After hiring special-education teachers, signing a lease and abandoning plans to add grades, officials at a Hanover charter school say they are cautiously confident that they have met the Anne Arundel County school system's list of demands for improvement.
Chesapeake Science Point Charter School was required to submit by yesterday details on how it would address the concerns in hopes of fending off continued probation or even closure.
Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell called for the school to address five areas, including improved special-education services, more concrete plans for future facilities and a more clearly defined budget.
School supporters, who were working on a 30-day deadline, said they have met or exceeded these recommendations to "exact specifications."
"That's what we think we've achieved," said Spear Lancaster, vice president and spokesman for the charter school's board, adding, "We can't see anything we haven't done."
But the school, which has 218 students in grades six through nine, had to make tough concessions. Because it could not secure a lease for a new, larger site so quickly, school officials had to cut its ninth grade and abandon plans to add a 10th grade next fall, followed by 11th and 12th grades in subsequent years.
The move will force about 60 eighth- and ninth-graders to find another school in the fall.
The school has hired a full-time special-education teacher and a part-time special education teacher to fill a gap, after the system questioned whether the school was adequately serving its special-needs students. The new hires are also intended to address a related concern about the school not properly keeping records on special-education students' progress. The school also has provided the school system a three-year budget.
The changes, along with the general uncertainty over the school's fate, has been a major concern for parents.
"I've had parents call me, and they're literally in tears they're so distraught," Lancaster said.
Linda Wilson, whose daughter, Serina, is in seventh grade, said she would be left with few options if the county's only charter school closes. Application deadlines for most private schools have passed, she said, and even those do not offer a high-level math- and science-focused track equal to what Serina receives at Chesapeake Science Point. She said she would not consider sending her daughter to her local public high school.
"My daughter won't go to North County no matter what programs they offer," she said.
This crisis is the latest of many challenges the charter school has faced in its three-year history. The school opened five days late amid delayed renovations, and by the next March, police removed then-director Jon Omural from the school amid complaints filed by three teachers. That led to an investigation into the school's management and operating procedures, which found financial and administrative shortcomings.
Last month, the school system transferred the principal, Fatih Kandil, and Ali Tuna, a popular math teacher, to desk jobs at undisclosed sites, pending investigation into complaints against them. System officials have declined to discuss the reasons, noting confidentiality of personnel issues. Judith Henry, who had served at the school in the fall of 2006, was rehired to lead the school on an interim basis.
The school system "arbitrarily sent in another principal, and our parents and all the others resisted so fiercely that we decided to get our former principal back," Lancaster said.
School system spokesman Bob Mosier would not comment on the school's progress before yesterday's deadline. But he said the school and the system had been working together on resolving the issues.
"There's certainly been a great deal of communication in the last month," Mosier said.