The Silicon Valley Flex Academy in Santa Clara County, California, recently won a five-year renewal of its contract, from 2016 to 2021, but will not open this fall due to “fiscal unsustainability.”
A Morgan Hill charter school is closing its doors due to a terminated contract and financial troubles, which means almost 250 students will have to enroll in new schools before the start of the academic year, Santa Clara County education officials said Wednesday.
Silicon Valley Flex Academy at 610 Jarvis Drive served 240 students between grades six to 12 and opened in 2011 under a countywide charter, county education officials said.
In November, Santa Clara County’s Board of Education had renewed the academy’s charter for another five years from 2016 to 2021, according to the county office.
On Monday night, the academy’s board told the county the academy would close because of “fiscal unsustainability” after its service provider, K12, cut their contract, county officials said.
Classes for the new school year were set to begin on Aug. 11, according to the school’s website.
The county office is working with the charter school’s board along with Morgan Hill Unified School District and its Superintendent Steve Betando to register the students for the 2016-17 academic year.
If you love disruption, watch the charter industry in California, where schools open and close with frequency, almost as frequently as in Florida.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Did K12 cut their contract becasue they couldn’t provide enough profits for their wealthy overlords to become richer?
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“. . . after its service provider, K12, cut their contract. . . ”
Hmmm, why would K12 cut off that service??
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k12 would cut off that service because they are a for profit corporation interested ONLY in profit. If their business model and projections determine that they are not making a decent profit from those 250 students, they will bow out. This is what happens when profit enters what should be free and appropriate public education.
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Tina…what do you think of the half page article in the LA Times today, California section, page 2, about the seeming raproachement between Supt, King and primarily pro charter BoE members Ref Rodriguez who has 16 PUC charter schools, and his ally Monica Garcia? The photo is quit sickening with them looking lovingly at each other. Has she sold us out????
Only BoE member McKenna is quoted as being against this new onslaught to give away our public schools, saying it is unfair to turn over public school locations to the demanding CCSA who is suing LAUSD for this economic rape.. BTW…the article calls all LA schools, including the various forms of charters….”public schools”….shameful misinformation.
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What does it say about how charter schools are regulated and the quality of state oversight for the charter industry—and make no mistake, that’s what it is; an industry—when the state renews a struggling charter for another 5 years, but the school closes because its management company (K12.com) is “fiscally unsustainable”?
Shouldn’t California’s charter oversight criteria include something about the school’s financial management, or the viability of the school’s management company?
School choice is a false choice. Every child deserves a public school that is adequately funded and locally controlled, not a 2-tier system of public schools, which have been systematically starved of resources and micro-managed, forced to compete against a Wild West network of private schools (yes, charters are in reality private schools, funded with public dollars) that are essentially unregulated, and financially unstable.
Where is the wisdom in policies that advocate for unfettered competition and “choice” as the solution to the problems in education that have been created by unfettered competition and “choice”?
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The Gates, Waltons, and Broads could have easily opened their check books to “save thus school” and “do it for the children”…but it was never about the children.
This example, and the many others occurring across our country, are flagrant snapshots of their intentions…disrupt and destroy the public school systems and educators, slowly starve them of their capital, write-off those who have completed their public education as being “lost”, and take control of the American children through data gathering and educating (or mis-educating) them only in the way they desire, all the while the expediting the theft of public tax dollars.
A sinister plot that has not only been exposed.,.but should warrant those involved in this scheme of both going to prison, and being stripped of their wealth.
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Broad believes he can open schools and run them for less money and get better results. I feel sure he has no knowledge of the research.
These are oligarchs hanging on to their money, but justifying it through their supposed altruism.
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The “business model” can never serve our children the way a public school does. It can use fancy advertising, glamorous window dressing, and circular talk…but it can never prevail because the message inevitably proves to be a lie…its essential goal is to make money, and those involved in the charter scheme can never ethically serve our children morally and ethically, as they base their “organization’s” success on profitability.
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Supply and demand will never meet the needs of students. Charters as they operate at present are a money grab…and are easy set ups for fraud and abuse.
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Parents can trust a charter school the way consumers can trust a used car dealership. When customers return to the car lot to redeem a warranty, they may find the building shuttered, and the owners have moved on. Do parents really want to subject their children to instability and insecurity despite all the shiny new claims a charter may make. Like many businesses parents have no guarantee of quality or reliability. with a charter school. Public schools are different as they are a building block of a community with democratic governance that answers to the taxpayers.
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Exactly…and to expand on this, this was just one small charter (250 students) and not worth investing in for K12 which found them easy to dump…like a used car lemon.
However, in LA, we have two examples of large charter chains, both of which were investigated for financial impropriety. First, the 11 Magnolia (Gulen( Schools…two were slated to close due to their lax use of taxpayer funds, and non payment of bills.., but over a weekend the mainly Turkish parents were able to get a judge to overrule LAUSD and the BoE, and reinstate them. Gulen then hired the notorious charter supporter from CCSA, Clarice Young, to run them….and she turned this around to Gulen’s favor.
Second, the 16 PUC charter schools founded and managed by Refugio Rodriguez, who ran a disgusting and mendacious campaign for BoE, which he won by hook or ‘crook’…were also schools being investigated by the State and the District for financial and other improprieties…and they too were given the go ahead, even after the LA Times did a good investigative article on them.
