in there in the first place if there wasn’t a problem, so obviously we expected them to come down on us,” Olkes said. “I’m a little big disappointed in the revocation. I thought we might get probation and have an opportunity to improve on that one.”
Olkes said he is confident that the schools placed on probation will improve enough to shed that status, but he acknowledged that parents of students in the academic success and cultural arts programs need to start looking for other schools for next fall.
“We would ask them to stay with us until the end of the year,” he said.
Bryce Chapman, spokesman for Missouri Baptist, said the university would now have its liaisons monitor the schools and report every 30 days until the end of the school year.
“We figure we have given them a clear path,” Chapman said. “The boards and the schools created these plans and signed off on these plans, so this isn’t a surprise to them.”
Imagine schools in St. Louis have been under the gun for several weeks, with Mayor Francis G. Slay, Missouri education chief Chris Nicastro and others saying they should be closed because of low test scores and poor administration.
Reprinted with permission and edited from a longer story first published at www.stlbeacon.org.