Imagine School in Las Vegas: high rent, poor scores, deteriorating climate

by David Safier
This is one of a series of posts, Peeking into Charter Schools

NOTE: I've decided to make 100 Academy in Las Vegas the first of the Imagine Schools I look into because of the timeliness of this story. As you'll find near the end of the post, this Friday, September 18, is a day that could decide the future of the school.

In Fall, 2006, Imagine Schools, based in Virginia, opened 100 Academy in Las Vegas. Imagine Schools is a for profit corporation. To open the school, it partnered with a nonprofit organization, 100 Black Men of Las Vegas, which promised members would volunteer at the school and act as mentors to the students. The student population is about 90% black.

In 2007, the state was concerned about the school's financial arrangements. The state's procurement laws demand that expenditures over $50,000 be put out for competitive bidding, which the school was not doing. In fact, 100 Academy leased its furniture and textbooks directly from Imagine Schools, and using a complex arrangement I'll discuss in a separate post, it rented the school building through Imagine as well.

The yearly rent for the school was $1.4 million. That amounted to about 40% of the state's funding to 100 Academy.

Nevada's DOE decided to have 100 Academy's governing board evaluate the school. The board was composed of 3 licensed educators along with other community members. In the first draft of the evaluation, the board used words like “neglectful,” “egregious,” “incompetent” and “unprofessional” to describe the management of the school. When Imagine Schools complained, the board added some new members and the language was softened. One reason was, the 100 Black Men group realized Imagine owned the school and everything in it, so if they wanted the school to remain in operation, they were at the corporation's mercy.

In the middle of 2008, the County School Board was growing increasingly concerned about the way the school was being run, saying that there weren't enough qualified teachers, students were performing lower on state tests than students in similar public schools and the school's bookkeeping was lax.

In June, 2008, a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun visited the school and talked to some parents.

The involvement of 100 Black Men of Las Vegas in the school was diminishing.

Later in 2008, the school's principal, Hugh Wallace, was fired by Imagine. An account administrator with Nevada's DOE said he believed, "Imagine has a cash cow to protect and could not broach dissent." Apparently, Wallace was asking embarrassing questions about the school's financing, especially the exorbitant rent the school was paying for the building. Wallace also complained that the class sizes were rising as the school got rid of its more experienced teachers. Since the principal and the teachers were employees of Imagine Schools, the local board had no say in the firings.

Now we jump up to the present. Two weeks ago, the most recent principal, Timothy Goler, was suspended by Imagine Schools. Most people believe it was because he encouraged parents to attend a school board meeting 4 days earlier, where parents spoke up about the school needing, among other things, a nurse and better physical education. Imagine School's Regional VP denies that was the reason for the suspension. Parents have signed a petition asking for his reinstatement.

This Friday, September 18, is a very important date for the school. That's the day Nevada counts the number of students in a school to determine how much state money each school receives. 100 Academy now has about 500 students, down from 600 during its first year. If more parents pull their kids out of the school by Friday, it's going to be in real financial trouble. If students leave after the 15th, 100 Academy keeps the money for those students, and the public schools will have to absorb the students without any added compensation.

This story is troublesome on a number of levels, but I'll let it stand on its own without any commentary from me at this point, except to say, this story is similar to others I have read about Imagine Schools elsewhere.

More stories to come about Imagine Schools — and firings — in other states.