L.A. charter school closes due to low enrollment; campus was in network co-founded by Ref Rodriguez
On the fourth day of its second school year, an Eagle Rock charter school closed its doors this week, leaving parents and students disappointed, angry and tearful — and bucking the usual narrative of ceaseless charter growth.
PUC iPrep Charter Academy had dual-language programs in English and either Spanish or Mandarin — the sort of offerings that are usually popular. But it was in an area with too many good school options, and it enrolled too few students.
It may or may not have been a factor that the school was part of Partnerships to Uplift Communities, the group of charter schools co-founded by Ref Rodriguez, who resigned from the Los Angeles Board of Education in July after pleading guilty to criminal charges related to his campaign for office.
The school aimed to enroll 275 students this year, although the organization told parents it would try to make things work with 200. But by Wednesday, it had only 114 students — and PUC’s board voted to shut it down.
“The last thing we wanted to do was disappoint the families who had chosen this school, but we can’t run the school without a certain number of students,” said Naush Boghossian, the school group’s spokeswoman. “It would have been impossible to continue to enlist high-quality staff and provide the kinds of programs that the kids and their families deserve.”
Parents arrive Thursday morning at PUC iPrep Charter Academy to find the school suddenly closed due to low enrollment. (KTLA)
The PUC school — which served students in kindergarten through second grade and in grades 6-8 — is the second charter to close in Eagle Rock in the last several months. That other school also was in a school network that got some bad publicity, which may have affected recruitment efforts. Then again, the neighborhood has become saturated with public schools, and the other school also cited low enrollment.
There is no limit on how many independent charter schools can open for business. And there’s no question that their rapid growth has contributed mightily to steady enrollment decline in Los Angeles Unified, exacerbating financial problems in the nation’s second- Continue reading: L.A. charter school closes due to low enrollment; campus was in network co-founded by Ref Rodriguez
