January 3, 2025
Dear Parents and Students,
It is with deep regret that I am obligated to inform you on behalf of the Board of Directors that the Encore Junior and Senior High School for Performing and Visual Arts (“Charter School”) will be permanently closing its doors on January 9, 2025. The Board has tried valiantly to keep the Charter School open notwithstanding drops in enrollment every year over the past several years as well as other operational challenges. The Board reluctantly made the decision at tonight’s meeting to close the Charter School because it is not financially viable going forward.
Next Steps for Families:
At this juncture, it is the Charter School’s goal to make every effort to ensure as smooth of a transition as possible to your child’s new school. The Charter School’s staff will be available to make copies of student transcripts and records for you through January 9, 2025 during normal business hours. We will maintain your child’s original records until January 31, 2025 and upon request will provide them to the school district or charter school that your child next enrolls in. If we have not received a request for records by January 31, 2025, your child’s records will be turned over to the Hesperia Unified School District or your school district of residence. If the school district in question refuses to accept the records, we will ask for assistance from the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools to find a suitable location to store them. However, we hope that you will immediately enroll in another school so that we can immediately transfer your child’s records to the new school. This will ensure your child’s records are safely transferred to their new school.
If your student has an individualized education plan (“IEP”) or is receiving accommodations under Section 504, please inform the school in which you are enrolling immediately and provide them with a copy of the IEP or Section 504 Plan so that your student can be promptly served and accommodated at their new school.
If your student has any need to make up assignments from the fall semester, you will need to work this out with your child’s teacher immediately. Upon closure on January 9, 2025, there will be no teachers available to assist you and grades cannot be changed.
We encourage you to apply immediately for enrollment in a school operated by the school district in which you reside or another local charter school so that your child’s education will not be disrupted to any greater degree than will already be the case. In particular, we want to be sure that all seniors can earn the remaining credits needed to graduate.
Your education is important, and we are committed to supporting you in this transition. We understand that this news is deeply upsetting for both students and parents. The closing of our school will be a very difficult and emotional experience. We are committed to doing everything in our power to ensure a smooth transition for our student(s). We want to assure you that your children are resilient and capable of adapting to this change. We encourage you to talk to your children openly and honestly about the situation, and to answer their questions as best you can. We also want to emphasize that this is not the end of your child’s education. There are many excellent schools in our community that will provide them with a high-quality education. We encourage you to explore your options carefully and to choose a school that is the best fit for your child’s individual needs and learning style. In the effort to do all we can, Encore will host a Student Transfer Enrollment Informational early next week. More details will be provided by Monday, January 6, 2025.
This has been a challenging time for everyone involved with Encore Junior and Senior High School. We are grateful for the dedication and hard work of our students, teachers, staff, and parents. We are also grateful for the support of the community. While the school is closing, the memories and experiences that have been created here will live on.
How We Got Here:
The current Board inherited a number of challenges that it has been working to address many fiscal issues, operational issues and declining student enrollment. The Board hired a new administration a few years ago to bring the Charter School into compliance with conditions set by the school district at the time of our charter renewal, balance the Charter School’s budget, improve the Charter School’s academic performance and increase enrollment. Although the prior administration made significant progress on meeting the District’s renewal conditions, these new recruitment efforts were not successful and enrollment continued to drop. The academic performance also did not climb as the Board had hoped. Enrollment in our school has dropped from a high of 1288 in the 2015-16 academic year to 477 currently. As our enrollment dropped, so too has our funding. Arts programs like ours are expensive to operate, and our facility was designed to house nearly three times the students currently enrolled. Although we have reduced staff and cut other expenses as enrollment has declined, many fixed costs including our facility costs remained the same even as our enrollment has shrunk considerably.
The Board hired Dr. Guillermo Munoz this past summer in an effort to get the school fully compliant with the remaining renewal conditions set by the District, continue work to improve the academic performance of the school and increase enrollment. The school has made great progress in a number of areas, and I believe was on track to meet all of the District’s renewal conditions this spring, but further reductions in enrollment and the resulting fiscal problems this fall have overshadowed the Charter School’s progress on other fronts.
Shortly after hiring Dr. Munoz, our Board began working on a Plan B in case enrollment did not increase. We began negotiations toward a potential merger with another charter school in the area. The goal was to merge with another school that was financially stronger and thus allow Encore to preserve its programs going forward under new management. Those merger negotiations fell through in mid-December when the other school determined that the risks of a merger or similar arrangement were too high.
Our current administration and a charter school fiscal expert then put together a corrective action plan to potentially save the Charter School that the Board approved on December 19, 2024. The plan involved a number of factors outside the Charter School’s control including enrollment growth from a local sports program that wanted to partner with our school, delays in payments to bondholders (which would have to be approved by bondholders), significant cuts to staff, and receipt of additional funds from the state based upon getting a letter of good standing from Hesperia Unified School District. All of those factors would have had to come together in order to make the plan work.
However, in attempting to implement that plan, it has become apparent since the December 19 approval that several factors may be even more challenging than anticipated. The Charter School is capped on the number of independent study students that it can enroll under its charter, so one element of the plan cannot be implemented as originally planned. Additionally, it is unclear how much enrollment growth would materialize or whether such growth would all occur at the start of the spring semester even if it did ultimately occur. It will also likely take longer than hoped to get the required approvals from the school’s bondholders and our charter authorizer. And there is no certainty that even with more time that all outside parties would agree to the plan over the next 30 days.
In short, there are too many variables outside the Charter School’s control to have any certainty that we could afford to pay our faculty and staff or serve students from now through the end of the current school year. The uncertainty only grew as we talked with other parties about the corrective action plan and we received none of the immediate commitments that would be required to ensure viability of the plan. In fact, a number of additional questions were raised that make the plan seem much less likely to be approved quickly by third parties. The Board believes a mid-semester closure would be even more disruptive for students and families and that the chances of the plan’s success before February is too unlikely. Moreover, even if this plan worked, it is far from certain that Encore would have the enrollment to continue into the next academic year. So even if the school took the risk and went forward with no guarantees from third parties and all of the plans came together in time, the school’s closure would likely be delayed just a few months.
The Board apologizes that it could not provide more notice for this decision. We were genuinely hopeful that a merger could provide a path forward and once it fell through we wanted as a Board to explore every conceivable opportunity to keep the school alive. But going forward would further risk our students, especially the senior class from being able to transition seamlessly this school year as they prepare for their futures. It would’ve also risked teachers and staff not being paid for the hard work they are doing for our families and students. Even after multiple layoffs of staff over the past few years, we have concluded that we simply cannot ensure that we can continue serving students through June of 2025.
Sincerely,
Chandale Sutton
Encore Education Corporation
Board Chair President
