KIPP charter school closure is certain

The Baltimore Sun

An Edgewater charter school that shut down and reopened over the past three weeks reversed course again yesterday, deciding to close after its principal resigned.

This time, officials with the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, Harbor Academy said, the closure is for certain.

The San Francisco headquarters of KIPP -- a network of 52 schools in 16 states lauded nationally for its work with low-income, minority children -- said it cannot easily replace Jallon Brown, one of its specially trained leaders, so the school must be shuttered.

Brown said that she stepped down because 10 of the 12 teachers found new jobs in the panic after the initial June 20 announcement, making it virtually impossible for her to replenish their ranks before classes resumed Aug. 6.

"We didn't have the human capital. It would've been a disservice to keep the school open," Brown said. "I don't believe we could have offered the quality education for students."

The school's board of directors could choose to keep the school open as an independent charter school outside of the KIPP network, but the lack of staff and disillusionment among some parents have made that option unlikely, KIPP officials said.

The yo-yo-ing fate of the school -- and the blame game among KIPP officials, the Anne Arundel County school district and parents -- is rare for an organization known for its blend of high expectations, strict codes of conduct and 11-month academic year.

The KIPP national model calls for each school to add a grade a year until it has fifth through eighth grades, a requirement that has stymied local officials since the Harbor Academy opened two years ago -- and ultimately led to the recent roller coaster of events.

The 6,000 square feet of space the school was renting at Sojourner-Douglass College was half of what it needed to teach its 120 fifth- and sixth-graders -- and not enough to hold about 80 additional students it expected next year with a new seventh-grade class.

KIPP offered the school district $100,000 to lease Annapolis Middle School, but was rebuffed by a school board that said it needed the space to house other programs. The school vetted churches, office space in shopping centers and the Maryland Hall for Creative Arts -- but by mid-June, KIPP's two-year survey of 25 locations proved fruitless.

"We've never been faced with this issue," said Steve Mancini, a spokesman for KIPP's national office in San Francisco. "Cities want to open KIPP schools, but here we felt unwelcome, unwanted. It's deeply disappointing."

After the school first notified parents it would close for lack of space, the ensuing outcry and emotion spurred the school's board of directors to vote 3-2 on June 27 to keep the school open -- with Brown casting one of the two minority votes.

KIPP officials blamed the Anne Arundel County public school system for being uncooperative in the charter school's search for more space. But some parents say KIPP itself mishandled the matter by informing them of the school's struggles too late and balking at the school district's offer two months earlier of portable classrooms at Sojourner-Douglass College.

Still others complained that Brown was an absentee principal who was more involved in garnering publicity for KIPP -- even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show -- than running the school.

KIPP parents received yesterday's news through one another and a reporter's calls. Heather Trotman, the mother of a rising seventh-grader, said she was "devastated." Her daughter Camry, 11, struggled with reading -- particularly paragraphs -- before she joined KIPP last summer. By December, she was not only reading paragraphs but also writing them as a part of a five-page paper on Costa Rica, complete with annotated bibliography, her mother said.

"For the first time, I felt my daughter was college-bound. Now, what am I going to do?" Trotman said through sobs. "I have to send her to a middle school she doesn't want to go to, to a place where she'll fall through the cracks."

ruma.kumar@baltsun.com

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