Our State BoE, and our Governor, favor charter schools…so it is an uphill battle to make change. “Used car salesmen mentality is similar with some of our legislators, and laws are continually bypassed. Even LAUSD has a charter fox (Cole-Gutierrez) guarding their charter oversight hen house. The CCSA (financed by the billionaire Deformers) has influenced (bought) too many in our State House in Sacramento. Last week we read about Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee frauds (they own 23 charter schools and seek to open more), and he is MAYOR of Sacramento (who has been using public offices to run some of his private businesses).
So it is rather like Trump saying he could shoot someone and still be held in high esteem…paraphrased. Our state seems to be run by too many “used car salesmen”…..
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The charter cheerleaders promote school choice and the fact that parents can vote with their feet. What choice is there when a charter school closes not only near the official school opening date but also the charters that close in the middle of the school year because of financial nonfeasance and/or malfeasance. There is incredible disruption and trauma for the kids, it is not a smooth seamless process to transfer hundreds of kids back into the public schools on such short notice. Not to mention the nitty gritty logistics of having enough desks, books, school supplies and the transfer of school records, all the individual folders and histories for each child, the IEPs for special needs kids. Many times, in these instances of abrupt closures of a charter school, these valuable records get mislaid and lost forever. All of this is glossed over by the charter propagandists.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Charter schools are not schools of choice; they are schools of CHANCE.
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As one of the former students of this school (I left the charter three years ago), I can personally say that I am glad this place is gone.
The school was definitely not a psychologically safe place for students to be. Bullying and drugs were rampant on the inside, with weed being the most common. Gangs were also a bit of a problem, but less so than drugs. Pretty much everyone did weed. The teachers would range from flaky to downright verbally abusive. The English teacher on the high school side would often yell at the entire class for ten minutes straight if two or three students weren’t doing so well, saying we were “stupid”, and “didn’t even care”. He was also suspected of having relations with the female students. The school board knew all of this, and they chose to do nothing.
If a student has a problem, who do they go to for help at school? Why, the school counselor, of course! A wonderful person to guide you onto the right path and help you get back on your feet when the other students or homework get you down.
Not at Flex.
If there was bullying, it would only be addressed if the bully’s parents were not involved with the school board in any way. I knew a guy who got caught smuggling weed to a middle schooler by leaving a cannabis filled backpack in the boy’s bathroom for pickup. Did he get expelled? Of course not! His mother was one of the most important members of the PTO! (aka, she had money). He didn’t even receive a detention. Also, I once brought another student with me to the counselor, and we both told her about several instances of bullying carried out by another student to both us and other students. She responded by saying that we may have misinterpreted every punch, cruel verbal jab, and backstabbing rumor, all because her mother gave the school lots of money, and was also a PTO member. If you had a parent on the PTO (And it wasn’t easy to get into the PTO, either, my mother tried without success), you could get away with whatever you damn well pleased with little to no consequences.
Core education was barely even there. The so-called “offline classes” were maybe a half-hour in Mr. Screamy’s room or with the flaky History teacher who quit in my first year, where you were either subjected to whining about how horrible the English teacher’s life was, or mumbling and doormat-like behavior from the history teacher, who wouldn’t even hand out a detention if you had just injured another student in front of her (yes, this actually happened a few times). We didn’t even have an on-campus science teacher half of the time.
Curious about how a day at Flex looked?
The main part of a student’s day consisted of being crammed into a tiny desk caddy cubicle, in a musty office room, working on content a teacher never took time to explain. If you were really lucky, you got to go watch the English teacher’s circus for a half hour once or twice a week.
Hey, it’s lunch time, where you get to play dodge the cars in the parking lot while trying to eat! It’s raining during lunch? Too bad, because the cafeteria is either at its maximum capacity of twelve plus the English teacher, or it’s locked! Enjoy your lunch in freezing December rain! What’s that? You’d rather eat at your desk caddy? Sorry, no food or drink allowed inside! If you get hungry or thirsty during the rest of the day, that’s too bad!
Well, back to work with you! You need to get that A+ on your report on Macbeth, little 9th grader, or Mr. ******** will scream and shout at the class again! But uh oh, is that the sensation of needing to pee? I hope your bladder muscles are strong, because you have to hold it for another half hour until someone bothers to look in your direction, because you’re not allowed to get up! It’s a good thing the school’s forcing you to do crossfit, because now your pain threshold is much higher. Once you tell them, cross your fingers, because they might say no due to water budget restrictions! Make sure you brought a pen, because there isn’t one attached to the sign-out sheet, put into place after the boy’s bathroom had a red swastika spray painted on the mirror. Make sure you don’t take too long, because they’ll come looking for you in five minutes!
Well, it’s 3:00, looks like it’s time to go home. Oh, wait, maybe not. It looks like Mr. ******** is being a pain about the noise level, and possibly had a fight with his on-again, off-again girlfriend (you’ve heard ALL about her.) He’s going to show you little brats who’s the boss around here. Nobody’s going home, to sport’s practice, or to their fragile part-time job to support their family until HE says so. Who’s the man of the house NOW, ****?
It’s been ten minutes, and you’re probably getting fired for being late. Mr. ******** is finally satisfied that his masculinity is unquestionable, so you can go home. Your ride waits outside for you (if you’re lucky, that sure is a long line that’s been waiting for ten minutes!), and now you can finally go home! Hooray!
Fortunately, this hellish prison of cardboard holding cells and thumbtacks flung like missiles across invisible borders can never hurt anyone ever again.
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