Failed Pinellas charter school MycroSchool closes a week early, sending 80 students home with no notice

Pinellas MycroSchool, a struggling St. Petersburg charter alternative high school that had announced it would close at the end of October, instead shut its doors without warning on Monday, Oct. 26, sending staff and roughly 80 students home a week earlier than planned. Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Kevin Hendrick told the school board Tuesday that the district has moved into overdrive to find new schooling options for the displaced students and to secure the taxpayer-funded equipment and supplies the school leaves behind.

District officials had believed they had two weeks to manage an orderly transition before the charter's announced Oct. 31 end date, the Tampa Bay Times reported. Then students and staff arrived Monday for what they thought would be the final week of classes and were told the school was closing effective immediately.

"They were told to go home and not come back," Hendrick told the board, according to the Times. "It's difficult when an organization decides on a Monday to close and kicks everybody out."

Why the school failed

The closure itself was announced only days earlier. Over the weekend of Oct. 17 and 18, MycroSchool sent the district a letter citing financial and enrollment problems and saying it would cease operations at the end of the month, according to the Times. The school said its enrollment had shrunk to 80 students after it had projected 110.

"They said they don't even have money to make payroll," Deputy Superintendent Stephanie Woodford said at the time.

The decline was steep. When the school board last reviewed the charter in February, MycroSchool served about 120 students in grades seven through 12, according to the Times.

A school already on probation

MycroSchool, which opened in 2012, had been on a short leash. In February, the Pinellas County School Board renewed its charter for just one year, far shorter than the five to 15 years that better performing charters typically receive.

District charter schools supervisor Bonnie Solinsky told the board at the time that the school had shown improvement in academic performance but had struggled to keep accurate attendance records and had claimed funds for required special education services it did not provide, the Times reported. The school's fix for the special education problem was to return the money and ask the district to provide the services.

Board members reluctantly approved the extension and wrote into the contract a five and a half page list of conditions that could lead to nonrenewal or termination if they were not met. In the end, the district never had to act; the school closed on its own.

MycroSchool had faced trouble before. Its charter had earlier been renewed for only two years because of a low graduation rate, according to the Times. And when the MycroSchool charter in Pasco County came under fire in 2019 for poor academic and financial performance, the Pasco district shut it down.

The February review prompted board members to ask what more they could do to make sure students were learning and taxpayer dollars were properly spent at a privately run, publicly funded school. At the time, MycroSchool was working with the district to fix its attendance reporting and said it wanted to continue operating under the district's sponsorship.

Board member Laura Hine noted that Pinellas had not shuttered a charter in several years, but that when it last did, it terminated five charters over three years. "We hope that we don't get to that point here," Hine said before voting for the one-year extension, according to the Times.

What the district is doing for students

Hendrick told the board the district is working to place the approximately 80 alternative education students in new schooling options. Woodford said when the closure was first announced that the district would look at each student individually. "We've got to take care of each of these kids," she said, according to the Times. "We're going to look student by student and see what's their best option."

Beyond the students, Hendrick said the district also had to move quickly to secure all of the equipment and supplies at the school that were bought with taxpayer money. The district had hoped to handle both jobs during the school's final week of operation, before the abrupt shutdown compressed that timeline.

The abrupt shutdown also drew criticism from people connected to the school. A woman whose husband worked at MycroSchool wrote to the district, in an email she shared with the Times, that the closure appeared to have been handled with an extraordinary lack of coordination and consideration for the people most affected, including by the district.

What state law requires when a charter closes

Florida law sets out what happens to public money and property when a charter school dissolves. Under section 1002.33 of the Florida Statutes, a charter's governing board may end its charter through voluntary closure, but the decision must be made at a public meeting, and parents, the sponsoring district and the Florida Department of Education must be notified in writing within 24 hours.

When a charter school is dissolved, any unencumbered public funds revert to the sponsoring school district, except capital outlay and federal charter grant money, which goes back to the state for redistribution to other charters. All property, improvements, furnishings and equipment bought with public funds automatically revert to the district, subject to any lawful liens. The law also requires an independent audit within 30 days after notice of closure to account for all public funds and assets.

Those provisions explain Hendrick's focus on securing equipment and supplies along with placing students.

A district already shrinking

The closure comes as Pinellas County Schools confronts declining enrollment of its own. On Oct. 13, the school board voted 6-1 to move forward with closing six schools and merging or relocating others, with board member Lisa Cane dissenting, WUSF reported. Hendrick said the closures and consolidations could save $25 million a year and cut nearly 5,000 unused seats, noting that 45 county schools sit below 60% of capacity.

What's next

With MycroSchool closed, the district's immediate work is placing its roughly 80 students in new schools and taking custody of publicly funded property, followed by the independent audit that state law requires after a charter closes. The end of MycroSchool also closes a 14-year run for a charter that the district had kept open through repeated short renewals, most recently with a one-year contract that was meant to give the school a final chance to fix its problems.