Funds Sought for Debts Of Closed Charter School

The D.C. Public Charter School Board has asked Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) for $420,166 to pay off the outstanding debts of a charter school that the board shut down just weeks before the beginning of the school year.

Josephine Baker, the board's executive director, made the request in a Sept. 11 letter on behalf of Sasha Bruce, a Capitol Hill charter school that served 232 students in grades 7 to 11. The charter board, which voted July 26 to revoke the Sasha Bruce charter, said the school's finances had been poorly managed since it had opened in 2001.

Baker said yesterday that the board decided to solicit the mayor's help because the school had few assets when it closed after its summer session ended in August. In addition to outstanding bills, she said, there were the extra costs of dissolving the school, such as transferring and storing student records.

"It's a public institution," Baker said. "Closing the school and asking for the money to make sure that the things that need to get taken care of to finalize the closure of the school is important to the students who were there," she said.

The request marks the first time that the seven-member board, an appointed panel with oversight of 37 schools, has appealed directly to the District to pay costs stemming from its decision to close a school. Charter schools are publicly funded, but they are operated independently of the system run by Superintendent Clifford B. Janey and the D.C. Board of Education.

The charter board has closed schools before -- the New School for Enterprise and Development in June and SouthEast Academy of Scholastic Excellence last year -- but those Southeast Washington schools had money to cover outstanding bills, said Thomas A. Nida, the board chairman.

Nida said the Sasha Bruce situation highlights the need to create an emergency fund to assist charter schools with unexpected shortfalls. Under the current system, the city provides charter schools with fixed per-pupil and facilities payments throughout the year, with the amounts based on the schools' October enrollments. Schools do not have access to more city funds should they run into financial difficulties during the year.

The Sasha Bruce bills included $98,438 in personnel costs and $94,338 in rent and building services, all incurred in July and August. Those expenses were not covered by the regular funding because the school did not receive its monthly payments for June and July, former principal Sally Herrmann said.

Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) has proposed regulations for disposing of the assets of a charter school that closes. Under her bill, a charter school would be forced to liquidate assets to pay off debts. Any remaining assets, including the school building, would revert to the District.

Mayoral spokesman Vince Morris said the mayor is reviewing the Sasha Bruce request and consulting with Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi on whether it would be sound policy. Morris said it is not clear whether the payment would need council approval.

"I don't recall a request just like this, but we're in new territory as far as some of this goes," Morris said. "We don't want to punish any staff at the school, but we also want to have confidence that we aren't rewarding sloppy management," he said.

Sasha Bruce Youthwork Inc., a nonprofit that has operated in the District for 32 years, founded the school as an expansion of its mission to help at-risk children.

Parents were upset that the closure came so soon before the start of the school year, but all but 10 of the 232 students are known to have been placed elsewhere, said Nona Richardson, a spokeswoman for the board. Sixty percent of those placements were in charter schools, she said. She said the board is still seeking information on the remaining students.