The Missouri State Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to revoke the charters of all Imagine schools in St. Louis, closing them by the end of the current school year.
The vote came after the board became the sponsor of the schools because Missouri Baptist University gave up its authority to sponsor charters in the state.
Sponsorship of the other charter school that had been sponsored by Missouri Baptist, the Carondelet Leadership Academy, was transferred to the University of Missouri at Columbia.
At its height, enrollment at the six Imagine campuses in St. Louis had been nearly 4,000. Missouri Baptist revoked the charters of two of them last year and put the rest on probation.
On Monday, the State Board of Education voted to accept Missouri Baptist University’s surrender of authority to sponsor charter schools in Missouri. Under the terms of the agreement, the university will not be allowed to sponsor charters for another five years.
In December, the university revoked the charters of the other two Imagine schools – the Imagine Academy of Academic Success and the affiliated Academy of Cultural Arts – affecting about 850 of the 3,750 students enrolled at Imagine. Those schools will close at the end of the current school year.
Last month, Missouri Baptist officials were summoned to a hearing before the state board this week to talk about its sponsorship of charter schools. But shortly after board members voted to call the hearing, the university announced it would voluntarily give up its power to sponsor the charters.
In a letter to state education officials, the university said it would not apply again to sponsor charter schools before March 30, 2017, and was waiving its right to a hearing. At that time, attorney Douglas Copeland, speaking for the university, said it was doubtful Missouri Baptist would ever return to sponsoring charter schools and would focus instead on educating students at the university.
At the same time, Jason Bryant, who is now the newly named executive vice president for Imagine Schools Missouri, expressed disappointment at the university’s move. He said Imagine had made progress in improving the poor academic achievement that prompted Missouri Baptist to put the schools on probation in the first place.
That move had come after officials from Mayor Francis Slay to Chris Nicastro, commissioner of elementary and secondary education for Missouri, had called on Imagine to shut down its schools in St. Louis. They cited poor scores by the school’s students plus questions about its financial operations.