The State Board of Education voted unanimously on Thursday to revoke the charter of New Castle’s Pencader Business and Finance Charter High School, backing a state report that found its students performed below average, that it submitted inaccurate information on its academic record, and that it had been forced to borrow to cover a financial shortfall of more than $600,000.
The six-person board accepted the recommendation of the Charter School Accountability Committee which determined in January that the school had failed to meet four out of six sets of statutory criteria including educational objectives, economic viability and governance.
State Education Secretary Mark Murphy told the Board that he accepted the committee’s recommendation, saying he had “serious concerns” about Pencader’s ability to provide a good education for its students in the past, at present and in future.
He said the school had been put on formal review four times in its six-year history and had failed to provide a convincing plan to fix its many academic, financial and administrative problems.
“They ignored the concerns expressed by the committee,” Murphy said. He argued that the school’s “lack of quality response” to the committee’s demands indicated that the school was not in a position to provide a good education for its students.
“The responses provided by the school are significantly lacking,” he said.
The revocation of the charter, which will become effective at the end of the current school year, is the first such action by the state Board since 2008, according to Alison Kepner, a spokeswoman for the Education Department.
After the vote, Murphy said he understood that that action has “serious implications” for Pencader’s 409 students – who will have to go to other schools starting in the next academic year -- and their families, and that state officials will begin working immediately to address their concerns.
Murphy said officials will be meeting with students next week to inform them of the board’s decision, and will set up a phone hotline and an email address to provide information. State education officials also noted that Pencader students will be eligible to use the state's Choice program, even though the deadline for submitting Choice applications was last month.
In its troubled history, Pencader was first placed on formal review in 2007 for missed deadlines related to charter conditions, late or incomplete responses to requests for information, parent complaints, and management concerns, according to the Accountability Committee.
It was placed on review for the third time in April 2011, two months before the committee recommended its charter be revoked. Secretary Murphy decided in August 2011 that the school should remain open but under probation. The fourth review began last September.
John Carwell, director of the Charter Schools Office at the Delaware Department of Education, told the Board that Pencader managers had ignored state officials’ demands or provided incomplete responses to them over several years, starting in 2007, only a year after it opened.
Among their shortcomings, Carwell said, were significant inaccuracies in student performance data; a failure to make budget provisions for hiring new leadership, and a failure to make budgetary plans for a new curriculum that might have improved the school’s academic performance.
“The school’s response to the report was ill-prepared at best,” Carwell said. “Overall, the response minimally addressed the concerns noted in the committee’s preliminary and final reports.”
Pencader principal Steve Quimby told WDDE after the board’s vote that the school’s first submission to the committee’s request was “not as good as it could have been.” He said he “felt very good” about the school’s second submission but “clearly it was not enough.”
“We will continue the fight and try and keep the school open although I know it’s rather bleak,” he said. “Our first and foremost concern is what is in the best interests of our students, our teachers and our families.”
Asked what options he may have for keeping the school open now, Quimby said: “We’re going to have to discuss that.”
He said closure would be tough on students who have put a lot into the school.
“We have kids who have very strong ties to the school, who have built their high school career doing activities with other Pencader students, representing the school, and I’m sure it’s going to be very difficult for them.
“I feel badly for students who had put down roots in the school,” he said. “Transition is tough for children.”
Asked whether he was surprised by the board’s decision, Quimby said, “Certainly, we knew it was a possibility but we always chose to remain optimistic in our view of what the future of the school was going to be.”
Pencader’s board, staff, students and parents sought a reprieve from closure at two public meetings last week. They argued at those meetings thatthe installation of a reconstituted board of directors in November and other changes put the school on the right track.
One state lawmaker is already offering his support to the decision to close Pencader. House Education Committee chair Rep. Darryl Scott (D-Dover) said after six years of working with the school to address its issues the time had come to revoke the charter.
"I am disappointed that it has come to this, yet I support the decision. The performance of the school left the board with no further options, said Scott in a statement. "Charter schools are given additional privileges and abilities not afforded to all public schools, but with those come additional responsibilities and expectations. They failed to meet those expectations on numerous occasions, and it ultimately became in the best interests of the students and parents of the school, as well as the taxpayers of Delaware, to revoke Pencader’s charter.”